Transparent Actress Emily Robinson’s Premieres Her Short Film ‘Virgin Territory’ At The 2016 Los Angeles Film Festival
Rich Girl had a chance to sit down with Emily Robinson a 17 year old first time filmmaker at the 2016 Los Angeles Film Festival who wrote, directed, produced and stars in her first short film, Virgin Territory. Emily, usually in front of the camera, loved this first experience as a writer/director. Emily knew she wanted to cast Michelle Clunie (Queer as Folk) as Harper and Mel Shimkovitz (Transparent) as Jordan. She sent them each a script, they both agreed that they loved it and wanted their respective roles. Emily committed $10,000 of her money to front the project and in September started the production process. She reviewed over 70 tapes from various cinematographers, meeting with 12 in-person to discuss the script and her vision. It was an incredibly difficult decision, but, Kay Madsen seemed to be the perfect fit. Her first hire. Emily and Debbie continued the process to hire the team, went to SAG-AFTRA meetings on production, called friends and various insurance and productions companies to learn as much as possible about the process.
Filming was set for November 27, 2015, a 4 day shoot, a SAG-AFTRA short film agreement with a cast of 3 and a production team of 11. Once shot, Emily was going to do a Kickstarted campaign to help cover post-production.
Kickstarter- launched on January 27th at 10am, asking for $6,000, she had 30 days to reach that goal. The goal was reached in 5 hours!!!!! Stretch-goals were then explained and after one month $17,583 was raised on Kickstarter. Although many people that Emily knew committed to her Kickstarter campaign, there were many, including at the Associate Producer level ($2,500) that she did not know, but they follow her on social media and know her acting work.
After everything was shot, Emily continued working with Tucker Marolf in Editing, then John M. Davis on sound and Patrick Taylor for Color correction, Virgin Territory was completely finished by March 1, 2016. Since then Emily created the poster and the trailer while Debbie started submitting to the film festivals; Virgin Territory had its world premiere on June 2nd at the LA Film Festival at 9pm at the Culver City ArcLight 2 theatre!
