Heart of the Jade Empress

THE STORY: The Jade Empress has been hunting her best assassin/lover Hero. He is discovered hiding with his Swordsman, with whom he is in-love. The Empress orders her Scarlete Guard to kill him. The battle leads to the honorable death of his love and her heart....................................................... ............................................................ ..................... THE JOURNEY: The goal of this project was to create an emotional cinematic experience with a mobilephonecamera. It is the result of an experiment for Shu Lea's Mobiopera, which traveled to OUTFEST 2007 from Sundance 2007. The opera had only one rule: the experiment was open to submissions only during the film festival and footage must be created with a camera phone. It took 3 weeks to secure the Los Angeles unit camera phone donation. Units also ran in Greece and the United States: Ohio, New Jersey and Indiana. They all had technical problems. The original "Hero" dropped out and was recast 6 hours before shooting. "The Swordsman" was recast during the 3 hour shoot. The entire production/post happened in about 12 hours. The phonecamera for L.A. unit was booked twice, tested once and bowed out twice. The third booking was made 6 hours before the shoot. Production picked up the craft service/swords and camera phone, delivered to base, choreographed, moved to location, blocked, shot, moved to editing, edited, camera phone returned, music composed, tested to final edit and submitted within this time frame. There was even a guest on set (who's actual name was "Hero" -same as our fictional lead male). Money spent on the production went to the organizer folder ($10.81). The entire budget from the production ($0.05) - a combination of donations - is still retained. This film was inspired by footage procured by the producer from a myspacer in Greece which qualified the team for the opera, plus a story demand from the director and the writer's broken heart. An unexpected outcome of the finished product was not that it was completed by deadline with 3 weeks of preproduction with a microbic budget and an international mobile cameraphone search, but that it healed the heart of the writer. The Mobiopera had a screening at OUTFEST 2007, but it was cut short before anyone saw the film. Subsequently OUTFEST 2008 requested the film. It has also been accepted to Festival de Cannes Short Film Corner 2008, asked to showcase on our IMDB page (October 2008) and requested to submit to Sundance 2009. Production awaits notification of Sundance 2009's New Frontier division decision in December 2008.