Dante and Minnie
Dante and Minnie is a Christmas movie we shot in New Orleans in 2011, starring Tommy Vita, Lauren Channell, and Holly Ladnier. Dante and Minnie premiered at the Baltimore International Black Film Festival in 2015.
The script for Dante and Minnie was written while we were shooting the feature film, Simple. We also shot some test footage between shooting days on Simple, back when the Panasonic HVX 200 with Letus adapter and Lomo lenses were considered high quality - months before the 4k revolution.
For the shoot, we ended up using a borrowed Canon 7d, as it was the most practical of what was available for the type of running around we were doing for the shoot. The Panasonic, with all the attachments, was a 30 pound camera, and we were trying to shoot a heavily shot listed feature film in eleven days. On top of that, we were shooting a Christmas movie in New Orleans, in the summer.
Preproduction
For most of this production, about homeless people, I was ironically living in my car. This was post Katrina New Orleans, and after a house fire, a foreclosure, and a bankruptcy, Eileen had moved to Baltimore to live in her sister's house, while I remained in New Orleans to finish both Simple and Dante and Minnie.
Holly Ladnier as "Cynthia" acting across from Lauren Channell as "Minnie" at Cynthia's French Quarter Apartment.
After Katrina, we had purchased a house in Montpelier, LA, while waiting for New Orleans to open to the public. Since then, the pipes had exploded in the attic while we were gone for a week, soaking the house. The house was full of mold. Separately, the county had turned off the electric due to a local ordinance/standards the house did not meet, making it difficult to implement any repairs on no budget. It was in the front yard of this mold infested place that I had lived in the car with two German Shepherds for several months, working mostly out of the local Starbucks.
It was exciting when it finally came time to shoot. We had to rent one of the locations for two weeks in the French Quarter, that would act as "Cynthia's Apartment," and doubled as my temporary home. Aside from the laminated floors, it was a great historic one bedroom apartment in a prime location in the quarter, a sharp juxtaposition from the front yard I was living in. Sadly, I can't remember what I did with the dogs for the two weeks I was there.