Friday, September 09, 2011

Interview with Monique Ganderton 'Seven Layer Dip'




Seven Layer Dip Premiered at this year's 2011 Hollyshorts Film Festival
Monique Ganderton Co-director, producer & writer
Sam Hargrave, Co director

Interview by Jasmina Nevada

-Would you like to tell me your participation in this short film?

My boyfriend and I are the only 2 people in this movie. It's a little action comedy and it may be based on true events...

-And the true events being?..

I made seven layer dip one day and he scooped off the entire top layer of cheese and I got a little upset. I said 'why wouldn't you eat the rest of it? Your dip etiquette is horrible! I made 7 layers and you only ate 1, it doesn't make any sense?'... He said 'why does it matter how we eat it?' and then we started laughing about it. It was this man versus woman moment in time and I thought it would be funny to re-create that in a 3 and half minute video,including a massive fight.

-What were you expecting from your audiences with this?

I don't know what I was expecting. I was hoping people would laugh and just enjoy themselves. It's short, when we made it we never intended it to go to film festivals. We put it online and got such a huge response from it. So we went back and re-edited a lot of stuff for sound. It has been in a bunch of festivals and this has been the only one that I have actually been able to go to, so it has been really exciting....

-So this true event that has been re-created for screen how long did it take to get it festival ready?

A day of shooting and then a day of editing for the first pass at it and then we spent about 2 days re-shooting a couple of things and doing some ADR to make it festival ready.

-What format did you shoot in?

Little Sony HD Handy Cams. It was just the 2 of us and so we shot each others coverage. We just got really creative. We bought ropes and pulleys and strung a line up in between 2 trees. We had our camera on a zip line, we had a string attached to it puling it up and really tried to find inventive angles and tricks to make it just the 2 of us completely. It was challenging but fun...

-Inside information tells me that you are also a stunt woman! Would you like to tell us a little bit about that? And how did you get into that?

I have no idea... I was modelling in Toronto and doing a runway show on a TV show called Femme Nikita at the time and I saw this girl she rolled down some stairs, shot a gun and kicked some guy in the face and I thought that makes so much more sense... like a lot of fun so I started taking acting classes and taking martial arts I am really tall so I think that maybe they needed someone like me..

-Are you pretty athletic, gymnastics as well?

I did when I was shorter..when I was little and when my legs started dragging over the parallel bars I had to stop. I did diving and have been riding horses my whole life, also track and field.

San Hargrave my boyfriend and partner who made this short with me is also a very well known stunt man and we were actually working on a movie at the time doubling 'Nicole Kidman'. He was the Assistant stunt coordinator and that's when we made seven layer dip. It was on our day off, in Shrevport, Lousiana

-So what is next for you?

We have a couple of scripts that we are working on. We have another project that we would love to do, another little short film just the 2 of us. We are gong to step it up a little bit 4 characters and 2 people. It will be difficult but really cool and then looking forward to a couple of movies that I worked on last year. Also just writing and thinking about new projects.

-Its sounds very creative! And I wish you the best with everything and hope you enjoyed the festival..

It has been a blast!

Links

Monique Ganderton

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1244650/

Sam Hargrave
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1092087/
Thank you for your time

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