Talent Signed: Raney Branch

In any noir film, it's the baser, seedier motivations that drive the morally-ambivalent characters to their self-destructive acts.  And by "base" I mean those lusty, primal drives that we all struggle to keep under some semblance of control. Or not.


Though the primary motivator of all of the characters in Sixufus is greed, we need to see other motivators too, just to flesh out the universe a bit.  And when you think about it, most noir films show sex as one of the paths to destruction (Body Heat, Double Indemnity, etc.).  


This was the original purpose of the Hillary character; a young woman who's amazing physical charm and diabolical scheming fouls things up for Darwin.  


But as the story unfolded, I found she had a much better purpose than mere sex appeal.  And in fact, I ended up picturing her as something less charming.  Less made up, more shrewish and isolated, with her own problems to overcome.  Which is why her name is Hillary; something we hope snags on some previously-existing associations. 


And of course, what happens?  Our director Maurice Moore ends up casting a beautiful young woman with amazing physical charm to play Hillary.  Ah well.  Never hurts. 


The actress of which I speak is Raney Branch; who was one of the leads in Maurice's Lovely project:


A little about Raney:

While studying at Emory University - where she received her BA in Environmental Studies and minored in Arabic - Raney performed in the regional touring company ENACTE Repertory Theatre.  Upon moving to New York to teach science, Raney returned to her musical roots, performing in local blues, hip-hop, and neo-soul bands.  Since returning to her hometown, Raney has performed in several theatre productions including Hair, Anything For You, HUE , and the multimedia production Twenty-1: The Age of Ultimate Change.  In film, Raney starred in the independent feature Family Curse. as well as the shorts Freakin' Funny, the aforementioned Lovely, and LA Sales.  Raney also guest-starred on the House of Payne TV show  ("I Got the Hook Up" episode). 


Having read all that, you should now head over to YouTube to see her demo reel:  Raney's demo reel

Concepts and Storyboards - Intro scene and the "Sixufus Location"

When this project was started, it was me and...

Well.  Me and my mouse.  Computer mouse that is, and I wielded it with abandon; firing up various pieces of software, generating concepts and storyboards and spreadsheets and whatnot.

Now that Maurice Moore and his team are doing the hard production work, thought I might share these concepts with the interested world, lest they fall into digital oblivion.  That, and I thought they're kinda cool, in a geeky sort of way.

Before presenting the media, however, a few explanations are in order.

Intro Scene
During preproduction, it's the natural order of things that the director bring his/her vision to the story.  Translated, that means re-writes to the script.  Typically, this is a good thing for the project, for a myriad of reasons.

For Sixufus, Maurice thought we needed an additional scene at the start.  An introductory scene.  It adds interest and backstory, perhaps enough to even give our main character a little much-needed sympathy.  Because this was fresh on my mind, I generated a few images that I thought were appropro.

Sixufus Location 
In our story, the main character, Darwin, has multiple personalities.  All of Darwin's personalities know that the others exist, and there's a fair amount of argument, banter, and unpleasantness that goes on between them.

These interchanges, though interesting, would lose some (if not most) of their impact if we just used voice-over.  We need to see them; their expressions and their gestures (or lack thereof), in order to understand Darwin, to see what it would be like to have a group of people living inside of you, and them rarely agreeing on anything.

Thus was born the "Sixufus Location".  It's not a physical place (though it resembles one), but a meta-setting.  A place where there are just the six characters, around a table, and nothing else.

Technical Details

I'm the world's worst hand-draw artist.  However, I do know how to run software, generally speaking, and that's what I used to generate these images.

The intro scene stuff was generated in Poser 7, using the toon renderer.  Has a nice hand-drawn look.

The "Sixufus Location" concepts started life as Poser 7 scenes, which were then imported into Vue 7.  Added  a stock table, some chairs, and a pistol, then rendered 5-second animations, using radiosity.  I then brought those clips into Adobe's After Effects CS4 and applied the Toon Effect for the final hand-drawn look.  Heh, not perfect, but as Maurice says, it is what it is.

Finally  
These are concepts generated by me, the writer.  These are NOT concepts generated by Maurice Moore or his team, and the final film will look much different.  That said, I'll then add that this will give you an idea of what my mind's eye saw as I wrote the script.

Talent Signed: Nathan Huntley

For the lead actor, Sixufus will either be a real show-piece or a masochistic acting exercise:  He must convincingly play 6 different characters.  At some points, he will have to morph between characters, insinuating this shift to the audience without the benefit of dialog, much less voice over.

Guy's gotta have chops.

Lucky for us, Maurice Moore, the director who has optioned the Sixufus script, has already identified the leading man and got him committed (so to speak):  Nathan Huntley.

Maurice had the privilege of directing Nathan in "Inseparable Hearts", a short romantic comedy that's now making the film festival circuit.  That piece has Nathan playing an actor, roaming through various roles with the ease of a shark in bloody water.

With Maurice's permission, we've managed to create a small clip from his performance in "Inseparable Hearts":

Here's a bit more about Mr. Huntley:

Nathan holds a B.A. in theater with an emphasis on performance and a minor in playwrighting from the University of Tulsa. While attending the University of Tulsa, Nathan received the American College Theatre Festival’s commendation for excellence in the arts.  Not just once, but twice:  Once for his performance as Billy in the 1996 production of "The Game Room” (a role he originated), and again in 1998 for "Mr. Lucky’s Pub and Grill" (his original work). While in Tulsa, Nathan also co-founded and served as a co-artistic Director for OK REP! (the only theatre company in Oklahoma that consistently produces a full season of equity plays).

Nathan’s most rewarding work is as an actor.  In the summer of 1997, Nathan had the opportunity to premiere "Nation", a play by Tony Award nominee Joe Sears, in the principal role of “Tassel”.  This honor comes second only to being asked by Yvegeny Yvevdeschenko (Russian Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize Winner) to create and perform in opening piece for Yvevdeschenko’s poetry performance  in 1999.

Since moving to Los Angeles, Nathan has performed with THE PROP-TARTS comedy team. He also served as an actor throughout the process of developing a new play called A Place at Forrest Lawn (written by Jim Bontempo and Luke Yankee). This piece was honored with third place at the Palm Springs International Playwriting Festival, where Nathan read the play alongside Pat Carroll, Barbara Rush, and Ian Abercrombie.