More Stills from the Dream

Sullivan sews (Kathleen Bryson)

Sullivan by the Raining Tree (Kathleen Bryson)

Cast & Crew - The Emmas!

Emma Thimbleby - playing title character X-tine!

Emma is currently studying a Music Techniques and Composition Course at Birkbeck.  Her acting roles to date have included a walk-on part as a greeting lover in the cult film The Viva Voce Virus, some hair acting in Jessica Cheeseman’s short Needle and now, her most challenging role to date, elements of X-tine in X-tine’s Diary.

Emma read Religious Studies and Philosophy at King’s College London before embarking on a series of occupations including teaching (issues with being the voice of authority), nursing (issues with the sight of blood) and finally IT (likes typing).

And... Emma Byrne - playing Helene, one of the two Terror Sisters!

Emma Byrne got her first break in film acting in Katleen Bryson and Kimmo Moykky's previous feature film The Viva Voce Virus as the naive but ambitious Emily. Recent stage productions include several regal roles: she played Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons in the feminist retelling of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Revenge of the Amazons (Network Theatre, London 2011) and Anne of Cleves in the time travelling romantic comedy Time for Love (Network Theatre 2010). She's also reclined in luxury as a penthouse guest in Electric Hotel (Sadler's Wells/Shunt).

She trained at the City Lit Jazz Workshop for several years and has studied voice production and acting at Morley College. She also has several lighting design and prop design credits in both film and theatre. In civilian life she is a research scientist in the Lottolab at University College London studying the origins of colour perception in the brain.

More Scenes from the Museum (okay... palaeo-lab)

Science is full of skeptics... and that's a good thing!

Who IS this guy?! (Anna Barros tries to dissuade her friend from dating the notorious Jeremy)

"On your own head be it, then..." (Anna Barros)

 

more from edolphs copse

kimmo: "our pre-raphaelite brotherhood moment" (jess, kathleen)

kimmo: "they're in the trees! they're coming!" (kathleen)

Cast and Crew

Casting and crewing as we go along, with treasures yet to come!


First up is Kimmo Moykky, Director:

Kimmo Moykky is a South London-based Finnish filmmaker and editor. He moved to the UK in 1994, after studying Theatre in Literature at the University of Helsinki. He continued his studies by completing his BA in Film and Video at the London College of Printing. In 2010, he completed his Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning. He works as an Audio Visual Technician at Central Saint Martin's College of Art and Design and teaches film production and editing at Cavendish College and CityLit in London. His first feature film The Viva Voce Virus (2008) was co-directed and co-produced with Kathleen Bryson. Currently in post-production is a short film, Elisavita: this is a partly animated live-action supernatural drama in collaboration with animator Kevin Rowe. Kimmo directed the project and is now working on the editing and compositing the 3D backgrounds with Kevin. Kimmo is continuing to produce, direct and edit independent films, including a 30-minute music video story for the band Arthur Sleep that is based on the Orpheus myth.

Next up meet the lovely Jessica Cheeseman, cinematographer:

Jessica is a filmmaker and artist. She has created work in both live action and animated films, and her work has screened at various film and arts festivals. Her animated film Points of View won two awards and screened on German television in 2010. Before studying and working on animated films in Poland and Germany, she graduated from the London College of Communication with a Cinematography specialism. Her degree film was directed by Kimmo Moykky. Currently she is indulging her other passion, music. She lives and works in London.

Next, meet our radiant star - and screenplay writer - Kathleen Bryson, "Sullivan".

Kathleen trained at the London Academy of Performing Arts in their full-time year-long postgraduate Classical Acting conservatory programme. She plays bride Leila in Campbell Blackman's feature film Stud Life, as well as the lead Sullivan in Xtine's Diary, both to be released in 2011. Another recent significant role is the young Gloria LaFonche, evil closeted blonde actress/mad-scientist in The Viva Voce Virus (2008, UK), a queer camp-extravaganza feature film that she wrote on her own, and then co-directed with Kimmo Moykky. The Viva Voce Virus had its U.S. premiere at the Siren Nation Film Festival in Portland, Oregon in 2008, and its UK premiere at the Cine25 Festival in York in 2009.

Bryson has acted in over 20 short films - notably in I Want to Be a Secretary, directed by Sarah Wood and winner of Best Film at the London Short Film Festival in 2008 - and also works as a film director, writer and painter. She produced the award-winning music video "Dear God" (directed by Nele Hecht) for indie-supergroup Monsters of Folk and is in pre-production for her second directed feature Spaceships Over Corvallis, after being selected for the 2009 Berlinale Talent Campus for up-and-coming young directors.

Her first novel Mush was published in 2001 and her most recent novel, Girl on a Stick, was published by Suspect Thoughts in 2008. In Spring 2011, Kathleen and Xtine's Diary cinematographer Jessica Cheeseman completed a graphic novel entitled Winterland. Bryson lives in Haringey, London, and is a first-year PhD student in Evolutionary Anthropology at University College London, where she is studying the cognitive and adaptative roots of prejudice and discrimination in humans and other apes.

Production Diary Vlog #1: Late-in-the-Day Prop Making

Edolphs Copse Shoot

The ancient Edolphs Copse

Prepping the props (Jessica Cheeseman, Kathleen Bryson, Chris Kiernan)

More props (Kathleen Bryson)

Witchy Sullivan (Kathleen Bryson)

Sullivan stitches in Edolphs Copse-set dream sequence (Kathleen Bryson)

Abandoned vestments everywhere. Who were the owners? (Kathleen Bryson)

Camerawoman Jessica Cheeseman runs through the woods towards Sullivan (Kathleen Bryson)

Sewing is a painstaking task, but not if you have a magic ring! (Kathleen Bryson)

Dream Carnival and Paleo-Lab Stills from Xtine's Diary Shoots, 2010/2011

Protacted pontifications from Jeremy. (Conor Gibson)

Sexual dimorphism is often indicated by the canines, as Sullivan is
soon to find out. (Kathleen Bryson, Katharine Balolia)

Post-graduate student Jeremy prepares to pontificate. (Conor Gibson)

The Dream Tree. Smoke rises through the sunlit branches and made for an amazing shot entirely by chance,
an instant jokingly referred to by cinematographer Jessica Cheeseman as her "Kurosawa moment".

The Dream Carnival.
Sullivan (Kathleen Bryson) can never remember what she dreams
after she wakes up, even if she writes it down.
And neither can you.

Catching clouds (Kathleen Bryson)

The Dream Field: Sullivan wakes up, to Life or the Afterlife. You decide. (Kathleen Bryson)

The Wrong House: Don't you hate it when the wallpaper changes,
and the people as well? Sullivan certainly does. (Kathleen Bryson)

Outside the Wrong House: For Sullivan, reality is close,
but possibly just out of reach. And time is running out...
(Kathleen Bryson)