'The Witch of Portobello: Andrea McCain' gets POW'd!

The creation of this week's POW was inspired by a very innovative film contest called The Experimental Witch Film Competition, based on Paulo Coelho's book 'The Witch of Portobello'.

Last year, this world renowned and best selling Brazilian author (The Alchemist, The Pilgrimage, Eleven Minutes, The Zahir, to name a few of his books) thought it would be a great idea to make a full feature movie with his readers.

'The Witch of Portobello' is divided into 15 narrators/perspectives, and thirteen of them directly interact with Athena, the main character. Inspired by the talents of many of his readers who work as actors, musicians and filmmakers, Coelho invited interested parties to submit videos based on the perspective of one of these characters and illustrate all the scenes in which they interact with Athena. Once uploaded to YouTube, winners will be selected, prize money awarded and then submissions will be professionally edited to re-create the book on film.

Answering to the call, California-based visual artist, Director / Producer, Chris Motola and his cast and crew undertook to create their own interpretation of the character, Andrea McCain. Among many assets in the project, we get a view in to the screenplay, scene/ character breakdown, storyboards, and casting process. Also included are a number of helpful filmmaking resources for the new and uninitiated.
Shot on HD in southern California and London in February and March, primary filming has been completed.

Below is Chris's detailed explanation of the genesis of his project:

"I have been a big fan of the author Paulo Coelho for about 15 years, since I read his book "The Alchemist"
I was talking with my friend Kirsty Hawkshaw (who is a wonderful person and singer) in Second Life, and we were talking about Paulo's writings. Kirsty asked me if I had read "The Witch if Portobello" I said no and she replied "Why not! it is wonderful, you should read it!"

"Ironically that same day I received blog on my myspace from Paulo about making a movie based on the book. I am a big fan of serendipity/ synchronicity and as it so happened I was already moving to Los Angeles to pursue a film career so it was very good timing, I read the book and thought "this is what I will devote the next few months to". Now I had a project I could sink my teeth into and learn from and hopefully have something  worthwhile to give back to Paulo."

"So I started to write the script for my section of the film, however my scriptwriting skills were non existent and I wanted to be able to work with other people that were more talented than I in that area, I searched around the internet for scriptwriting/ collaborating software and after trying a few  things that did not satisfy I found Celtix, the moment I installed it I knew it was what i was looking for, from the scriptwriting interface to the ability to share projects, i started working with it right away. Originally I was going to do 2 versions of the movie, one in real life and one in Second Life and Celtix would have helped do both. I plan on using it again for some Machinima projects I have coming up in Second Life."

In his Artist Statement Chris indicates he "...wants to produce a feature film collaborating with others around the world." I'd have to say this was an incredibly interesting way to go about doing that.

The deadline for inscriptions is May 31, 2008 and the results will be known by the 25th of July 2008.
We anxciously await the results, and wish all the very best to Chris and his crew.

Cheers!
Sheila and The C-Team