LIFE IS HELL SHORT FILM EXPERIENCE - March 2013

TORONTO,O.N-  On March 10th 2013, Aramis Neal Pacitto and I began to write a script for a "Life Is Hell" short film The script was done by the 12th and filming began on the 13th. We picked our theme and it was a song by Duran Duran called Virus and Aramis is working on a new version of the song.The first scene we filmed was THE COLD OPEN scene with a spoof on "Rear Window." Its a funny scene that you really have to see to understand. But its basically Andrew and Aramis sitting down in front of a window with Nikon cameras with 240 mm zoom lenses. Andrew claims that an elderly women has different men over every night and that she kills them. Meanwhile, Almorindo and Gigi argue in the background over dishes. Aramis did the voice for Al and I did the voice for Gigi.

      The next scene on our list was a scene where Almorindo (Aramis), opens up the blinds in the bedroom and begins to yell at his neighbor who is in the process of cutting his tomato plants. Last on our list for the day was filming a scene where I played Tony Rissi. The filming process took about 4 hours to film. Our next filming day was on Sunday March 17th. We were filming the action part of "Life Is Hell, AKA "Life Will Be Hell." Bruno Sepe was playing Cutter and Aramis Neal Pacitto was playing Aramis Spear. We filmed for about a hour and a half and after Aramis edited the scene we realized that Bruno was not going to work as Cutter. He was playing more of a traitor type of character so we made him the handler.

       So we ended up needing an extra day of filming (which was on March 21st 2013 at Yorkdale Mall). So we re-wrote the final scene and made it be Spear on the phone with a British version of Cutter. This is where it gets interesting. There was a part of the scene where Spear pulls out his gun. Someone called 9-1-1 to report it and next thing you know, the cops were following us. They followed us all the way from Yorkdale mall to my street. Then 5 cop cars swarmed all around us! 15 cops pulled out their guns and said "Put your hands up!" They didn't notice that I was in the car so I leaned forward and said, "Do I have to put my hands up to?" They said yes and told me to lean back. We ended up going to the police station for possession of weapons. Soon after, they realized that arresting us was a waste of time because we only had a BB-Gun. The charges were dropped.

       So after sitting in a cell for 3 hours we were released and now were done filming. To top off the day when we went back to get the car, the seats were ripped out and Aramis's sun glasses were in the trunk along with one of our zoom lenses and not to mention that we ended up on the 6:00 news. It was an experience that we will never forget. The "Life Is Hell- Short Film," will be released next week.

- Andrew Di Pardo