'Red Mondays and Turquoise Twos' (RMTT) started its journey as a feature script in 2011, as a finalist at the Sundance/Sloan Grant. Nearly one and a half years later it is taking shape as a short film.
RMTT is the story of a mathematician with synesthesia and his violinist daughter who appears to have the same condition. Synesthesia is a rare neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory pathway. For those who don't have a degree in neurology, a synesthete may see blue when he hears a certain musical note, experience guilt when he touches silk, or smell freshly picked berries when he tastes salt.
So the first thing that struck me when I came across this condition was - Why aren't there more films about this? It lends itself perfectly to the medium of cinema - it can make a poetic drama or a fast paced thriller or an Aranofsky-esque noir. Before I let my imagination run amuck, I decided to do something about it. And that was how RMTT was born as a short film.
After several rounds of auditions, we found some amazing actors to play Ralph and Lara, the mathematician and his daughter.
Ralph is played by Jack Merrill , an LA based actor. Jack’s credits include ‘The A-List’, ‘Hannah Montana’, ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, ’Sex and the city’ and ‘Law and Order’, to name a few.
Lara is played by Felicia Masias, an up and coming actress who trained with the American Musican and Dramatic Academy. Some of her credits include 'Clouded', a new feature film by Curtis Easley, award winner of the 2005 New York Independent Film Festival, and 'We Are the Lawmakers' in the New York Fringe Festival.
As part of research for the film, I interviewed synesthetes world over, to get an idea of what goes on inside of them when they are taken over by a photism (a synesthetic hallucination, for lack of better words). We also ran a successful Indiegogo campaign to raise funds for the film.
It has not been an easy task; with me in Phoenix, Jack in LA and the rest of the cast and crew in New York, pre-production has been little short of a nightmare.
On the bright side, we got some unexpected press attention :
http://www.thehindu.com/arts/cinema/senses-and-sensibilities/article4123086.ece
This is probably the largest crew I've worked with, and with ten days left until the shoot, the excitement only keeps mounting. I have lived and breathed this movie for nearly two years and now its time to let others see what the synesthetes see. (On second thoughts, maybe I should have named the film 'The Synesthetes'!).
