Casting Call! Dramatic role for documentary

We are producing a short film on a very sensitive and stigmatized topic.

The focus is on an invisible population that is part of the collateral damage surrounding sexual offences: the partners of the offender and their decision to stay with their partner who has offended sexually.

Due to the sensitivities of the subject matter, we cannot reveal the identity of the subject (based on a true story) and therefore will be filming abstract dramatizations. The scenes will reflect themes of:

- family
- isolation
- loneliness
- fear & anxiety
- love and hope

Lead Roles:
Woman - around 30 - 40 yrs, any ethnicity (2 days, paid)
Man - around 30 -40 yrs, any ethnicity (1/2 day, honorarium)
Boy - around 7 - 10yrs, any ethnicity (1/2 day, honorarium)
Girl - around 10 - 14 yrs, any ethnicity (1/2 day, honorarium)

Background Actors:

3 adults, any age, ethnicity (1/4 day, honorarium)

Please send photos/reel to casting [at] roscofilms [dot] com.

We will be filming in middle of November in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. Own transportation a must!

Promo video: Casting Call! *Updated*

We are producing a promotional video for a Christian charitable foundation that wants to "help people recognize abundance and live generously."

The scenes we will be filming are similar to what you see in the image above, essentially, people enjoying life with people they love with an emphasis on gathering around a table for a meal.

The roles do not have any speaking lines.

We need a cast that has diversity of age, gender, and ethnicity:

Female, 50s-60s, any ethnicity
Male, 50s-60s, any ethnicity

Female, 30s - 40s, any ethnicity
Male, 30s-40s, any ethnicity

Female, 5 - 12 yrs, any ethnicity
Male, 5 - 12 yrs, any ethnicity

Families with kids are ideal since you all know each other already! If you know us already, even better!

Depending on the applicants we get, we will update the call to fill any gaps we might have.

Remuneration: $100/day for one day, probably not more than 3 hours.

UPDATE: Shooting in Stratford park by the lake on Tuesday July 26th and Thursday July 28th.

Please send any questions as well as photos/reels to casting [at] roscofilms[dot] com.

Promo video: Casting Call!

We are producing a promotional video for a Christian charitable foundation that wants to "help people recognize abundance and live generously."

The scenes we will be filming are similar to what you see in the image above, essentially, people enjoying life with people they love with an emphasis on gathering around a table for a meal.

The roles do not have any 'speaking lines' per se, but anyone who can speak authentically about their faith and how it has played a role in how they view generosity is an asset for voiceover.

We need a cast that has diversity of age, gender, and ethnicity:

Female, 50s-60s, any ethnicity
Male, 50s-60s, any ethnicity

Female, 30s - 40s, any ethnicity
Male, 30s-40s, any ethnicity

Female, 10 - 16 yrs, any ethnicity
Male, 10 - 16 yrs, any ethnicity

Depending on the applicants we get, we will update the call to fill any gaps we might have.

Remuneration: $100/day for up to 2 days (or 1 day and 2 half days, we appreciate your flexibility!).

Shooting in Waterloo Region sometime end of July or early August.

Please send any questions as well as photos/reels to casting [at] roscofilms[dot] com.

CASTING CALL: Women in prison - Volunteers!

We're looking for a group of 6-8 women, preferably 35 yrs + of any ethnicity to act as our "Volunteers" for STRIDE night, a program that brings the community into women's prisons across Canada through games, crafts, and other social activities.

The main scene would be a simulated STRIDE night with volunteers being paired with actors portraying the women in prison. Activities would include making hand-made cards, writing letters, drawing pictures.

A select few volunteers (1 or 2) with flexible schedules are needed to be featured volunteers few extra scenes interacting with one of the women.

Time commitment: 1/2 day for STRIDE night scene; + 1 day total (but possibly broken up over a number of days) for featured volunteers.

Renumeration: Minimal honorarium (Gift card).


If you are interested, pls email us some photos of yourself and any comments/questions to: casting [at] roscofilms [dot] com.

Location Scout: PRISON (... or school).

Knowing that finding a school available to shoot in June is very difficult to find, we're looking at early July if possible! One full day (8 - 12 hrs if possible). Holla at ken[at]roscofilms[dot]com.  Thanks!

Location Scout: Beautiful natural lighting, indoors.

We're looking for a space to conduct some interviews! Do you know of any places?

We need:

- natural lighting
- big windows, if possible
- quiet space (for audio recording)
- not too fancy or high-end, a place with character
- I know this is getting very specific...

The location in these screen grabs are in a church. We can't use a church for a number of reasons, but if any of you have any leads, let us know! THANK YOU.

Contact: ken[at]roscofilms[dot]com.

CASTING CALL: Women in prison

We are producing a story about a powerful program that invites community members and women in prisons to spend time together, build relationships, and then grow these relationships when the women are released so that they have the emotional and practical support they need to succeed.

For reasons of confidentiality, we will not be showing these women's faces on screen and thus, we are looking to cast 3 or 4 women for re-enactment/dramatization non-speaking roles.

These dramatizations do not focus on the crime that landed them in prison; rather, the focus will mostly be on their re-integration into the community and the challenges they face.

1 woman, any ethnicity, age: 20s

1 woman, any ethnicity, age: 40s

1 woman, any ethnicity, age: 60s

Time commitment: 2-3 days shooting in Waterloo Region, looking to shoot in May.

Remuneration: Small honorarium or gift card.

Please send any photos/reels to casting[at]roscofilms[dot]com .

To read more about the program, visit the STRIDE website.

Syria Series - The making of...

This is a project that we started the wrong way and ended up, through a lot of hard work and opening of minds, doing it the right way (or at least a vastly better way).



At the end of 2015, just before the Christmas holidays, we were approached to produce a video series for Mennonite Central Committee Ontario that on the surface, was fairly straightforward: to create a resource for sponsors of Syrian refugees to help them understand: 

1)Who are these refugees and why are they coming to Canada? 

2) What are the "nuts and bolts" of resettling a family in Canada?

3) How can we continue to support them after the initial year of sponsorship?

Piece of cake, right?

Our initial concept was instructional - a presenter speaking to the viewer, telling us about the war in Syria - the stats, the geography, etc. Also the culture - Syrian people are generally like this, the land is like this, and the history is like this.

We spent a lot of time researching the war, and Syrian culture, and put together a rough script outline. And then we reached out to Shamrose Syria, a local Syrian community group that was working around the clock to help facilitate newcomers to Waterloo Region and beyond. We were introduced to a young man who was instrumental in identifying and navigating some of the obstacles we faced.

Hsain: "Rhymes with insane."

Our challenges were legion, but the main ones were:

• contextualizing a complex refugee crisis with integrity, 
• portraying refugee stories with sensitivity (without access to actual refugees to speak to us on camera!), 
• painting a picture of a diverse culture that defies meaningless generalizations ("Family and food are important parts of Syrian culture")
• being informative without being dry or overlong

Hsain Al-Shihabi and his family's contribution to this project cannot be understated. They were willing and able actors whose powerful performances enabled us to portray the story of a composite character, "Tareq" and his family. The experiences of Tareq and his family were gleaned from numerous first-hand accounts of Syrian refugees collected from news articles, videos, and from interviews that Hsain and his mother, Helen, conducted with newly arrived Syrians.

They spent several full weekends with us filming in sometimes less than ideal conditions including this full-on blizzard that roared for the entire day of exterior shooting:

Though Hsain and his family are NOT refugees themselves (they immigrated to Canada more than a decade ago), they channeled the newcomer experience with real heart it and gave the series a powerful and cinematic quality that elevated it beyond merely a point-by-point talking head series.

***

Another boon for us was the very supportive sponsor group and the incredibly gracious newcomer family that we followed for Part 2 and 3. Not only did they allow us to film them, but they welcomed us into their home with grace and generosity. The first time I met these people (Jon had previously met them at the airport on arrival day) was at their home - and they were not expecting us, due to some miscommunication. Even so, there was a delicious chicken and rice dinner with fatoush salad served to us within minutes!

Sponsor group breaks into spontaneous applause as they meet their family.

This whole experience, aside from being a very intense period work-wise, was one of learning and opening and new relationships. Even as we collected stories of welcome and heard our participants talking about the value of setting aside fear/stereotypes/prejudice/apathy, we learned to do those things ourselves, as filmmakers and as individuals. It was a true honour and life-changing process for us to work with these brave, generous, compassionate, gracious sponsors and newcomers.

Watch the series here:
Part 1: Leaving Syria
Part 2: Welcome to Canada
Part 3: A New Home

Power of Partnership - THIS is how refugee resettlement is done!

Six months ago, we were approached by Mennonite Central Committee Ontario to produce a short documentary following a private sponsorship group who were preparing to welcome a Syrian family to Waterloo Region.

We said yes without really knowing how we would do this - logistically, everything was still up in the air. Housing, furnishings, how many family members - and the timeline was nebulous. But the sponsoring group, led by Dan Herman, was resourceful and resilient and by the time they got the call to pick up their family on January 1st, the apartment was secured, furnished, and everything was in place.

On that day, and on every occasion since then, the Salkini family have been gracious, generous, and lovely people. I can't imagine the stress and anxiety they must have been feeling coming to a new country that is both geographically and culturally a world away from their home in Syria. Combining that with the open hearts of the sponsoring group have created a nourishing environment that will set up the Salkini family for success in their new home in Canada.

While this story of this particular group of people may seem like a best-case scenario (which it is!), from the stories we've heard from other sponsor groups, this is not a unique story. Time and again, we've heard from sponsors whose lives have been impacted powerfully and new relationships created.

Despite the sensationalized negativity in the media and especially in the comment sections on refugee-related media, seeing this story unfold gives us hope that Canadians are compassionate, generous people who are willing to step up to help those in need.

Meanwhile... PIT makes Toronto Premiere!

It's been a busy time for us at Rosco with extremely rewarding finishes to a number of projects.

One of these, is the Toronto premiere of our short film PIT which we wrote, shot, and edited in a span of two months last year!

I have to say, Canadian Film Festival is a new favourite! Celebrating their 10th anniversary this year, CFF is a vibrant festival celebrating independent Canadian films of a very high caliber. We were honoured to open the Home Grown Shorts program this year.

Proudest filmmaker moment to date: seeing my name in the credits of Rosco Films' "PIT" during Canadian Film Fest...
Posted by Katie Parkes on Sunday, April 3, 2016

We went down with Katie Parkes (1st AD) and our star Lindsay Stewart to represent the PIT crew and we had a great time. Festival director Bern Euler made us feel welcome and people were gushing to Lindsay afterward about his performance, which is both understated and spectacular, if we may say so ourselves.

One thing I noted watching all the other shorts in the program was that every one of them had some kind of funding - there were a lot of sponsors, Bell Media, Whites International, etc who helped produce their films. We, on the other hand, made PIT for, I think it was $500 out of pocket. Such an interesting difference, and yet our production was equal to those with $50,000 budgets. Of course, I would've loved a budget so that we could pay our crew but it reminded me that budget doesn't necessarily equal a good film.

We had a ton of great people working on this short and we would be remiss if we didn't recognize them all so watch this and clap your hands, wherever you are:

PIT Crew from Jonathan Steckley on Vimeo.

Calling All MCC Alumni: Photos & Videos wanted!

We are working on a promotional video for the good people at Mennonite Central Committee Ontario and part of that work is to show off nearly a century of building peace, development, and assisting those in need.

If you or anyone you know have worked with or for MCC in any capacity, and you have photographs or video footage from your time in the field, please contact us! ken [at] roscofilms [dot] com.

We do not necessarily need you in the photo/video, but photos and footage of:
- partners
- project locations,
- MCC signage from around the world
- photos of people having fun is good, too - a look behind the curtain, to see real relationships at work!
A note/caption about when/where/who would be helpful - we may not state it directly in the video, but good to know.

*Update re: footage
We need more footage! We haven't received any footage yet! If you know anyone who has taken any video, please tap their shoulders and/or send them this blog post!

*Update re: format:
Many of you will have prints or slides from back in the day - for now, if you could take a digital snap of 4 prints at a time and email those to us, we could sift through a lot photos and get back to you with which ones we would like scanned (or mailed to us so we can scan).
*Update re: MCC photo database:
Yes, we do have access to the MCC Media Space so if you have photos in there, we will probably be going through it. If you have any in particular which you think might work, let us know the time and date maybe we can track it down.

Please send to us by February 29th! Any stragglers are welcome but we'd like an idea of what we're working with by first week of March.

Below is my own contribution from my time in Uganda with the SALT program circa 2001-2002. #timeflies

- Ken

*Please only send photos/footage that you own the rights to. This should go without saying, but by sending in photos/footage, you are giving us permission to use it.

Call for Props - Syrian Refugee Sponsorship Resource Video

Happy new year all!

As we enter the new year, we are also welcoming a number of new Canadians to our midst....

We are producing a video series with Mennonite Central Committee that will help sponsors of Syrian refugees navigate the complex and rewarding challenge of supporting new Canadians in a difficult time. We are so proud of Canada's response to the overwhelming needs of this crisis and we are honoured to be doing our part in making sure that the resettlement is as successful as possible. Your help is a vital part of making this powerful, inspiring, and informative series that will help so many sponsors and refugees alike.

To that end, we have some props we need for some re-enactment scenes:

(2) road flares
(3) life jackets - two adults, one child
(4) blankets (old and worn; solid colours - browns, blues, greys)
(1) old dirty book bag/backpack
(1) hard hat
(1) reflective work vest
(1) ESL textbook

If you have any of these items, please contact us ASAP at ken [at] roscofilms [dot] com. Filming begins on Saturday January 9th!