Roto Gallery - images and ideas from the artists involved

Helen Dreams of Dinner Parties by Gabriel Garcia
oil on wood 2008

Hors d'oeuvres and Appetizers 12/22/08

Extras Editor Steve Delisi is creating a series of tantalizing trailers to give a taste for the real lives of the characters.  Click the link below to see the first three:
"Helen Daydreaming - James Calling"

"Bus Loitering"

"Important Business Reasons"

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Flick Picks by Roto Cast 12/31/08

Helen's Fave Films (courtesy of Kathleen Purcell Turner)

White Christmas
Breakfast at Tiffany's (except for the Mickey Rooney parts)
It Could Happen to You
In Her Shoes

Helen loves movies that are either entirely magical or all too realistic to her circumstances. From a competitive and more glamorous "sister" to a waitress just waiting for her moment, she's always ready for a little choreography!

Tall's Fave Films (courtesy of Heather Townsend)
The Maltese Falcon

Casablanca
All About Eve

James' Fave Films (courtesy of Matthew Holzfeind)

James would recommend the following films:

1. Rushmore
2. Annie Hall
3. There's Something About Mary
4. Good Will Hunting
5. The Princess Bride

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A Highfalutin Artistic Statement

11/7/08 by Roell Schmidt

The danger of merging film with live theater is that flickering light draws our eyes as effectively as candlelit jewelry.  My vision for The Rotogravure is that the audience, like the characters, will be seduced again and again from the real world story told in the projections to the world of fantasy on stage and vice versa.  I believe hope lies in the blending of dreams with reality.

I have been hanging out in The Rotogravure’s dangerous intersection of cinema and stage since 1996 when I interned at the Independent Feature Film Market in New York City. After a day of screenings, I would hole up at the New York Public Library and draw stick figures of how live actors could interact and manipulate projection surfaces to delve into the layers beneath surface realities.

I am drawn to tell stories that explore how so much of our ability to connect with or reject each other is born from news reports and dreams invented by film and television studios.  How we seem to absorb ideas best through parables. How a film like Blood Diamond can have more impact on raising consciousness than documentaries about diamond mines or a play like Doubt can get strangers talking about a taboo subject in search of a shared truth.

The Rotogravure is not a dramatic tale of death or birth – it’s a comedy about all the in-between times when neither fate nor crisis is taking choice out of one’s hands.  And it's about the opposing gravitational pull dreams and reality can exert when they are segregated and kept unshared and silent.

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Early sketches for paintings in The Rotogravure by Lowell Thompson
chalk on paper 2008

Artist Lowell Thompson makes a cameo appearance in the films of The Rotogravure along

with four of his original paintings.  A Chicago-based visual artist, his art and musings can be found at www.originaals.blogspot.com

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Set Photographer ~ Stephanie SeRine

A recent graduate of Columbia College, Woodstock, Illinois native Stephanie SeRine captured the 19-day shoot in August through the lens of her still camera.  Check out her "The Rotogravure Collection" on Flickr.

Click here to thumb through the shots.

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