THE CHALLENGER (Short Film) - December 2012 to January 2013

           Over the years Aramis and I have always thought about the possibilities of doing a short film for our shows. We talked quite often about doing a "Life Is Hell" short film but we soon realized that without pro actors it wouldn't do the  people that the shows based off justice. The idea was ultimately scrapped. But then when "The Challenger" was created in early 2012, it opened a new door for us and since it wasn't based off real people, it was a lot easier to do and easier to make it believable.

        The idea to do a short film for this show came to us in August. But we decided not to go through with it until December 13th. On that day I looked at the pilot that Aramis wrote and took some scenes that I could see working in a cut down version of the show and put it into a script for the short film. Then the over the next couple of days Aramis and I finished the script and we were ready to go. We casted Anthony Digiovanni as Mafioso 1 and Dario Nouri Nejad as the hitman and Mafioso 2. Then we added ourselves into the mix with Aramis Pacitto as Detective Rick Sledge and me as assistant Ronny Gunnerson.  We chose the theme music right away, we chose a untitled and unreleased Duran Duran instrumental from 1989. There was even a time when we were considering using that music for the action part of "Life Is Hell" (AKA "Life Will be Hell).


                  The next step was Storyboards... Aramis took care of that and our next step was filming.The first shot we filmed was Scene 3 on December 19th, that was when Gunnerson meets Sledge. The next scene we filmed was the Cold Open scene in the Sheppard plaza on the 21st, where the Crazy Christmas robber (AKA me), ran out of the bank into a dark ally where he would get killed by Sledge. Anthony came in and filmed what we like to call, a scene that should have been left out. I think it should have been left out because it didn't go with the flow of the film. Aramis agrees and regrets his decision to keep it in the film.

        Anthony was supposed to come back for another scene but the next scene we were filming was on Christmas eve and he couldn't make it, so that's when I put on the ski mask for another scene to stand in as Mafioso 2. The other member that cancelled last second was Dario, due to reasons we can't disclose. So I called Matthew Quan Yin at about 11:00 PM and he agreed and the film went on. Our best decision in casting was to bring in Darius Ban (who was standing in for Dario) as the Hitman. Darius portrayed the role better than we thought and we are even considering bringing him back into the series as another villain, that is if we do a second Challenger. Another good piece that we added was a Frank Pacittio cameo as Mafia boss Ricci in the after credit scene.

      Other good additions to our film was Mikayla Pacittio as Camera women for scene 1 and 3 along with Angelo Di Pardo as camera man and director for scenes 4 and 7. Aramis and I even had to step behind the camera for a few scenes. A good thing to know about the filming in this film is that all the scenes where it was Sledge and no one else, that was filmed by Aramis himself.The editing for the film was done by Aramis Pacitto and it was completed on New Years and was released on Youtube on January 6th.

The main reason reason why we decided to do a short film for "The Challenger" was so that networks can see our concept of what could be a 40 minute Drama series.

- Andrew Di Pardo