Gretchen McCarthy, Reporter
@GretchenCourant
With Career Night behind us, NCHS students are beginning to look around them for ideas and inspiration about various careers. Past graduates Nicola Scandiffio and Abigail Schwarz provide an inside look at life in the filmmaking world for prospective creative arts students. Their independent comedy, Those Who Wander, comes out later this year and after writing and producing the film together Nicola and Abigail exemplify many of the skills needed to be successful in the filmmaking world.
Abigail served as the writer, director and producer of the film, starting the project with an idea of the story she wanted to communicate. “I think if someone had sat me down and asked me where I thought it would go this probably was always the endgame, but in the beginning process it was more just about I had a story I felt I needed to tell and wanted to get it down on paper,” Abigail said.
While Abigail was putting together the beginning stages of production. Nicola was an architecture student at the Pratt Institute of Design in New York City. After Abigail sent him the script, Nicola saw the quality of her work and immediately knew they had a good film in the works. “When I read the script I was like ‘this script is awesome!’ We’re going to make a movie and we’re going to make a movie at any cost with whatever money we can raise,” Nicola said.
As a high school student, Nicola was more interested in architecture and design, however; during his junior and senior years he began producing NCHS classics like SOHCAHTOA and Scholarship Sunday. “I was an architecture student, I took architecture class, I went to architecture precollege,” Nicola said “Film was a hobby, film was something I was passionate about, I guess something I was really good at.”
Until his senior year Nicola hadn’t even taken any film or TV classes, and he credits the support of teachers Roman Cebulski and Tony Psenicnik for allowing him to pursue his goals outside of the classroom. “Some of those lighting kits I swear were never in the school, they were always in my car, for an entire year. I would check them out for a year and if a student really needed it they would call me,” Nicola recalled. “They trusted me a lot and I was really grateful for that.”
While Nicola worked within the film program, Abigail was an active participant in theater productions such as DramaFest and many various plays. “It was a supportive environment in which we were able to really believe that we could build careers in the arts which is a rare thing nowadays,” Abigail said.
Once Abigail and Nicola began to see the potential for a full length movie they turned to the online site Kickstarter to raise money to budget their movie. Their Kickstarter page describes the film as a “passion project” and lays out all the reasons the film, along with its two leaders, should be supported.
After opening up the page to backers around the country, Nicola and Abigail were met with tremendous support from the New Canaan community. “The New Canaan community is the reason this film happened,” Nicola said. “We got a lot of local businesses agreeing to put takeaway cards in their stores and put flyers in their windows and send out email lists to people.”
As word about the film spread, author of A Million Little Pieces James Frey and Harry Potter actress Bonnie Wright joined the project. Frey learned about the film through Kickstarter and decided to invest in order to support local talent. Wright played the main character Zoe and was fortunate enough to read off of the script that Abigail had written. “A great project starts at the script and Bonnie read an amazing script and decided she wanted to be a part of that project,” Nicola said.
As production progressed, both Nicola and Abigail learned about the process of bringing a script to the big screen. “I didn’t realize how hectic it was going to be to be physically on set and it really is crazy and very fast paced, there’s an adrenaline rush that comes with it,” Abigail said.
Despite the challenges that come along with production, Nicola realized the importance of filming as a way to learn more about the industry. “I knew it would be exceptionally challenging because in production there are so many curveballs,” he said. “Every step of the way was an amazing learning process and I’m so fortunate to have gone through it.”
As leaders of Those Who Wander, Nicola and Abigail are starting to look towards the future and the possibility of another opportunity on the horizon. “For me and for Nicola this whole process has really reaffirmed our love for the industry and confirmed to us that this is what we want to do for the rest of our lives,” added Abigail. “It’s nice to now have a little split hole in the door of the industry and have some connections that we can use going forward to build our careers.” After working on Those Who Wander and other various short films together, Abigail and Nicola have already started putting together their next project, which they’ve kept under wraps as they continue forming their ideas.
Even though they didn’t run in the same circles in high school, Nicola and Abigail are grateful to have found each other after leaving New Canaan. “We have come so far in this process of working together and it’s exciting to have a partner that you trust in an industry that can be a little sketchy sometimes,” Abigail said.
Now that Nicola has progressed from past music videos like SOHCAHTOA and into the more serious filmmaking world, he thinks the biggest key to success in the movie industry is a drive for hard work. “The film game is all about having done more, having solved more problems, having shot more, having acted more, having done everything more and having done it better than everyone around you,” he said. “Any high school student who can get his or her hands on a camera should go out and shoot something. Youtube is right there, you can have a billion fans by the time you graduate high school, you just have to put in the work and make great stuff.”
Watch out for the premiere recap, and hear all about the real movie from Jenny and Gretchen.
