Nearly there

Dear friends,

It's getting very close to Xmas and our installation & premiere at Stanley Picker gallery!

A huge thanks to the amazing gallery staff: David Falkner, Julia Jarvis, Jacqueline & Marc for their incredible support in putting the show together.

In the meanwhile, it's been busy here at Ten Faces HQ / Santa's Grotto, dealing with an incoming flurry of print products and our limited edition DVDs - all designed by the wonderful Rosy Tsai.

Thanks for all your support & interest in the project! We can't wait to share the films with you &
hope to see you many of you at the gallery event this Wednesday!

For those of you that aren't in London this week, the films will go up on Electric Blue Films' Youtube channel starting on Thursday. Please join our Facebook group if you'd like project updates - we'll be linking all the films there.

XX

Acting and Accents - a guest blog from Annarose

Dear readers,

We have a special treat for you today: Annarose would like to share some thoughts about using accents in creating characters. Enjoy!

"As a character Actor, I can safely say that if the opportunity arises to use an accent different to my own, then I will grab it with both hands.

We character performers love nothing more than to hide behind the mask of voice and costume. However, working on Ten Faces of Anna, I was challenged, courtesy of Laura Hypponen, to strip down to the bare bones and brave the waters by using my own voice. Not for all the pieces, mind, but for the majority.

For me, this was initially something I felt very strongly against. How could I truly step into someone else's shoes if I wasn't permitted to step into someone else's voice? 

The answer, I found, is much more simple than I had at first appreciated. How can I possibly step into anyone else's shoes, if I haven't really walked far enough in my own first? 

I realised I had to take this time to explore my own voice qualities and discover a way to bring the truth of these fictional characters to life through ME, rather than through a previously planned out character. 

I still prefer to go as far a way from me as possible in my performances but one thing I have learnt through this process is to trust that I, alone, am enough to bring a piece to life. That in fact the work is much more authentic this way, and that when I choose to use an accent in the future, I will think long and hard about whether it serves the piece well before diving into Australian, Russian or Irish. 

The beauty of a great performance comes from honesty and there's nothing more beautiful and more honest, than bringing to a performance a little bit of yourself."

Anna
x

Annarose wins BEST ACTOR award at ASVOF in Paris!

I'm very proud to announce that Annarose was awarded the Best Acting gong at Diane Pernet's A Shaded View On Fashion Film Festival this weekend at Centre Pompidou, Paris.

I'm so happy for Annarose, and our whole team - it is an amazing feeling to be acknowledged in such a lovely way for our work.

Annarose as Dolly - as seen on the big cinema screen at Centre Pompidou, Paris 

It was also a great experience to watch Dolly, the film Annarose won the award for, on the big screen with a cinema full of fashionistas. Annarose looked amazing and her performance truly captivated the audience.

Laura (director) wearing Boudicca, with ASVOF founder, Diane Pernet

Now, what could be better motivation than this to get on with the post-production of the films, and rehearse our final Face - Goddess - for our live performance at Stanley Picker gallery on 17th December?

A bientot,

Laura X

Post-production madness!

Hello everyone,

Great news: we succeeded in our Kickstarter campaign! Huge thanks to all of you who contributed to the campaign.

Thanks to the funds we've been able to start work on the graphic design of the Ten Faces 'goodies', including monologue booklets, postcards and DVD packaging. We can't wait to see what our lovely designer, Rosy Tsai, will come up with!

We are also putting finishing touches on all the offline edits of the films. Our editor-extraordinaire, Laurent Chinot, is currently cutting face number nine, "Star", in Brussels, whilst we are working closely with a brilliant sound designer, Marie Tueje, on creating soundscapes for the films.

After a year and a bit in production, it's a wonderful feeling to start seeing the finishing line in the horizon! We have a month until our premiere at Stanley Picker gallery, and just a few days until Jester and Dolly will screen at the legendary Diane Pernet's A Shaded View on Fashion Film Festival at Centre Pompidou, Paris. Here's the trailer for the festival - see if you can spot Jester!

Exciting times!

XX

We've launched a Christmas themed Kickstarter campaign!

We can't believe nearly three months have passed since our last update. They've gone by in a whizz!

The great news is that we're nearly there with the project. We've now filmed all nine of the pre-recorded monologues (Anna will perform monologue number ten, "Goddess", at the opening event of the films in December), and we're currently in the editing suite, cutting rather feverishly.

Besides working on Ten Faces, Anna has been preparing a much more significant project - she gave birth to a baby girl last week! As you can imagine, it's been quite a journey for us to get this far, and I believe Anna will be updating this blog with a bit of a perspective on what it's been like for her to be working as an actress that late into her pregnancy. Parental guidance: not for the faint hearted!

We have recently launched a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign to help us finish the post-production of the films, and to help make nice artifacts of them - a nicely designed DVD, special edition post cards and so on. These will make some lovely Xmas stocking fillers for anyone who's interested in design, theatre and fashion.  

Please take a moment to have a look at our campaign site and share with anyone you think might be interested in supporting our project. Donations start from £5 and we would be extremely grateful for your support. The campaign ends on 14 November 2014 so please make sure you get your donation before then.

Thank you for your support & wishing you a fantastic Autumn,

XXX

PS: We'll be posting details of our UK gallery premiere here shortly, watch this space!

Would you like to know your future?

Fortune Teller, our latest character, might have a few nuggets of wisdom to share with you about what lies ahead. But us mortals, we can only give you an update of what's been happening in the past months. It's been rather hectic! We shot Sleepwalker in April, followed by Survivor in early June and then Fortune Teller a few weeks back in July. Three films, three DoPs...Malte Rosenfeld on Sleepwalker, Luca Rocchini on Survivor and Dean Scanlon from Scanach Media on Fortune Teller.

Other credits include:

Sleepwalker 
Styling by Andrew Ibi, assistant stylist Maria Piene, hair & makeup by Lina Santos Baptista, camera assistant Haavard Helle, production assistant Abigail Shaw, exec producer Jack Rosecroft & special thanks to Patrick Hart & Olga Stenqvist

Survivor
Styling & costumes by Galina Sherri at Gigi's Dressing Room, makeup by Julia Wilson, makeup assistant Inga Kunigonyte, hair by Koko @ Joe's Salon, Sloane Avenue London, 1st AC Blaine Rennicks, 2nd AC Haavard Helle, gaffer Antonis Tsiakis, art direction Vana Karamanou, set construction Grant Jarvis, set dressing Abigail Alvarez, assistant art department Filomena Barberio, production assistant Abigail Shaw, stills by Karina Lidia

Fortune Teller
Costume by Galina Sherri at Gigi's Dressing Room & Laura Hypponen, hair & makeup by Lina Santos Baptista, set dressing & props by Vana Karamanou, 1st AC Jim Samborg, sound assistant Justin Bayley, production assistant Abigail Shaw

Huge thanks for all the hard work of the crew!!!

Next up we are finally filming Anarchist, which will be a true DIY piece, in the spirit of the character - we'll be shooting on mobile phone!

Between all this filming activity there is of course post production. Laurent Chinot, our wonderful editor, has completed picture cuts of Sleepwalker and Survivor. He has moved to Amsterdam for the summer so we are experimenting with a different editor, Annarose (!) on Fortune Teller. I suspect it's an interesting challenge for Anna to cut her own performance, and I'm sure she'll be adding her own notes on the process here on the blog some time later.

Our fab composer Martin Bjorck has been excelling on the music front of the films & we are delivering some of them to be graded at Onsight tomorrow! We can't wait to reveal these new films. The plan is to release them all on Youtube once a week starting in October. We'll post more info & dates here closer to the time...

With love & sunshine from Ten Faces HQ,

XXX

Guest blog from Anna - on actor/director relationship

"Working with Laura on Ten Faces of Anna has been by far the most valuable experience I have had in my career to date.

My entrance to the industry was pretty standard and began back in 2009 after graduating from a very intense 3 year acting diploma course at the Oxford School of Drama. I got a great agent and went forth into the world of auditions and copious amounts of rejection J

I had always had a very clear idea in my head of the kind of work and characters that interested me and never lost sight of this along my journey. Making this a reality seemed less and less certain as the years progressed, however. The roles on offer, I felt to be quite one dimensional for female actors and found myself longing to be a man, just so I could sink my teeth into a really nitty, gritty, dirty  character. The chance to get behind the mask of Hitler, perhaps, and explore the human beneath the beast. These roles never popped up. For obvious reasons.

Three years on, I eventually decided to conquer the industry alone and start up my own film company, leaving the commercial world of agents and casting directors behind me. It was about one month into this process, that I got a lovely email from Laura Hypponen asking me if I would be interested in collaborating with her on this project. The timing was perfect.

I had met Laura once many moons ago at an audition for a film she had written and was directing. She cast me in the leading role of the film but, alas, it never got financed, so life went on as usual! It was incredible to hear from her two years later and to know she had thought of me for such an interesting and unique piece of work. I hope other actors who feel a little lost at times, may find this encouraging. It is all about timing and circumstance. Nobody is forgotten.

Ten Faces of Anna is every Character Actor’s dream. (In my humble opinion). An opportunity to explore an enriched variety of different people from different ages, backgrounds, moral standings, sexual orientation. Every single person on this weird and wacky planet has a story to tell, and I am so lucky that my job allows me to tell them.

A great actor/director relationship is key to creating a great piece of art and Laura and I really ‘’get’’ one another, which is amazing when working on such intimate stories. Until starting Ten Faces, I didn’t realise how little I was actually putting into my character building process. She has taught me so many priceless tools and techniques for my work. She is very much in control of what she seeks from the outcome of each character, but her complete open mindedness and BELIEF in my abilities as a performer, allows me to fail as many times as I possibly can, before being gently pushed in the right direction. I’ve gained an enormous amount of courage, self-worth and compassion from working on Ten Faces of Anna with such an incredible director and cannot wait to crack on with the Third Face.

I hope that every performer out there will have the opportunity to work with such an insightful mentor, but I really do think they are few and far between, and if you are lucky enough to be sought out by one, grab the opportunity with both hands and never let go!"

Love,

Annarose X