SHOOT MAGAZINE- HOUSTON WORLDFEST

Fritz Feick of Aftershock Digital wins Gold Remi Award at Houston Worldfest

LOS ANGELES, April 27, 2009 | SHOOT Publicity Wire | --- 

Fritz Feick, of Aftershock Digital (Los Angeles) recently completed shooting "The Enduring Call," a half-hour thriller set at California's Salton Sea. The film played to a sold-out crowd at its Premiere at the Houston Worldfest which awarded Feick with a Gold Remi Award, his 14th award at Houston in almost as many years. Feick, a commercial editor and owner of Aftershock Digital, is best known for cutting innovative campaigns for the likes of Reebok, Toyota, and Nintendo, and for editing the feature films Save The Last Dance, Che, and Sundance favorite Expired starring Jason Patric and Samantha Morton. "On the production side, I first settled on the Salton Sea, which is anything but… the only place to be (local bumper sticker)." The vast inland lake, which was once a paradise of biodiversity, has become an ecological wasteland where nature struggles to exist. It was the perfect setting for Feick's harrowing romance that followed the journey of a beautiful young eco-activist (Katrina Nelson) who travels there to investigate a sudden and mysterious disappearance of endangered wildlife.

Feick shot the Enduring Call over a long weekend, and was the producer, writer, director, D.P. and editor on the project. "The Enduring Call had no crew—just myself with a camera, a battery of Coleman lamps, and some truly haunting locations. We lost our hair stylist the first night. When I hiked back to the cars from the beach, she had simply vanished. Apparently, she couldn't get back to civilization fast enough. So much for hair and make-up!" Don't be misled by the looseness of Feick's approach. He copiously planned all of his locations, which required weeks of scouting. He sought to portray a vanishing America, a soulless landscape of complex beauty—one step from desolation. "I chose to shoot in an unique color palette (yellow and green)," Feick adds, "and spent the next two months collecting stacks of green and yellow bottles, toothpaste, breath mints and such. The green camera car was a weekend loaner from a friend, and I put all the clothes on credit cards—which raised a few eyebrows when I returned all of them neatly folded after the shoot. Controlling the color in the vast landscape proved to be a challenge, but it definitely impacts you on a subconscious level when watching the film."

"As a director, I found that working alone with the actors in such a remote and god-forsaken environment had the inverse effect of creating an unusual ease in bringing the two characters to life. I was acutely aware of the contrast between the vacuous physical elements of the terrain and the rich, raw emotional elements I wanted to capture in the characters."  Feick was intent on accurately portraying the science behind the film, and researched techniques used by field scientists for water sampling. He enlisted several biologists to aid the production, and incorporated their ideas into his script based on their sobering accounts of the potential horrors that could go wrong in the field. Their input added a crucial credibility factor to the actors who were themselves actively collecting data as the plot thickened.

Katrina Nelson faced an enormous challenge depicting a woman caught in the crosshairs, who risks everything in an encounter with unpredictable forces. "Her performance worked on every level," claims Feick. "Katrina showed great flexibility as we raced from location to location-- never shooting the pages in order. And she wasn't just a trooper, she was an artist." "To say that it was always challenging and never boring is an understatement!" Katrina added. "I think Kayvon (Esmaili) and I had great chemistry. We all worked long, hard hours making this film guerrilla-style on little sleep and meager accommodations. One morning, we even ate pancakes at a church for $1... talk about low budget!" Kayvon Esmaili, who plays a faithful colleague and jilted lover, called it a one-of-a-kind experience. "We would film pretty much all day sun up to sundown, then start up all over again at night. I actually don't remember the sleeping part. Fritz seemed to know where everything was and drove us around to all of these locations he had mapped out. Well, we'd just get out and attempt to lose ourselves in this world." Composer Steven Sacco drew upon some of the world's best performers to deliver the provocative score. Steven Isserlis, CBE (Order of the British Empire), one of the world's most renowned living cellists, ripped an astonishing solo, which is the heart and soul of The Enduring Call. "The music for the film has a warm and sensuous patina, filled with passion, drama and rage," adds Sacco. "In the film, I love the extended time devoted to the abstract, the long stretches of beautiful, cinematic photography and the fast paced juxtaposition of distinct short shots. Fritz has a great affinity for music and his film leaves ample room for the composer to shine! My thinking was to create a score with strong narratives that would, in essence, create a counterpoint with his beautiful film." Sacco first met Feick at a screening for Fritz's first film Bulgare which also won a Gold Award at the Houston Worldfest, and went on to win the Bohemian Crystal for Best Drama at the Golden Prague International Television Festival. It would later become part of the collections of the Museum of Television in New York and the Center for Independent Journalism in Prague.

What's on the horizon for Feick and The Enduring Call? The film will be screening at the Short Film Corner at the Cannes Film Festival next month, and Feick looks forward to the European response. His toughest audience, however, still lies ahead. "When I show the film to my daughter, a very strict devotee to Criterion Collection black and whites, then I'll know if the film holds muster."

Contact Info  Fritz Feick Aftershock Digital  (323)658-5700  fritzfeick@gmail.com