New Canaan High School graduates Nicola Scandiffio, left, and Abigail Schwarz have teamed up for a film project called ‘Those Who Wander.’
Abigail Schwarz and Nicola Scandiffio are two recent New Canaan High School graduates who have wandered into the realm of filmmaking. But they need your help to make sure their first feature-length film— “Those Who Wander” — wanders into “a theater near you.”
Schwarz, a 2010 graduate of the high school, and Scandiffio, who graduated in 2011, have already made one short film together — “Seconds of In Between” — which was chosen as an official selection of the LA First Glance Film Festival and featured on its website, and approached for distribution.
“We’ve done it before, we know how this works and we have an incredible support staff, from teachers, to producers out in LA who are mentoring us, to everyone who has already agreed to come work on this project for free — just because they love the script,” Schwarz, who wrote the script for the comedy, said.
Schwarz — a student at New York Film Academy in New York City — is the director and producer, and Scandiffio is also the film’s producer. He is a student at the Pratt Institute, also in the city.
But before they can yell “lights, camera, action,” the duo needs to raise funds to produce their film. To that end, they began a fund-raising campaign on June 20 on Kickstarter, an online crowd funding website, that allows people to easily pledge money in exchange for rewards offered by the project creators. The Kickstarter campaign ends on July 20.
“It’s an incredible way to bring communities together to financially back a creative project,” Schwarz said of Kickstarter. “As the money is being pledged, your credit card only gets charged if we successfully reach our funding goal, which is $70,000. It’s a lofty goal, but is manageable if we get the support of all our families and friends. Even a small donation helps enormously by raising our target, raising the number of backers and showing that people do support this film.”
According to Schwarz, raising the capital to make the film has been difficult, and their budget is too small to be recognized by Hollywood investors. She and Scandiffio don’t have nearly enough money combined to fund it themselves, which is why they launched the Kickstarter project.
‘Those Who Wander’
The script was completed in January and the film is slated to go into production in August.
According to Schwarz, “Those Who Wander” is “a funny, smart and honest coming-of-age story that speaks to the unglamorous and uncensored truth of being a 20-year-old child who is failing every way but up.”
“Frustrated with midterms, the city, and her increasingly complicated love life, 19-year-old Zoe sets off on a road trip down to her unpredictable and ill-advised best friend Sam’s childhood home in Georgia, with Sam’s judgmental older roommate Spencer, Zoe’s it’s-really-complicated-so-let’s-just-say-friends-with-benefits lover Joel, and a guy named Danny, who correlates his mood to his socks,” she said of the film’s synopsis.
The young filmmakers are planning to shoot in New Canaan, Stamford and New York City, and are hiring a mix of SAG actors, professional crew members and local talent.
“We are part of the SAG Ultra Low Budget Agreement, which means that the Screen Actors Guild recognizes that we are a tiny budget independent film, and is allowing us to hire professional actors alongside non-union actors, and for a fraction of what it would normally cost to hire them,” Schwarz said. “Using local talent is so important to us, especially since we have such a wealth of talent in this town. Already cast are Ryan Stiffelman [NCHS Class of 2011], in the role of Danny, the youngest, oddball traveler of the five friends, and Ryan Timberlake [also Class of 2011] in the role of Eddy, a philosophizing stoner they meet along the way.”
Just added to the cast is Anna Holbrook, an Emmy Award-winning actress and teacher at the Performing Arts Conservatory in New Canaan. She will be playing the role of Grace, Zoe’s mother.
“Growing up in New Canaan, we were lucky that the public school system supported the arts the way it does and we got to pursue what we loved in high school and had role models who encouraged us to go after our dreams,” Schwarz said. “If we didn’t, we probably wouldn’t be here doing this today, so it was important to us to come back to the town that had given us so much to shoot our first feature.
“We are working with the town — First Selectman Rob Mallozzi has been invaluable to us in helping with permits and locations and getting the word out — and many local businesses have stepped up to take a part in the film,” Schwarz said.
Chasing their dream
Schwarz and Scandiffio have been collaborating on film projects for the past three years and are enthusiastic about pursuing their dreams of being independent filmmakers.
“In high school, I started making music videos,” said Scandiffio. “A lot of people enjoyed my Scholarship Sunday video that helped raise more than $50,000 for the scholarship foundation at the high school. Making music videos in high school is what began to get me interested in making films. I went off to New York City to study architecture at Pratt and met up with Abigail who was studying film in the city and we decided to collaborate on some of her school projects and eventually a short film, ‘Seconds of In Between.’”
Schwarz said that she has been a writer “for as long as I can remember,” and was involved in theater in high school, winning DramaFest in her senior year, which she said launched her into playwriting.
“Then it was a natural progression to screenwriting when I graduated from NCHS,” she said.
“When Abigail wrote the script for this feature, I was one of the first people she came to, to talk about making this project become a reality,” Scandiffio said. “Once I read the script, I signed on board. When figuring out how to make this movie, we decided to shoot the movie in New Canaan instead of down South due to the amazing community and support structure we have here, and that structure is truly responsible for making this movie possible. Without this town, the movie couldn’t happen.”
Scandiffio said that Kendall Eagan, another NCHS grad is their music supervisor, and other graduates like Zack Zannini and Cameron Lancaster have been helping them with photography, and many more are part of the crew.
Both Scandiffio and Schwarz are clearly grateful to the community that gave them both roots — and now — wings.
“We didn’t even really interact in high school,” Schwarz said of her and Scandiffio, “but we both were very supported by the schools’ arts programs and that encouraged us to go after our artistic dreams.”
More info: ThoseWhoWanderFilm.com, facebook.com/ThoseWhoWanderFilm