NYC director holds local casting call

BY ROBIN CAUDELL

Press-Republican

PERU — New York City director Christa Haley is looking for local talent for a short film, “A Beautiful Corpse.”

“It is very loosely based on a classmate who passed away in high school,” the former Morrisonville resident said.

“The experience stuck with me. So, I’m doing a short film based on attending the funeral of a high school classmate as a high schooler. I think that kind that kind of experience can be quite traumatic. So, I wanted to explore that a little bit in a short film.”

CASTING CALL

Zoom auditions are open until Jan. 10, 2021, and the oneday shoot is slated for Jan. 23, 2021 with a backup date of Feb. 6, 2021.

“It is going to take place at the Hamilton Funeral Home in Peru,” Haley said.

“We’re going to be shooting on film. It’s going to be blackand- white 16 mm. It’s going to be on steady cam, which means that basically all the shots are going to be very like floaty. I would say, very ghostly.”

Cinematographer is Kelsey Smith.

Haley’s producing partners are Marie O’Connell and Jackie McTigue.

“Marie, Kelsey and I have been trying to put together another larger scale short film for the past three years called Roadhead,’” Haley said.

“That takes place in Nevada, only it’s going to be a six-day shoot. Because of COVID, that has been on pause. We’ve been eager to do another project, so we are doing this short film before we shoot the other.”

LIFE IMITATING ART

Haley has always wanted to shoot something locally with the people she grew up with and in the area she grew up in.

“The main people we are looking for are going to be these teenage high schoolers, and a few extras, and a teacher and a priest,” she said.

“We are also open to getting local cheerleaders, who are local cheerleaders, and a local priest who is a local priest.”

Pretty Little Film LLC has a COVID safety plan.

“Any traveling crew and main cast will need to be COVID tested,” Haley said.

“We’re going to be very safe on set. This is a mix of professionals from NYC crew and locals and recent grads.

All of my projects have been always been very ambitious. That’s what makes me very excited about doing them.”

Haley is primed to involve the local community.

“When I was growing up in the area, I was really eager to work with professionals that work in film,” she said.

“I would be really excited to meet any current students or locals in the area that are following in the same path as me. I’m just really excited to do something at home.”

Haley watched director Ben Stiller’s award-winning, “Escape at Dannemora” and worked with a few of the Showtime series’ post doc crew in the past.

“I know the area is no stranger to filmmaking,” she said.

“But I am eager to meet people like high schoolers who want to go down that path.”

HER PATH

Haley grew up in Morrisonville and graduated from Peru Central School in 2008.

“I have always been interested in film since I was about 10 years old,” she said.

“My grandfather was always filming growing up. My parents gave me my first camera at 10.”

Haley attended SUNY Oswego, where she majored in Cinema and Screen Studies.

“When I went in, it was actually the first year of their program,” she said.

“It has since grown quite a bit. Amy Shore is the director of the Cinema & Screen Studies program. She’s also been a huge supporter of my directing career.”

While in college, Haley started becoming involved in local productions.

“So, I worked on ‘Mineville’ that was filmed in Ticonderoga,” she said.

“I worked on the set of the ‘Star Trek: Phase II’ web series up in Ticonderoga, also Port Henry.”

Her first professional film internship was on the movie, “The Place Beyond the Pines,” a 2012 neo-noir crime drama.

“That was my first large professional movie set,” she said.

“That was shot around Schenectady. It starred Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper. Since then, I have moved to NYC and I work in editing.

“The way that the editing community works in New York is that there are post supervisors. The post supervisor (Jennifer Lane) who was on ‘Mary Poppins Return,’ I had worked with her before.”

BE FREE OR DIE

Haley was assistant editor on “Harriet,” which starred Cynthia Erivo.

She was the first assistant editor on the film about the Dorchester County, Maryland born self-emancipator/ abolitionist Araminta “Minty” Ross, later Harriet Tubman.

“The film was edited by the same editor that did ‘Mary Poppins Returns,’ Wyatt Smith,” Haley said.

“Wyatt brought me on from ‘Mary Poppins Returns.’ He’s just an really incredible editor. He’s been very encouraging of my career and my dreams of becoming a director.”

Working on ‘Harriet’ was amazing for Haley.

“I had a great time working on that,” she said.

“Kasi Lemmons was the director. She was the most friendly and open to your feedback during the process. “She really wanted to have conversations with the post team, which was really amazing. It was just a really fun project to work on.”

HEAD UP & FEET BENEATH YOU

“Mary Poppins Returns” was an entirely different experience from “Harriet.”

“It was equally amazing in a different way,” she said.

“It was a very large team. ‘On Mary Poppins Returns,’ we had three assistant editors, two visual effects assistant editors, so it was just a much bigger production and also much longer year. It was about a year and half in post production editing.”

For her, it was really amazing to watch the film come together because there was so much visual effects and animation, 2-D hands-on-animation.

“That stuff that films don’t see a lot of anymore,” Haley said.

“So that was a very labor intensive film and also incredible to be a part of.”

Email Robin Caudell: rcaudell@pressrepublican.com

VALA KJARVAL/ PHOTO Director Christa Haley (left). Kelsey Smith (DP), and Tim Ciavara (Gaffer) at test shoot for “Roadhead.”

The same team will come to shoot “A Beautiful Corpse” in Peru.