Charlotte puts Rochester in the rear view as she runs away from the life she has known. She has never been on her own and doesn’t know if she’ll make it as her resources are stripped away. She meets diverse women who offer connection, insight, and laughter on the road to Florida and a possible new life.
Lorraine is an award winning Playwright, Screenwriter, and Filmmaker. She taught Playwriting and Screenwriting at Flagler College in Saint Augustine, Florida for ten years. She holds a B.A. in Theater from Smith College and M.F.A. in Film from Florida State University. Lorraine also attended the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center.
Upon graduation from Smith College, she won the Denis Johnston Playwriting Award for “Small Animals”, which has been given staged readings at NTI and Smith College and has been produced by Limelight Theater, Flagler College, and The BOOM Theatre Company.
Her play “Barefoot” was produced by The Boom Theater Company in Bel Air, Maryland. “Barefoot” has been published in “The BOOM Theatre Co. Anthology of New Plays, Volume 1 2011-2013”.
She has written and directed seven short films and a feature. “Saving Sophie”, the feature, was based on one of her produced plays and as a film played 26 film festivals and won 9 awards. She directs plays as well as films.
Her screenplays have been placing in national and international competitions.
Gordy Hoffman, BlueCat Screenplay competition, awarded “Peace, Love, and Law Enforcement” the “Screenplay Live!” award. The screenplay was produced as a staged reading as part of a Rochester film festival, where she met Gordy’s Mom, Marilyn. Marilyn introduced Lorraine to her granddaughter, Madeline, who is the lead actor in “Falling South.”
Lorraine has optioned screenplays and has been doing for hire work writing for producers in a number of genres.
Lorraine grew up in Peekskill, New York. She spent time exploring close by NYC. She also enjoyed summers in rural, upstate New York on Keuka Lake. After college, she spent five years living in Peekskill and running a tavern before moving to Florida. She has been married and divorced twice and now prefers living in rural Florida with her retired professor turned fern farmer and poet boyfriend.
“Falling South” is an epic short film. And not just because of the run time! Literary heroes travel to underworlds, returning to the real world changed. Our protagonist, Charlotte, travels through an underground Fairyland, an underworld where she can consider fairy tales. We are told these stories as children, but how do those stories stack up against our lives, and is there a happily ever after? What does happily ever after really look like?
My last film was dialogue driven and shot in my living room. In this film I wanted to explore leaving a great deal in subtext, working with visual metaphor, approaching themes in the most visual ways, using every tool to add layers of meaning and make story clear.
I use framing to support Charlotte’s journey as a character. At the beginning of the story, Charlotte is lost in her landscape. She is given headroom in every shot. She is swallowed by nature, her environment, diminished in the frame, even in her close-ups. As she finds herself, she becomes more and more powerful in frame.
Water is a visual metaphor. Women can be like water. Flowing around obstacles. Changing our world as we move through it. Constantly in motion until we find a place to settle. Charlotte is drawn to water and flows like water. I picked locations to support this idea. Niagara Falls, fast flowing and incredibly powerful. High Falls, surrounded by an urban landscape, seemingly out of place and dwarfed by the cityscape. The Tennessee River, flowing through the rise and fall of the land. And finally, a small lake on a farm in Florida, where Charlotte settles.
I used color to support the story. We start in a cool and de-saturated world. The farther Charlotte travels from home, the more vibrant the colors. She is free to see all that life might offer. And when she arrives in a place where she is welcome, the vibrant world becomes warm.
We used my Super 16 prime Optar lenses on an Amira. I love film and have a Super 16 camera, an Aaton XTR. But trying to pull off a two country road trip from Niagara Falls, Ontario to Pierson, Florida, while paying cast and crew and covering the travel costs, digital seemed necessary. The film lenses and the coloring process have made it possible for me to fall in love with the footage.
We shot in October to capture the difference between the fall up north and the lush, green fall in the South. We wound up shooting up north while Hurricane Matthew hit our homes in Florida. We headed north to start shooting in early October and the weather didn’t look like anything to worry about. Another tropical storm, like so many we deal with. When we were too far away to turn back, Matthew was clearly a huge threat. With our cast and crew lined up, there was no going back, in terms of our shoot schedule. We just had to pray and hope our homes, and locations, weren’t blown away. We came back to Florida to find trees down. Trees blocked roads on the farm where we were shooting. I had to adjust where scenes would be shot. One house, where the crew was staying, had no AC for a few days. One house lost water one morning. There had been no power for a week, so a friend and my father had worked to save food from my freezer that I had made ahead of time to feed the cast and crew. No one was hurt, and this is the most important thing. So we zigged, zagged, and met obstacles with grace and humor.
Our cast and crew were troopers. We had a small traveling crew and our lead actor who went from Ontario to Florida, shooting in Niagara Falls, Rochester, Chattanooga, Rock City, Tennga, Pierson, Lake Como, and Crescent City.
My last film was three shots in my living room. Contained. I wanted to do something different. Sure, most people wouldn’t then take on the kind of road trip that we did, but who wants to do something small? I travel, to go to film festivals, to visit family. I love road trips. And there are places I have fallen in love with that I wanted to capture. Most of all, this story is a journey that demanded an actual journey. Moving away from a place of being controlled to a place of freedom.
I realize the running time is an issue. Instead of thinking, we could program four other short films, why not think, let’s program “Falling South” with several other short films and ditch a feature. There are any number of themes that could create a very strong program anchored by “Falling South.”
If your festival is seeking to support women filmmakers, “Falling South” has a woman writer, director, producer, director of photography, 1AC, supervising sound editor, production assistants, and associate producer. The story is a woman’s story with a female lead and other strong, complex female characters.
We also have a transgender actor playing a transgender character. The character is crucial to Charlotte’s journey.
We sought to hire cast and crew that reflect the world we want to live in, diverse and inclusive. People of color and people representing a range of gender identity and sexual orientation make up our cast and crew.
The story was inspired by events in my life and by my boyfriend’s beautiful fern farm. My first marriage fell apart when my first husband and I couldn’t navigate, together, our losses. What we needed was so different, the only way was for us to go separate ways and each find our own peace.
I’m now dating a wonderful man who lives on a fern farm. It is a lush world away from the rest of the world — and a world I haven’t seen portrayed in film. A world in which people can be close to nature and heal.
I’m thrilled to share this film with you. There are worlds that I don’t think have ever been shown in a film. Also know I believe in being an active partner to any festival that programs one of my films. I will help with PR efforts and make sure you have everything you need from us quickly. Thank you for your time and consideration.