In Passing
A short film about falling...
in love.
Short Film / 5 mins / Comedy
In Passing is a short film about two lonely people who jump off a building to end their lives, but meet on the way down and discover it's never too late to fall in love.
Starring
David Trice
David Trice has been on numerous television shows including “GO ON,” “A.N.T. FARM,” “BIG BANG THEORY,” “WEEDS,” “CRIMINAL MINDS,” “KICKIN IT” and “PARKS AND RECS.”
This project is probably the most challenging he's done and his favorite. He's very proud and excited to be a part of "In Passing.”
Dana Lyn Baron
Dana's film highlights include David Zucker's An American Carol, Paul Auster's Lulu on the Bridge (with Harvey Keitel and Mira Sorvino), and Rene Alberta's Dream Date (Cannes 2010). She also does extensive voice work, none of which was put to use for the dialogue-free In Passing, which has been the greatest highlight of her film work thus far.
Experiencing life and understanding her inner artist in each moment is Dana’s passion, allowing an awkward intellectual to find art in the everyday. Whether actress, dancer, singer, producer or writer, Dana's approach to her career is with a business mind that can let go when it’s time to play and allow the “script to play you”.
Making the Film
The film was produced as my graduate student thesis film for the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts. It was shot on stages at USC, with the background plates being shot in my hometown of Vancouver, B.C. We shot it over five days on the stages, with our infinitely patient cast being strung up from the ceiling on wires for most of that time. Dana and David were amazing, forced to act without dialogue, hanging from painful wires, with giant fans blasting in their faces, and still manage to create compelling characters in under five minutes.
The visual effects were done by MFX, a company of extremely gracious magicians who adopted us as a pet project. We couldn't have done it without them. The entire film was shot against a green screen, with the environments added later. There is only one single shot in the entire film without some kind of digital effect. The backgrounds were created by layering several different elements to create a believable and evocative environment without breaking our modest budget. Most shots are constructed something like this: First, the actor or actors shot against the green screen were isolated and the wires painted out. This usually involved some difficult and tedious work to reconstruct their clothing around the wire attachments. Then, behind them, our digital hero building. That was created from scratch so we could control it fully and design it to become a character of it's own as it's architecture inserts itself into the story. Behind that are plates of Vancouver, my home town. We couldn't afford to create a fully digital city, and I wanted to keep as much reality in there as possible. The only way we could figure to actually accomplish these shots was to go up and down a glass elevator in a lookout tower over and over and shoot every angle. We weren't able to make any special arrangements, we just paid the tourist ticket and never got off the elevator. Finally we replaced the sky in the back with clouds taken from our VFX supervisor's vacation photos from Fiji, because it was a gray overcast day when we shot the original plates.
Crew
Written and Directed by
Alan Miller
Produced by
Alan Miller and Emily Ferenbach
Director of Photography
Damian Horan
Edited by
Joel Townsend
Visual Effects
MFX
Production Design
Maria Dirolf and Kali Heitholt
Music by
Alexis and Sam
Awards
Winner - Best Comedy - Student Emmy - Television Academy Foundation 2014
Winner - Best Comedy - First Film @ the DGA - 2014
Winner - Best Comedy - International Student Film Festival Hollywood 2013
Groundbreaker - HATCHfest - 2013
Grand Festival Award - Audience Favorite - Berkeley Video Film Festival - 2014
Best International Fiction - El Corto Del Año - 2014
Winner - CBC Short Film Faceoff - 2014
Bronze Frame - The Unprecedented Cinema - Estonia - 2015
Lenzing Award Special Jury Prize - 43rd Festival of Nations - Austria - 2015
Audience Award - Festival Joven de Cortometrajes de Huetor Vega - 2015
Best Short - MizzicaFilm - 2015
First Place - XXS-Kurzfilmfestival Dortmund - 2015
Festivals
Los Angeles Short Film Festival - 2013 - USA
Vancouver International Film Festival - 2013 - Canada
HATCHfest - 2013 - USA
Asiana Film Festival - 2013 - Korea
Victoria Film Festival - 2014 - Canada
Tofino Film Festival - 2014 - Canada
Emerge Film Festival - 2014 - USA
First Film - 2014 - USA
Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival - 2014 - Israel
Seattle International Film Festival - 2014 - USA
Maui International Film Festival - 2014 - USA
Champs Élysées Film Festival - 2014 - France
Palm Springs Short Film Festival - 2014 - USA
CBC Short Film Faceoff - 2014 - Canada
San Gio Verona Video Festival - 2014 - Italy
Ozark Shorts - 2014 - USA
Sardinia Film Festival - 2014 - Sardinia
Rhode Island International Film Festival - 2014 - USA
Montreal World Film Festival - 2014 - Canada
L’Étrange Festival - 2014 - France
Lady Filmmakers Festival - 2014 - USA
Ojai Film Festival - 2014 - USA
AmFest - 2014 - Moscow, Russia
Tallgrass Film Festival - 2014 - USA
Interfilm Berlin - 2014 - Germany
Berkeley Video and Film Festival - 2014 - USA
Cleveland International Film Festival - 2015 - USA
Arts and Algorithms International Short Film Festival - 2015 - USA
Tiburon International Film Festival - 2015 - USA
Dead by Dawn Festival - 2015 - Scotland
BeFilm Underground Film Festival - 2015 - USA
Amarcort Film Festival - 2015 - Italy
Tainan 39 - 2015 - Taiwan
Rencontres Du Film Court - 2015 - Madagascar
Around the World in 80 Shorts - 2015 - Italy
The People's Film Festival - 2015 - New York, USA
Festival of Nations - 2015 - Austria
Tabor Film Festival - 2015 - Croatia
One Shot International Short Film Festival - 2015 - Armenia
The Unprecedented Cinema - 2015 - Estonia
Festival De Cine De Villa Maria Del Triunfo - 2015 - Spain
Cinemabrut - 2015 - France
XV Festival Internacional de Cine del Aire - 2015 - Spain
Le Festival International de Contis - 2015 - France
Festival International du film de Vebron - 2015 - France
River Film Festival - 2015 - Padova, Italy
Festiwelt - 2015 - Berlin, Germany
Caserta Independent Film Festival - 2015 - Caserta, Italy
II Mostra de Cinema - 2015 - Amadora, Portugal
BeCurt, Festival de Curtmetratges - 2015 - Benimaclet, Spain
Camaiore Film Festival - 2015 - Italy
Festival Alto Vicentino - 2015 - Italy
Media-Art Lviv Festival - 2015 - Ukraine
Festival EtnAci - 2015 - Sicily, Italy
ARQFILMFEST - 2015 - Chile
XXS Kurzfilmfestival - 2015 - Dortmund, Germany
Cinefringe Film Festival - 2015 - UK
Mizzica Film Festival - 2015 - Italy
State aKorti Festival - 2015 - Italy
Comedy Cluj Film Festival - 2015 - Romania
Festival Joven de Cortometrajes de Huetor Vega - 2015 - Spain
Lo Cercacurts - Festival de Curtmetrages de Montornès de Segarra - 2015 - Spain
Corti in Cortile - 2015 - Italy
CineFest Miskolc International Festival - 2015 - Hungary
Court Métrange - 2015 - France
Festival du Cinéma International en Abitibi-Témiscamingue - 2015 - Canada
7th Ibero-American Film Show - 2015 - Nicaragua
Meme Pas Peur Festival - 2015 - Reunion Island