There is an alien world in western Wallingford.
Co-writer/director team Chris Caldwell and Zeek Earl, along with producer Brice Budke, created Prospect, a short film that was well-received at SXSW back in 2014. Encouraged, they captured funding from Bron Studios in Canada to turn it into a full-length feature film starring Sophie Thatcher, Pedro Pascal (Game of Thrones, Narcos), Jay Duplass (Search Party, Transparent).
They searched a wide area for a space to create their workshop and studio in but ended up finding a large open space with clear span (and a difficult to find one year lease) right here in Wallingford, on Stone Way behind Oz and the Episcopal Bookstore in an old boat building warehouse. (It was a convenient spot for Earl, who lives by the Durn Good Grocery.)
Brice explained:
The warehouse was a shop, studio, and post production suite. We had an indie horror film budget and attempted to make a fully detailed Star Wars-esque world. We had quite a few ‘maker’ community friends – none of whom had film experience – that we banded together to create all the extremely detailed sets and props.
It was a huge passion project. We built our own industrial CNC machine out of a kit so we could design all the sets digitally and then robotically cut them out of plywood sheets so they could be assembled like lego sets. The whole production was extremely DIY from beginning to end – a lot of which blew up in our faces, but ultimately I think we were able to pull off something pretty unique in the budget space.
All the interior shots were filmed in the studio, while the exterior shots were filmed over in the Hoh Rain Forest. Breaks took them out into our neighborhood (Brice says that MIIR, Stone Way Cafe, Bar Charlie, Kozue, and the Pacific Inn were favorites, while Al’s Tavern was the site of many planning meetings for the original short-film).
This short “making of” featurette they put together gives a great taste of the indie spirit and passionate attention to detail that went into the project:
The film premiered at SXSW this March, where it won critical acclaim as well as the Adam Yauch Hörnblowér Award, which is given “in honor of a filmmaker whose work strives to be wholly its own, without regard for norms or desire to conform.”
The film opened November 2nd in Los Angeles and New York, but will show nationwide (including Seattle) starting this weekend. Caldwell and Earl will be holding a Q&A at the Seattle screenings on the November 8th and 9th at the Regal Meridian downtown.
If that’s not enough for you, props and artifacts from the production will be on display at a gallery installation in December at the Glass Box Gallery in SODO.
The premise of Artifacts from the Multiverse is that it was curated by an interdimensional Sotheby’s-like corporation that has collected artifacts across many different worlds for display in our own. This includes a vivarium of living light, an interactive flow-state table, a collection of furniture from a renowned futurist, an exhibit dedicated to King Mandtii (the half-crab, half-man who charmed a nation with his charismatic performances on the silver screen) and more. All items in the exhibition were created by the team behind the feature film PROSPECT.
Here’s the official trailer for the movie, to whet your appetite:
So does it talk about Soros and Bloomberg?
That “large open space” studio was a built as a still photography studio (Picture This) in the late 1970s. Many print catalogs were produced there for Fredrick & Nelson’s and The Bon as well as daily newspaper. I have fond memories as a shooter there.
Interesting. In the late 70s and 80s I shot in large catalog studios in NY for Montgomery Ward and the like. Now I live a few blocks from this space.