The Beehive Short Film: Transplanting the relationship of Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol during the 1960’s pop art scene into the present day hipster movement

You have the opportunity to become involved in writer/director Jacobie Gray’s next short film called ‘The Beehive’. This is Jacobie’s 3rd short film and she hopes to include some very cool visual effects (aka VFX) which can be expensive. 

Film Synopsis: 
Transplanting the relationship of Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol during the 1960’s pop art scene into the present day hipster movement, the film unfolds in an art studio called The Beehive; a place where artists go to pollinate. The story follows Angelique, an ageing superstar socialite, who struggles to deal with the younger version of herself that Elan, a cutting edge contemporary artist, has taken as his new muse. However unlike the drug fuelled sixties, Angelique doesn’t self-destruct like Edie. Instead, she takes the beehive analogy to its ultimate end and gets her sweet revenge.

Director’s Notes:
It was my parents’ record collection that ignited my love affair with the sixties. The Beatles, Hendrix, Bob Dylan… you know the list. But it wasn’t until a brief hiatus from acting when I managed art auctions at Christie’s in London that I encountered the mind- blowing legacy of Andy Warhol. Suddenly I had an artistic context for the social revolution these musicians embodied. And it wasn’t necessarily through the work itself, since Warhol’s pop art is as often synonymous with the mundane (a la Campbell’s soup cans) as it is with the burgeoning consumerism of the 1960’s, but the world he inhabited. Delving deeper and deeper into the New York scene where iconoclastic artists like John and Yoko staged their week long ‘bed-ins’ protesting the Vietnam war and Bob Dylan protested being held up as the poster child for protest, I discovered a plethora of iconic bohemians living fabulously eccentric lives in newfound liberation from social conservatism. And it seemed that one of the central nervous systems for this generation of free loving radicals was Warhol’s infamous ‘Factory’.

What struck my imagination immediately about the Factory, Warhol’s aluminium foil lined studio established in 1963, is that its daily happenings were as much a piece of art as his legendary silk-screen portraits. I started dreaming about existence in this debauched playground where artists, actors, beat poets, musicians and underground ‘celebrities’ converged in a melting pot of creative expression. It’s no secret Warhol surrounded himself with the beautiful people he aspired to be and the artists who aspired to being him. One such person who seduced his fascination was gamine debutante, Edie Sedgwick.
 
She was the original socialite who shot to superstardom through Warhol’s voyeuristic style of filmmaking, the ethereal muse of the sixties (Bob Dylan, The Velvet Underground and Patti Smith amongst others wrote songs and poetry about her) and the clincher in my desire to explore this world on screen.

CAST: 
We have an incredible cast attached to this project, led by: 

FRANCESCA SAVIGE as Angelique                FELIX JOZEPS as Elan 
                 

(Art credit for the wall Jacobie is standing in front of in her video: Z.Rodriguez @ztheart @streetcraftla) 

So our target is $15,000.
We will spend pretty much all of that on the Visual Effects; creating the bees in our dramatic finale scene. The rest of the money will go into catering to feed our brilliant Cast and Crew who are all deferring their fees to help us make this film.

MEET THE TEAM: 
   Writer / Director: JACOBIE GRAY
A QUT acting graduate, Jacobie transitioned into talent management and casting before coming full circle creatively to work as a writer/director in 2010. Her debut short film,Cavity, was a Tropfest Australia finalist, 2014. The Aquarium, her second short, premiered at Palm Springs International ShortFest in June and will play at Flickers: Rhode Island International Film Festival this August. For theatre, Jacobie directed Wild Honey andWhat it Feels Like(QUT) and was assistant director on The Seafarer (Darlinghurst Theatre), The New Electric Ballroom (Griffin Independent), The Dark of the Moon (ACTT) and A Streetcar Named Desire (QUT). Her first stageplay, The Interminable Witness, is undergoing development. Jacobie has also studied at UCLA Extension, AFTRS, Metro Screen and Stella Adler School of Acting (NY).

 

Challenges