{"id":34706,"date":"2024-06-13T16:50:09","date_gmt":"2024-06-13T20:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=34706"},"modified":"2024-06-13T16:50:10","modified_gmt":"2024-06-13T20:50:10","slug":"upcoming-short-film-doc-puts-local-seniors-into-the-spotlight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/upcoming-short-film-doc-puts-local-seniors-into-the-spotlight\/","title":{"rendered":"Upcoming short film, doc puts local seniors into the spotlight"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Local seniors picked up new skills last week while coming away with a little bit of \u201cHollywood North\u201d stardust on their shoulders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hillary House National Historic Site was recently a hub of activity as director Sean Cisterna transformed the local site into a house of horrors for his upcoming short film The Rug, starring Canadian acting icon Jayne Eastwood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Rug centres on a woman played by Eastwood who finds an eye-catching rug bundled up beside an abandoned house. Rather than letting the rug go to landfill, she brings it home as the perfect piece of d\u00e9cor \u2013 until she discovers it has an appetite for more than just collecting dust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly, The Rug is more than just a short film; it\u2019s also the subject of a concurrent documentary which charts Cisterna\u2019s efforts to get local seniors into the production side of the film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think what makes this a very special project is we don\u2019t really have a traditional crew this time. We\u2019re using a group of inexperienced senior citizens to help bring this movie to life,\u201d Cisterna told The Auroran during a filming break on May 31. \u201cI thought if we had a senior protagonist, why don\u2019t we try making a movie with a group of seniors to see what happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis movie is a horror film so to see our seniors work with blood and guts and gore, all kinds of special effects. Using our creativity rather than throwing our money on digital effects, we\u2019re bringing this rug to life practically through puppetry and it really is the ingenuity of our senior crew members who are truly bringing everything to life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In order to make this happen, Cisterna and his skeleton crew of professionals visited local seniors groups with as simple pitch to \u201canyone who isn\u2019t afraid of gore or guts\u2026 to sign up for an adventure in low-budget horror filmmaking.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo our surprise, we had quite a few volunteers,\u201d said Cisterna, noting that he hopes participating seniors see new potential outlets for creativity. \u201cEveryone has chipped in, creatively and passionately. I think some of our other younger crew members want to bring seniors on as their assistants because they have done such an incredible job over the last few days.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their work has also earned the thumbs-up of Eastwood, who has worked with some of the best in the business, with credits including multiple episodes of Murdoch Mysteries, Workin\u2019 Moms, the Anne of Green Gables films, the My Big Fat Greek Wedding Franchise, and the musical Chicago, which took home the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is a total change of pace, especially when you\u2019ve been doing Christmas movies for the last five years for Hallmark!\u201d Eastwood joked about the shift to horror. \u201cThis is a really great set \u2013 these guys are fast, efficient, amazing, and this whole documentary of seniors learning the film business is going to be really, really interesting. It\u2019s just a fantastic thing to be a part of. We\u2019re a pretty happy crowd here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEveryone has a mentor so nothing can go wrong, but there is a fair amount of hands-on. They\u2019re learning as they go and it is just a brilliant experience for everyone. I don\u2019t see why more seniors couldn\u2019t be working in the film industry. I think we might have a few people who are just really gung-ho and want to learn as much as they can and see how far they can go, even if it is just on a volunteer basis. It\u2019s a great thing to do. It could be the beginning of a whole new movement, which I think is terrific \u2013 and I\u2019m a senior myself at 77!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cisterna said his ultimate goal with The Rug and the associated documentary is for it to travel the world to various film festivals \u201cand use it as not only a tool for horror cinema but also an amazing behind-the-scenes story to feature the creativity of the seniors\u201d who brought it to life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe want to inspire others to be creative regardless of our age limits,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Local seniors picked up new skills last week while coming away with a little bit of \u201cHollywood North\u201d stardust on their shoulders. Hillary House National Historic Site was recently a hub of activity as director Sean Cisterna transformed the local site into a house of horrors for his upcoming short film The Rug, starring Canadian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":34707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/2024-06-13-03.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-91M","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-14 12:16:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}