Rooftop Intermission
Seeking a momentary respite from the strains of life in 2020, two strangers from the same building end up on a roof together and make a socially distant connection. Shot on a mobile phone by the sheltering-in-place cast.
Interview with Writer/Director/Producer Masa Gibson
Watch Rooftop Intermission on Masa Gibson’s website
Congratulations! Why did you make your film?
Back in the spring of 2020, we found ourselves halting preproduction on a feature project we'd been developing while we sheltered in place. Naïve and hopeful that everything would be back to "normal" within a couple of months, we decided to shoot a quick-and-dirty little "meet-cute" sketch on our rooftop, using Abby's phone as a camera, as a temporary creative outlet. Little did we know what the rest of the year had in store for us! As spring rolled into summer, the pandemic raged and BLM took to the streets. The little sketch took on a life of its own, and what we had envisioned as a one-weekend shoot ballooned into a long-term project.
Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?
It serves as a snapshot from a heightened time in our collective lives. Fans of theatre might enjoy this work, which plays out a bit like a one-act play.
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
The film explores how different people connect with other people and with the wider world.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development?
The script evolved along with our world outlook over the course of the production, as various significant global developments occupied our attention. Luckily, dialogue continuity was not an issue thanks to the face masks worn by the characters (all dialogue was planned to be recorded as ADR in post-production), and the indefinite timeline and convenient location gave us the license to be more picky about shooting conditions; we shot an hour or less a day, during pre-golden-hour light, and we only used the takes with the best sky and wind conditions. (We paused shooting for a week when the sky hazed over from the western wildfires.) We even trained local birds to fly in and out of frame for the opening and closing shots. In a very real way, those shooting sessions became our own "rooftop intermissions".
What type of feedback have you received so far?
The film has only been screened in one online festival and one in-person festival so far, but people have commented on its gentle pace and the intimate atmosphere it evokes. People also seem to relate to certain elements in it that mark a certain time in our society's recent history
Has the feedback surprised or challenged your point of view?
Different viewers have located it on different parts of the spectrum between drama and comedy, which we've found interesting. In that way it seems to serve as a sort of Rorschach test.
What are you looking to achieve by having your film more visible on www.wearemovingstories.com?
As with all of our films, we want to help this film find as wide an audience as possible.
Who do you need to come on board (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists) to amplify this film’s message?
We'd love to hear from any festival directors that might be interested in screening it!
What type of impact and/or reception would you like this film to have?
We strove to make this film universal and timeless while simultaneously serving as a snapshot of a very specific time and place. The setting is quintessential East Village in Manhattan, and people who were in this city in 2020 will recognize certain elements in the film that other people won't pick up on. But we hope that viewers from any part of the world, both now and many years from now, will see something in it that they recognize.
What’s a key question that will help spark a debate or begin a conversation about this film?
The two characters in the film, Brian and Martina, have contrasting personalities and are experiencing the circumstances around them in very different ways. Do you see yourself in one of them? Both of them? Neither?
What other projects are the key creatives developing or working on now?
We are developing another short that was inspired by the COVID 19 pandemic. Unlike "Rooftop Intermission", this film is much more fantastical, taking place in an alternate world gripped by a very different kind of pandemic (one of the virus's symptoms is that it turns the infected person's hair blue)...
Interview: September 2021
We Are Moving Stories embraces new voices in drama, documentary, animation, TV, web series, music video, women's films, LGBTQIA+, POC, First Nations, scifi, supernatural, horror, world cinema. If you have just made a film - we'd love to hear from you. Or if you know a filmmaker - can you recommend us? More info: Carmela
Rooftop Intermission
Length:
9:17
Writer
Masa Gibson, Abby J. Smith
Director
MASA GIBSON (they/them) holds a BA in Music from Rutgers University and a PhD in Linguistics from Cornell University. They are a classically trained singer and a Meisner-trained actor. After spending time on set as an actor, they migrated over to the other side of the camera to try their hand at filmmaking. ABBY J. SMITH (she/her) is an all-around designer/fabricator, working on all aspects of production design. Smith holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University and is a member of United Scenic Artists, Local 829 in NYC. She works in both theatre and film/TV; recent film/TV credits include Blade Runner 2049 (senior model maker and assistant art director for Weta Workshop’s miniatures unit), The BFG (senior model maker), and ITV’s Thunderbirds Are Go! (senior model maker and art department miniatures technician).
Key cast:
Masa Gibson, Abby J. Smith
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/RooftopIntermission
More info:
https://www.masagibson.com/rooftop-intermission
Where can I watch it now?
Super 9 Mobile Film Festival / https://super9mobile.com/?videos=rooftop-intermission; the film is also an official selection at an NYC-area festival to take place in late September/early October, but the organizers of the festival have asked that the film's selection status not be publicized until the festival schedule has been made more firm. TBA!