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For Michael James Kacey, the dream of bringing DAYBREAK to the screen has been a triumph. After a decade of day-player and minor guest starring roles as an LA actor, Kacey has finally found what he loves. Directing."There's a lot of complexity to it," Kacey notes. |
"No matter what phase of the project, whether it be pre-production, the shoot, or post-production, there are thousands of decisions to be made. How well you make those decisions determine the fate of the film. I love that process." The gleam in Kacey's eyes surely means that he is a day-player no longer. |
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Committed to bringing the film he'd imagined to the screen, director Michael James Kacey set out to shoot the low budget miracle on two coasts in 15 days. "Insane. Pure insanity," claims Kacey. "I did it because I didn't know any better. I didn't know it wasn't possible." Since most of the film takes place in a depressed coal-mining town in Pennsylvania, Kacey knew exactly where to go. A native of Shamokin, PA, a small city whose population grew and fell with the anthracite mining industry, the area gave Kacey the look he'd promised cinematographer Cameron Cutler. A chance to film the dark fantasy-drama against the rarely seen coal-mining region of northeastern Pennsylvania. The late March shoot would also aid their quest for a cold, barren and overcast look for the film. "That particular town gave DAYBREAK a look and style that you couldn't have gotten anywhere else," says Cutler. "Plus, Mother Nature helped us out tremendously. It turned out that it really worked to our benefit." The location shooting also gave Cutler some intangibles. "Being in the environment you're trying to portray really helps you to convey the textures of this world. It comes through in the picture both consciously and unconsciously in the style I used to shoot."
The 12-day Pennsylvania shoot would prove to be a grueling test of commitment for director Kacey and his small Los Angeles-based crew. Over the course of those twelve days the crew would be exposed to rain, sleet, snow and blistering sunshine with daily high temperatures ranging from 27 to 88 degrees. "Weather is great production value, they say," Kacey adds with a wry look. "But it can be a continuity nightmare." When two inches of snow draped the countryside on Day 3 of filming and exterior scenes had to be filmed due to the tight shooting schedule, Kacey was nearly apoplectic. "I had no choice but to shoot outside, yet I knew that none of it would match with what we'd be shooting in a few days," Kacey explains. "So I rewrote the script. It was early enough that I could just alter the timing of these scenes so that they would not occur on the same day in the story. Now I could use the snow as that vaunted production value."
Composer Sonia Wisgo also joined the DAYBREAK team as a result of reading early news clipping on the project. She, at the time a student at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, decided to seize the opportunity to pitch herself for the job of DAYBREAK composer. "I felt that I had an advantage being from that area," Wisgo explains. "I thought I could capture the flavor of the region because I could put my personal experience into it." She then moved to Los Angeles where she completed the film's haunting score. "It's not really based on music theory," she says of her method for scoring DAYBREAK. "The music is based on the emotions of the characters and the colors and camerawork." |
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DAYBREAK, the story of man whose wish to change one event from his past leads to a nightmarish new life, is a refreshing variation on the "what-if" scenario. It is a decidedly dark tale whose bleak ending hearkens back to the style of "The Twilight Zone." Starring Paul Clemens as Jeff, in a role which builds on his impressive work in such films as PROMISES IN THE DARK, and the cult classic THE BEAST WITHIN, DAYBREAK also stars Debra Henri (THE SECRET LIFE OF GIRLS) as both versions of Jeff's wife Michele. Jeff Bergquist, Michael James Kacey, Mitch Campbell, Ian Tomaschik, and Christopher Roberts round out the impressive cast.
Jeff Stokes lives with his wife Michele and stepsons in Los Angeles pursuing his dream of being an artist. Unhappy that Michele cannot have more children, Jeff makes a wish to change one thing in his life: that Michele had married him after high school and not Walter, her late husband. Jeff's obsession to father his own children, and thus achieve a kind of immortality, is used as a metaphor for the artist's need to create a masterpiece. A masterpiece, the pinnacle of an artist's creativity, is another form of immortality. And so Jeff Stokes makes a wish to achieve his masterpiece, his own children, by any means.
The next morning Jeff wakes to discover a very different world. Michele is still his wife, but she is not the same. And neither is Jeff. No longer an aspiring artist, he languishes as an insurance salesman in his Pennsylvania hometown who hides his paintings in the basement. Jeff finds he has created his "masterpieces" (two sons) as accidents in his youth. Metaphorically, what do you do once you have your masterpiece? Drive sustains the journey to create the masterpiece, but what sustains the artist after it has been achieved? And what if the masterpiece was an accident? Confidence and courage to create breathe life into the artist. Without that ability to create, what is left for the artist?
DAYBREAK follows Jeff's struggle to comprehend the true cost of his selfish wish, as he desperately searches for a way to set things right. That option may be more than Jeff has bargained for. |
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