Cold Souls - BEHIND THE SCENES

Return to the Wild About Movies homepage.

Movie Showtimes

Discount Movie Tickets

WAM Homepage

Free Movie Screenings
KICK ASS

Free Movie Screenings

Movie Box Office

Search this Site

"Cold Souls"
BEHIND THE SCENES
by Tim Nasson
July 28, 2009

Watch "Cold Souls" Trailer

Cold Souls Poster

After winning the screenplay competition at the 2006 Nantucket Film Festival with her dream-inspired script, writer/director Sophie Barthes and cinematographer/producer Andrij Parekh joined forces with New York-based production companies Touchy Feely Films, headed by Paul Giamatti, Elizabeth Giamatti and Dan Carey, and Journeyman Pictures, headed by Paul Mezey and Jeremy Kipp Walker. “When Paul and Liz came back from the Nantucket Film Festival and described their chance meeting with Sophie and the project she was working on, I knew right away that it would be something that would appeal to Paul as an actor and would be a great fit for our company,” says producer Dan Carey. Recounts producer Elizabeth Giamatti, “When we met again in New York City, Sophie had stacks and stacks of images – all these photographs and drawings that related to elements from her screenplay, inspirations which gave us such a clear and beautiful idea about how she envisioned the film. It was quite remarkable.” Adds producer Jeremy Kipp Walker, “It’s rare when you find a filmmaker with such an acute sensitivity and fine-tuned aesthetic. We knew right away that Sophie was a special talent.”

Soon after, the project was invited to the Sundance Institute’s Writers Lab during January 2007, as well as the corresponding Directors Lab held the following June. In addition to work-shopping scenes from the film, Barthes and Parekh also met several key collaborators during their time at the Sundance Institute, including editor Andrew Mondshein, fellow Lab participant Eric Lahey, who designed and built the soul extractor set piece, as well as music supervisor Tracy McKnight, who was instrumental in bringing composer Dickon Hinchliffe on board.

COLD SOULS marks the fourth collaboration between Sophie Barthes and Andrij Parekh. The two share a keen sense of trust and Barthes views her partnership with Parekh as an essential component to her process as a director. “We share the same sensibility. In the past few years we’ve developed the same taste for movies, paintings and photography. On set we occasionally had different opinions, but we always understand instinctively what the other is trying to do. We’ve found a healthy and energizing balance between differences and communion. Although we had distinct roles as writer/director and cinematographer/producer, COLD SOULS is a film by us.”

With the script complete, the project was set for production during the winter of 2007¬2008. COLD SOULS was invited to participate in the IFP’s annual No Borders International Co-Production Market and Charlotte Mickie of Maximum Films joined the team to shepherd international sales. Shortly after, a French co-production was forged with Memento Films Production and Arte France Cinema.

Celebrated film and theater casting director Daniel Swee helped assemble an outstanding cast, including Paul Giamatti, David Strathairn, Dina Korzun, Emily Watson, Lauren Ambrose, and Katheryn Winnick. “Sophie and I discussed a specific set of challenges while casting this film,” recounts Swee. “The tone had to be pitch perfect and we needed to create a consistency and depth with the performances in the movie. We were also targeting real Russian performers – authenticity was key and we didn’t want to inhabit the film with Americans ‘playing’ Russian. We brought several actors over from abroad and targeted specific communities in New York and Los Angeles beyond the normal casting pools.”

At the cornerstone of COLD SOULS is actor Paul Giamatti, whom Barthes had in mind for her film from the beginning. “I like to write for a specific actor,” she says. “Good actors are an infinite source of inspiration. Paul is a dream to work with. His range, sensibility and intelligence are just mind-blowing.”

"I really loved how this very fantastic idea was presented with so much low-key humor, with a very deadpan delivery,” says Paul Giamatti. “The whole idea is rooted in a very simple, real world, but it's still totally out there. There's something so calm about the nuttiness of it.” “The tone was influenced by my taste for the Theatre of the Absurd,” says Barthes. “I admire the playfulness of the tone in the plays of Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett and Jean Tardieu. It’s a tone that mixes comedy, satire, irony, melancholy, and tragedy – characters are often caught in dreamlike, nightmarish or hopeless situations, and the dialogue flirts with clichés and nonsense.”

The shooting schedule was split into two sections – the first phase of production was slated for New York City and the second phase was to be completed in St. Petersburg, Russia. Parekh and Barthes had visited St. Petersburg during the summer of 2005 and already had a strong sense for the city and its potential as a location for the film. “I grew up reading Akhmatova, Chekhov and Gogol. In my imagination, St. Petersburg has always been the city of poets,” says Barthes. In order to capture the precise tone of a world that is both realistic and fantastical, the filmmakers sought out a number of unique shooting locations in New York City, including the original immigration facilities at Ellis Island, an abandoned elementary school in Brooklyn, the winter surf of Brighton Beach, and the Roosevelt Island aerial tramway spanning the East River. Combined with lyrical photography and inspired production design, COLD SOULS shows an unusual side of New York City that doubles as a canvas for the human soul.

On the process, cinematographer Andrij Parekh recounts, “Sophie and I were blessed with having an extraordinary amount of time to prepare this film – over a year as opposed to a few months. We had time to imagine, to brainstorm, and to practice at the Sundance Directors Lab. We live in New York, and had prepared a list of locations that we wanted to shoot in. We gathered all our favorite paintings and photographs into a binder, and that binder became the guide for the film. Going back to those photos now, after the film has been completed, is rather surprising – the photographs now look like the film!”

“My cinematography tends to be naturalistic,” continues Parekh, “so I always begin with location, as physical space brings reality to the abstraction of a script and storyboarding, and sometimes, as in the case of COLD SOULS, the locations were even better than one could have imagined. Location Manager Jeff Brown was instrumental in finding spaces that elevated the script and ideas we had. For example, an abandoned school (with an incredible existing ceiling) on Roosevelt Island became the Soul Storage, providing a blank canvas for Production Designer Beth Mickle. Locations, Camera and Production Design worked in close harmony to give this film a creative visual style.”

Adds production designer Beth Mickle, “Designing COLD SOULS was absolutely one of the most exciting, challenging, and inspiring projects of my career. Sophie Barthes' script offers such an imaginative, complex visual landscape. Bringing that landscape to life on a relatively small budget required resourcefulness and inventive solutions, all of which came in the form of thrift store finds, futuristic pieces hand-made from hardware store merchandise, generous vendor donations, and much more. Working with an array of research materials, a refined color palette and use of lighting, and a fantastic collaboration between every department, a very distinctive visual style was attained. For me, COLD SOULS is wonderful example of what can be accomplished with creative thinking, passion, and collaboration regardless of the resources at hand.”

Filming on location in St. Petersburg presented its own challenges for the second half of the shoot. “February in Russia doesn’t exactly evoke ideal shooting conditions,” recounts producer Jeremy Kipp Walker, “though I must say the team we partnered with in St. Petersburg from Globus Film Company was stupendous. We’ve mounted a number of international projects over the years and this experience was far and away the best to date. St. Petersburg is amazing to look at – the architecture is unbelievable and the whole city is built on a series of canals. Some of the Russian locations we captured in this film added the perfect compliment to Sophie’s script and helped punctuate the tone she was hoping to achieve. I don’t think it would have been the same in another city, and the experience of living and working in Russia was pretty incredible for all of us.”

Once the shooting and editing of the film was complete, Barthes teamed with esteemed music composer Dickon Hinchliffe. “When I score a film I write some music in response to the script before I've seen any images,” recounts Hinchliffe. “I find this leaves more freedom for the imagination, and while some elements are inevitably discarded, many of the themes and ideas that are generated at this early stage become central to the score as it develops. With COLD SOULS, I sent my ideas to Sophie as they happened and between us we gradually found how the score should sound. The instrumentation is largely based around harp, vibes, celesta, strings, and organ. The motifs are sparse as the images are fragile and could become overburdened by too much sound. In terms of tone, the score had to somehow balance the absurd – and often amusing – nature of the protagonist's soul journey and the more disturbing questions that the film raises about modern society.”

2008 Movies_2009 Movies

In The Spotlight!

"2009 Movies" & "2010 Movies"
AND - "2010 Oscar Winners"
By Tim Nasson
Publisher, Wild About Movies

Wild About Movies provides you with the most comprehensive movie posters, movie trailers, movie synopses, Behind The Scenes of movies, and celebrity interviews, and current, updated movie release date information - than any other movie website. At WAM you are able to peruse the movie trailers, movie posters and movie synopses of more than 500 movies not yet in theaters (and thousands of movies formerly in movie theaters and currently on DVD, including all "2009 DVDS" and 2010 DVDS and "2009 BluRays" and 2010 BluRays). The latest additions to the Wild About Movies database include the 2010 , 2011 and 2012 Big Screen Releases "Knight & Day" starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, as well as "Kick Ass" featuring Nicolas Cage. Julia Roberts in "Eat Pray Love." The - now - non Avatar entitled movie "The Last Airbender" and sixty-something year old Sylvester Stallone in front of and behind the camera in "The Expendables" and "Rambo 5." Also "Lovely Still" - featuring Martin Landau & Ellen Burstyn. Jake Gyllenhaal as "The Prince of Persia" and Rose McGowan as "Red Sonja." And Seth Rogen is "The Green Hornet." Also, a plethora of sequels: Sarah Jessica Parker in "Sex And The City 2" and Emma Thompson in "Nanny McPhee 2" and the non Disney movie "Narnia 3." And everything from Daniel Radcliffe (naked at WAM and fully clothed) in "Harry Potter 7: Part 1," to the Disney 3D films including "Tron 2," "Cars 2" and "Toy Story 3." Michael Douglas in "Wall Street 2." And the requisites, "Cloverfield 2" and "Iron Man 2." Also "Shrek 4." In addition, "The Escapist," and Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit Movies." Also, Kenneth Branagh's "Thor" and the big screen version of Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" and Ben Stiller's "Chicago 7." More? "Get Him To The Greek" and a slew of animated and non animated Walt Disney and non Disney movies, many in 3D: including "The Smurfs" and "Fraggle Rock: The Movie" and "The King of the Elves" and "Rapunzel," "The Bear and the Bow;" "Newt," and also "How To Train Your Dragon." The four Jonas Brothers in the big screen adaptation of "Walter The Farting Dog" and Chace Crawford, not dancing queen Zac Efron, in the (now 2011) remake of "Footloose" and the sequel to "Twilight," and "New Moon," "Eclipse" and all starring Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart. And "Captain America." Also, check out all of the "2008 Movies" that were released in movie theaters. We also bring you "2010 Oscars" coverage - and the movie trailers and movie posters of all "2009 Movies" & "2010 Movies" currently in theaters. Today's IN THE SPOTLIGHT - "2010 Oscar Winners" ... (continue)

Celebrity Interviews By Tim Nasson More Wild About Movies Interviews

Movie Showtimes, Movie Box Office

Features

2007 Films - 2008 Films

"Films Now Playing In Movie Theaters"

2007 Movies - 2008 Movies - 2009 Movies

Movie Trailers and Movie Posters of ALL "2009 Movies" & "2010 Movies" Coming To Movie Theaters

WAM Giveaways

Go to the WAM Giveaways Page to enter the Sherlock Holmes Promotion

Wild About Movies In The News