Kassandra's images - 4

And there it is: new pictures from Kassandra's set.

You can also see more images here, here and here.

Actor Leandro Lefa and director Ulisses Costa in the set

Renata Stein and Blá-Blá, the doll

Improvising a curtain for a point of view shot

A ghostly image

Leandro Lefa geting into the character

Kassandra's Images - 3

New photos from Kassandra's set.

See more pictures here and here.

Shooting Renata Stein

Leandro Lefa (right) ready for action

Cinematographer Pablo Chaseraux and director Ulisses da Motta Costa

Watching the "film inside the film"

"And... Cut! More blood!"

Alfredo Barros, the editing man

Alfredo Barros is amongst the main names in Kassandra’s cast and crew. He’s an editor and one of the successfull cinema professionals that accepted the invitation for this project, just like Pablo Chasseraux, Luis Franke and Leandro Lefa.

Barros is the kind of person that doesn’t have a “curriculum”. He has a filmography. He was assistent editor in movies such as The Man who Copied (2003). Today, he got plenty of work as main editor and some of them end up in awards. In the last Gramado Film Festival, he won for best editing in short film with Três Vezes por Semana (“Three Times at Week, in english). In Kassandra, Alfredo’s job is to put together more than 120 camera shots.

According director Ulisses da Motta Costa, Alfredo got into the project when he knew it was going to be a psychological horror. “He asked me: ‘is this a horror movie?’ and I said yes”,  tells Ulisses. “Then he replied: ‘man, that’s cool, I’ve always wanted to edit a horror movie”.

The editing process is already began.

The movie inside the movie

A simple detail on Kassandra’s script ended up creating a whole new monster, with the biggest proportions possible. It was right there, in Roger Monteiro’s script, in the scene 7: the neighbor, played by Leandro Lefa, is in front of the TC watching a “porn movie of questionable taste”.

We could have simply hided the TV or used any erotic vídeo. But director Ulisses da Motta Costa decided to shoot some erotic scenes – but no hardcore, changing a bit the original concept, without sex.

“I took as reference the ‘Pornochanchada’, a popular Brazilian genre from late 70’s, early 80’s, that used to mix comedy, some action and plenty of nudity and, sometimes, even real sex”, explains Ulisses. “And anyways, we couldn’t make someone go through any embarrassment, but we could make it all funny. That’s why I invited a longtime friend, Elena Meneghetti, who, when we were in college, made a class work dressed as a dominatrix. She’s really humorous, perfect for what we needed.”

A frame from the original material

The scenes that will be used on Kassandra were shooted in a couple hours on Elena’s house. Maico Silveira made a small part as the man who is seduced by Elena. The crew and cast had such fun in the shooting that when the producer Ramona Barcellos called to know if everything was ok, all she heard was laughter.

The crew was improvised: besides Ulisses directing, the producer Roberto Coutinho made the cinematographt, the publicist Daniel Coutinho was the set producer, the composer Chico Pereira edited the video. The only one on her function was the costume designer Giulia De Cesero, who also made art direction.

In no time, what was to be a small scene turned into a “bigger project”: a fake trailer of a Pornochanchada set in Porto Alegre (usually, those genre was made in Rio de Janeiro or in São Paulo). Not just that: even artistic pseudonyms are being thought to make the 70s vibe even more alive. Not counting, obviously, more characters and scenes.

“I got why people used to make Pornochanchadas at that time: it’s so much fun, even thou the movies were awful”, says Roberto Coutinho. “It´s a challenge to make something purposely poorly made”, Ulisses states. “That’s why the improvised crew was essential for the bad visual results.” Chico Pereira, responsible for editing the little “treasure” got the difficulty. “I was editing right the scenes when I thought: no, I have to unlearn everything I know”, tells him.

New scenes will be made on the breaks of Kassandra’s shooting. Wait for it!

About the cast: Leandro Lefa

He’s the last one on the presentations. Doesn’t mean he’s less important: Leando Lefa plays one of the main characters in Kassandra, a weird and nameless neighbor which represents a threat to the leading character. However, the actor was the last one to be confirmed in the movie.

According to director Ulisses Costa, the difficulty was to find someone different from the other men in the cast. “Roger Monteiro, the writer, imagined someone older and possibly ‘bigger’”, he remembers. “But I was really afraid that the character was confused with the Big Man”.

Ulisses chose Leando Lefa also because their long friendship. He was one of the actors of  The Screamer (watch it with english subtitles), the director’s first short movie. The promise that they would work together again stood and more than one project was thought to continue the partnership, but none worked out. Another point well considered about Lefa was the fact that he already had done a horror movie – played a role in the almost legendary Beyond the Grave, a zombie movie shooted in Porto Alegre, never released commercially.

The construction of the character had to be really specific. Even with a tight schedule, Lefa was able to email pictures to the crew, showing some ideas of costume, make up, facial and body expression (pic). “Despite the lack of time to rehearse the way we did with Renata, for example, Lefa’s dedication was essential to make the character as ready as it was in the day of shooting”, tells the director.

“Ulisses’ merit: with intelligence and sensibility, he knows exactly how to say what he wants and then things just flow”, says the actor. “All I needed was the script, one coffee and three minutes of improvisation exercise where enough for me to feel completely safe and comfortable with my character and the whole crew, particularly with the rest of the cast.”

Coffee? Yep: on his first scenes, Lefa needed to look dirty. Art director Ana Gusson, suggested that a shirt was stained with coffee, to make the filthy look on the black and white photography. After that, the actor wore a wet shirt with a strong smell of coffee for several hours, what resulted in many jokes from Renata Stein.

About working in more than one horror movie, Leandro says: “I wanted to create a guy without deepness, driven by sex, who thinks is fun being grouse and repulsive. It’s interesting that in Beyond the Grave I also played a man intellectually limited and who didn’t know how to act like a person, but the characters are completely different”.

About the cast: Luis Franke

 

Somewhen, during the footage of Kassandra, the following dialogue happened between actor Luis Franke and director Ulisses da Motta Costa:

Ulisses: You do know I’m a nonsense director, don’t you?

Luis: No. You have some sense. Some.

A few minutes later:

Ulisses: Luisão, do you know why I’m a nonsense director?

Luis: Why?

Ulisses: Because only a nonsense person would call an actor two times winner of the Açorianos Award to play a character that… doesn’t speak.

Luis Franke is the mysterious Big Man: a man with huge proportions, whose only purpose is a mystery to the main character, once he usually appears as a threat. “Kassandra is a walk through the real and the imagination, the lucidity and madness, the fight and the encounter with our real ‘me’”, defines the actor.

 

During the rehearsals, Luis was worried discussing the meaning of each character and their actions along the narrative. He wanted to know the role of the Big Man related to Kassandra: “I think my character represents the sleeping courage in her, which will be awake whenever she needs”, said.

Wanted by cinema, publicity, television and, of course, theater, Luisão won one Açoriano Award (a theater award in Brazil) for his work on the play O Sobrado – as a supporting actor – and another, for best actor, in an adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist’s The Broken Jug. 

He praises the whole cast and crew: “I have the biggest pleasure on being in the cast of Kassandra. The high level crew, coordinated by the great Ulisses Costa, who directed the process beautifully, allowed all the actors to connect with their characters and reach the deepest point of their minds. Acting with the young Renata Stein and my friends Maico Silveira and Leandro Lefa was, more than anything, an honor”.

About the cast: Suzana Witt

Renata Stein is not the only girl in Kassandra's cast. She's followed by Suzana Witt, who plays two different roles in the movie.

It's not mere coincidence that both the actresses study together, at the Dramatic Art Department in the Rio Grande do Sul Federal University. Suzana already worked a couple of times with director Ulisses da Motta Costa as assistent director. One of these works was a web series in wich Suzana called Renata for an audition. Eventually the web series was not released, but it was in the audition that Renata met Ulisses and most of the Kassandra's crew. By the way, she was aproved in the audition for one of the main characters. 

From assistent director, Suzana was promoted to actress. "In our earlier works, I was used to work behind the cameras", she says. "In Kassandra was different, but not that much. In the end, cast and crew are one". A curiosity: she and the costume designers Isabela Boessio and Giulia De Cesero were high school colleagues. To choose a costume for a prostitute (one of Suzana's roles) was a great fun for them.

Thou it is a quick appearance, the prostitute's scene was complicated. Suzana didn't have the time to rehearse with her partner, Leandro Lefa. Also, the dialogue indicated in the screenplay was vague: "a discussion with obscene terms". Both the actors and Ulisses conceived the scene just before it was made. 

In the first take, Suzana turned to Lefa and spoke out loud:

- Honey, this is way more expensive!

The crew had to hold the laughing until the "cut".

Kassandra's Images - 2

More pictures from Kassandra's filming, starring Renata Stein's with her thousand faces. Check out for more pictures here.

 Marker and action.

Leandro Lefa in scene.

Ulisses da Motta Costa directing.

"Calm down, Kassandra. It's just the world outside".

Bye-bye! See you in the next post!