A short film created by New School students may be coming to a big screen near you. For the first time in three years of New School participation, two students–Jamie Rabinovitch and Thais Vitorelli–were selected as finalists for the Coca Cola Regal Film Festival Script Contest.
Vitorelli and Rabinovitch created the 35-second promotional film entitled “The Exchange.” It depicts two sisters watching the same movie, at the same time, but at two separate theatres. The plot was inspired by Vitorelli’s own experience of moving to New York from São Paulo, Brazil. “Being an international student living in New York, you say goodbye to a lot of friends,” said Vitorelli. Because of this, she often finds small ways to share experiences with her long-distance friends, such as reading the same book at the same time or binging the same TV show.
Both women graduated from the Creative Writing MFA program at the New School in 2017, and are now enrolled in the Media Management program. When Vitorelli heard about the project, she asked Rabinovitch to sign on as producer. This contest was the first time they worked together since graduate school.
Vitorelli wrote and directed the film, while Rabinovitch produced it. Rabinovitch grew up in Montreal, Canada and has had experience producing live comedy shows in Manhattan and Brooklyn, but this was the first time she had produced a film. As the producer, Rabinovitch was in charge of the film’s budget and her responsibilities included logistics like getting equipment insurance, location insurance and paying the crew. “It’s a lot of different moving parts and pieces that I had never faced before in live comedy, so that was definitely a challenge, but I’m really glad that I got the experience,” said Rabinovitch.
As the director, Vitorelli was in charge of the creative side of things. She created the story boards for the project and revised the script several times. “I think one of the biggest challenges for me was to kind of separate my project from myself and learn how not to get unmotivated when your project is getting a lot of critiques,” said Vitorelli. Though the pair did much of the work on their own, they also had help from the Regal Cinemas and Coca-Cola team.
Hundreds of applications from 29 college and university film schools around the country were submitted to the contest and only five scripts from five schools were chosen. Each of the schools were given a RED camera and a budget of $15,000, which the students were to manage themselves.
After Vitorelli’s script was selected, Vitorelli and Rabinovitch held auditions at The New School to cast the actors who would play the two sisters in the film and the other minor parts. Before holding auditions, Vitorelli and Rabinovitch felt it was important to have a predominantly female film set. “The story of the short represents sisterhood, we wanted our cast and crew to reflect that,” said Rabinovitch. “A lot of the women on set came up to us and were like, ‘This is very cool. We’re not used to this.’” Vitorelli and Rabinovitch also felt it was important to have a diverse cast. The two female leads are Italian and Turkish-American and they worked with a cast of around 50 people from countries including Brazil, Canada, Australia, Namibia, India, Colombia, Spain, Taiwan, Guam, Laos, Philippines, Italy, and Turkey.
On the day of production, Vitorelli and Rabinovitch arrived at Regal Cinemas in Union Square at 8 p.m. They rented a theatre and filmed through the night for 13 hours. Rabinovitch said that filming was exhausting. “We had a super great team,” she said. “Everyone was super determined. We had lots of coffee, so that was helpful.” The hardest part for Vitorelli was drafting the script. “The requirement was to write a one page script and it couldn’t be any more than that. So I had an idea but, of course, when I wrote it, it was at least two pages and a half. I had to work to cut some things out.”
In April, Regal Cinemas and Coca-Cola will choose between the five finalists’ scripts. The grand winners will have a red carpet experience and their short film will be shown in Regal Cinemas nationwide right before the full length feature film starts. “It was the first time the New School won, so it’s really cool to be able to represent our school. Especially since we’re not necessarily a film school,” said Rabinovitch.