THE 'Dark Justice' UNIT: Andrew Di Pardo, Aramis Neal Pacitto & Ashlee Martina
With Vito Sundano, Neva Rowell & Marc Samuels
Producers: Angelo Di Pardo & Frank Pacitto
STORY BEHIND THE TITLE: DARK JUSTICE
Back in August 2014, with "The Challenger" series finale currently in production. Aramis Pacitto and I felt that we wanted to do more 'Challenger' films. But we didn't want to continue our web series, we wanted to go back and start from the beginning. So we came up with a new mini-series idea that would last for three 15 minute films. We came up with an idea of a 'darker' Rick Sledge that would be fighting crime without the help of Gunnerson or Strike. He would be going solo up against the likes of a new variation of Antonio Ricci and Walker along with the Irish Mob. We completed the script and found that our theme was about getting justice in dark ways. So we called the film "Dark Justice." Next was casting. Chika Mafiana was all set to reprise his role as Walker and Aramis was returning as Rick Sledge, the rest of the cast would be filled with new faces. Neva Rowell was casted as Holly Rawls... This film was fully casted and ready to shoot, but we felt that after doing a web series on "The Challenger" that it was too early to go back and revisit the idea. So ultimately the idea was shelved for now. But we still wanted to do films. So Aramis and I decided to keep the "Dark Justice" title for a new series. A series where every film will be in black and white... A series of 4 different " Dark Justice tales."
MJ-12 : A film full of disasters
MJ-12 was an idea that Aramis and I came up with involving a top secret government operation that was in affiliation with the NSA. The Majestic 12's job is to stop TOP SECRET government operations/secrets from getting to the press. This film followed Nick Foster, a man that has been framed for the murder of his friend Danielle and the NSA documents that he has in his possession. MJ-12 framed him and now has every cop in the city looking for him and those confidential documents. Nick and his girlfriend Joanna are on the run trying to escape Agent 7 & Agent 8 who are everywhere. They have eyes and ears in the streets. I ended up writing this script solo and it turned out really well and had potential to be one of our best films. But it didn't live up to it's potential... I casted myself as the main lead (Nick) and I casted an actress to play Joanna... My acting in this film was not believable and on top of that... I had no chemistry with the main actress. Aramis was casted as Agent 7 and Justin Moses (who played Mr. Black in "The Challenger") was casted as Agent 8. They were amazing! Neva Rowell (who was casted as Holly in the cancelled "Challenger" film) was casted as Danielle. She was great. Marc Samuels was brought on board as director and camera operator. So this film will never be released in it's current state... Main reason, my acting was bad, had no chemistry with the other main lead and the camera work was amateurish at points along with the worst audio we has since my very first film. This film other than the script and a few good actors was our biggest disaster yet and will not be released.
DEEP TROUBLE: As classy and old fashioned as you can get
Deep Trouble is a script written by Aramis Neal Pacitto. It's a story about loss, regret and love. It follows John Bray who's coming out of retirement to help a damsel in distress named Alexa. A killer is out there and is killing people with a special poison that comes in a vile. Alexa has been given the vile and she has 24 hours to drink it. John Bray and Alexa used to be lovers and because of that, John feels obligated to help her. "Blue eyed Alexa, the angle." Despite the disappointment of MJ-12 we brought back Marc Samuels as camera operator and Neva Rowell as PA. Our new crew at this moment had expanded from just two people to four. It started with just Aramis and I, but now we had Marc and Neva on board with us for the entire 'Dark Justice' series (so we thought). Casting for this film was simple. Three cast members... Me as Quick, Aramis as John Bray and a new actress who's never worked with us before named Ashlee Martina as Alexa. This film turned out really great. One of our best acted and shot films... After what happened with MJ-12, it felt really good to get back on the right track... This film has everything you would want from a 'Suit & Stubble' film... Action, suspense, drama and even a little bit of comedy. Ashlee and Aramis on screen together had instant chemistry and are the reasons why the film turned out the way it did. After editing was done, this film was sent to Varia Studios to upgrade the audio and give it the movie feel that it needed and Vito Sundano delivered just like he did with "The Challenger 7: Broken Hope."
VISIONS OF VIOLENCE: As British as it gets
Visions of Violence was another script written by Aramis Neal Pacitto. The story centred around Granite... Roy Granite, a hitman for hire. Darke is another hitman on the block and he's made a bet with Grainte. Grainte vs Drake, winner gets 10 million and the loser... Well dies. Our new crew returned for this film except instead of one or two of the members being in the film... We all were. Marc Samuels played a small role of a doctor and was the main camera operator. Neva Rowell played the main women lead of Felicia. Aramis played the role of Roy Granite and I played the role of Drake. I love playing Villains. This was my second time doing it and this time was even more fun especially since this was a tougher character than I usually play. This film has a James Bond like feel to it, as the two main leads (Aramis & Neva) were doing accents and just the whole set up felt like the way Ian Fleming intended Bond from the books to be. Its not Bond by any means, but it does have the 007 feel. You'll see when you see the film. Vito Sundano once again works his Varia magic in the studio to make this film turn out as great as its intended to be.
"May the best killer win."
Crew Change: MEET THE NEW CREW & COLLABORATORS
After "Visions of Violence" our crew had a big change for 2015... Due to difference of opinions, Marc Samuels went his own way. In his place we brought on board the women who played Alexa in "Deep Trouble" as our new GO TO director and actress for our planned films. Ashlee Martina became a member of "Suit and Stubble Productions" along with me and Aramis. We called ourselves the A.A.A. team. Vito Sudano was our Audio guy in post production and we planned to have him come on set now and then. Angelo Di Pardo & Frank Pacitto were still on board as our producers. This was our new team...
100 BLACK COFFINS: Falling Down
After expanding the team... Things got dicey down at "Suit & Stubble." We had plans to shoot a film that I wrote called "100 Black Coffins" in March with an all star cast. We had several faces that acted in "The Challenger 7: Broken Hope" such as Adam Bossio (Giovanni Ricci), Cynthia Stone (Holly Rawls), Agata Waclawska (Aryn Sky), Aramis Pacitto ("The Challenger") and me (Gunnerson) with Neva Rowell (Felicia from Visions of Violence). Our audio guy, Vito also planned to do the audio on set. So with filming dates and rehearsals set up plans for the film started to fall apart. Due to a conflict between Aramis and I (Which will not be disclosed), plans for what was going to be our LAST Youtube film came to a close... The A.A.A Unit never saw a day on set together. The unit lasted no longer than a month. We were falling down with the cast standing round, the only question was... How far and how bad would we fall? We didn't want to see that question through and so we ended it before things got worse...
THE NEXT STEP: Enter THE CHALLENGER
The main reason we ended our ties with the post-Challenger films was so we can keep the possibility of getting "The Challenger" on network TV alive... In this debate it was key to stay on good terms if we ever wanted to do "The Challenger" on a larger scale. So even though "Suit & Stubble Productions" is no more... The Challenger still lives on and we are planning to potentially do this series on a larger scale. We have been in talks with people about this for quite some time and we're getting close as some new people have entered the discussions... We have even been pushing to get this vigilante a cameo in another online series as well, but that idea may or may not happen for quite a while. So we hope to bring "The Challenger" back in some form in what we're calling our "Post-Youtube" stage....
RELEASE DATES (Youtube):
Deep Trouble - 04.18.15
Visions Of Violence - Fall 2015
- Andrew Di Pardo
