Student-created, feature-length film ‘Pretty Little Things’ set to premiere

"Pretty Little Things," the first feature-length film to come from the students of Point Park University's cinema program, began production in early June and shot until mid- to late July and involved close to 100 students throughout the process.

But at the film's premiere on Sunday, Jan. 29 at the SouthSide Works Cinema, writer and director Alex Di Marco will only be able to discuss his experiences on set based on pictures and stories, because he cannot remember any of it.

Di Marco, a senior cinema and digital arts major, finished the script last year and began to assemble a team to turn his story of over 100 pages of text into a film that plays just under two hours. This summer, he was confined to the hospital with pneumonia and viral meningitis, which traveled to his brain, causing him to lose his memory from the past year.

"We were watching the scenes for the first time and I had trouble grasping onto how we did them," Di Marco said. "... I was doing flash cards of pictures of shoes and keys while everyone [at Point Park] was studying for finals. I was really lucky and definitely got a second chance."

According to the film's Facebook page, "Pretty Little Things" tells the story of Tommy Fulmer, a stand-up comedian who is about to begin his dream career and take his "beautiful" wife and daughter with him to Hollywood, when he is sentenced to a decade in jail for narcotics possession. The story fast forwards to his release, leaving him homeless and broken, until he meets a "four-legged friend" who inspires him to attempt to reclaim his daughter, his career and his life.

Now that the film has "come to fruition," Di Marco acknowledged that the process was not easy.

Dan Sotak, a senior cinema and digital arts major, worked behind the scenes on everything from swapping out camera lenses to changing lighting to "telling people they can't walk down the sidewalk" the crew was filming on. As a grip, which is essentially the "equipment mover," Sotak helped with a lot of troubleshooting and small challenges faced when trying to create the perfect shot.

"We had a couple of 15- to 16-hour days on set to get everything right," Sotak said in the Point Cafe on Sunday.

For example, when shooting outside of a bar, the public street lights shut off before they were finished filming, and they had no choice but to reconstruct a set of lights to imitate that, Sotak said.

But the overarching challenge for the film was finding support.

"[A feature film] is a hard uptake; it really is. If it wasn't there would be more than one in the nine or so years that this program has been around," Di Marco said in the Point Cafe on Sunday.

He said a lot of people were intimidated by the idea of a feature, including Heidi Schlegel.

A junior cinema and digital arts major, she was a co-producer with two others, a position that coordinates all of the logistics of the film. Schlegel handled crew, making sure that everyone was on set that needs to be for that shoot.

"When I initially heard the idea of all students producing a feature-length film, the idea almost seems impossible," Schlegel said Sunday morning in the Point Cafe. "People tend to believe that it's not something we can pull off because we don't have the experience or the knowledge, and with this film it truly did work out. We all worked together so well and I think we managed to pull off a great film."

Di Marco was not deferred by skepticswho told him to limit himself to short films. 

"Filmmaking is an art. Dancing is an art. Acting is an art ... and there are no rules to art," Di Marco said. "In art, if you want to make it, you are the only person that can tell yourself ‘no.'"

Also, post-production of a feature film is "an entirely different realm" from a short film or a music video that would span only three to 10 minutes.

"You've just got to remember to keep a theme going," Di Marco said. "You can't edit it one way in the beginning and [at the end] edit it another. You can shoot a filmwonderfully, but if your post-production isn't up to par, you can completely diminish the film."

For Di Marco, his illness and recovery inspired him to "take on a whole new meaning" for "Pretty Little Things," which included a complete revamp of the music selection.

The wrap party is inportant to the crew and cast because immediately after watchng the film, they can begin to get audience feedback and critiques.

"From the get-go, Jordan [DiRisio], a producer, and I agreed that we just want people to see it. We don't really care if we make money or not. That's not a concern," Di Marco said. "We got together to tell a story and now we want to tell it to everyone."