Skin Flesh Bone
An original short film directed and produced by Jessica Ammirati and written by Camilla Ammirati.
Two are poets. Two are builders. one is a bridge between them. Two are finding themselves. two are finding each other. One is losing everything. two are lovers. two are friends. one is a guardian. or maybe an oracle. or maybe just half of one.
Skin Flesh Bone, the short film, is only the first 15 minutes of a full length screenplay. It’s a simple story: Four people arrive at a house in the woods and await the arrival of the cabin’s owner. But as with every simple story, there’s much more here than meets the eye…
On the invitation of Mira, (a poet and a retired professor), two of her former students, the previously affianced Adam & Kate, arrive at Mira’s uniquely designed cabin for an extended stay. They bring with them Eva, Adam’s rommate, and Ford, Kate’s husband. In the short film we see the arrival of the two pairs at the house. Adam and Kate cautionsly re-connect and discover what’s been happening in each other’s lives including Adam’s blossoming as a poet and Kate’s abandonment of her writing in favor of more practical needs. Simultaneously, we see Ford and Eva, a contractor and a builder respectively, bonding over their mutual reluctance to embrace the poetry of their partner’s lives. The short film ends with the arrival of a not-entirely-well Mira and the promise of difficult questions and uncomfortable answers awaiting all parties during their stay.
From the abstract reaches of poetry to the basic functioning of speech, the full length screenplay (from which this short film was derived) illuminates the struggles of five characters to deal with each other honestly. SKIN FLESH BONE integrates the stories of several people trying to find their way clear of the experiences and expectations, of the words (and failures of words), that have held them back. They search for their voices, writing poetry not only with their pens, but with their silences and their actions. By the end of the movie each character has gone on the journey to which the title refers, delving one at a time through the layers of how things seem and how things are: the superficial impression of skin, the rich complication of flesh, and the bare truth of bones.
Watch the Short film:
Behind the Scenes: skin.Flesh.Bone. the short film
Skin.Flesh.Bone. the short film
In 2006, I had been living in NYC for about 10 years and somehow, my film/theater directing career hadn’t really taken off. Going to Tahiti Productions as an actual business entity was still two years off, but I felt it was time to make a film and see if I could take the indy film world by storm. I had been contemplating filming the full length script for Skin.Flesh.Bone. but knew that coming up with $50,000 was unlikely to happen, and in the days of Clerks and Napolean Dynamite, I thought I would film a short (just the first 15 minutes of the screenplay) and use it as a proof of concept for a feature.
I spoke to a producer friend of mine, Beth Heffron (Beth Vogt at the time), and she said she could find me a crew if I could find a location. I had already been doing theater in the city, so I already had a cast in mind. And then it just came down to the money. I new I needed about $5000 and was able to cobble it together through savings, credit cards, and donations from friends and family.
Location was the first step and the script called for a unique house in the woods that was cantilevered over a ravine. Enter Mom and Dad. The Connecticut house I grew up in, though not a fully cantilevered structure, did, in fact have an addition that had been cantilevered and Mom and Dad, ever supportive, offered it for the (extremely generous) location fee of $1.00.
My big sister, Jen Doyle, served as production manager, little sis, Camilla (the screenwriter) was on hand as general crew support and defacto script supervisor. My husband served as general Crew, Mom and Dad were Catering and Craft Service as well as some unexpected specialty roles - Dad, a physics professor, became the defacto gaffer and Mom, an english professor was as the body double for Mira as the vocal actress, Mikel Sarah Lambert, wasn’t on site for the filming. Beth had found me a DP named Rachel Morrison (yes, that Rachel Morrison) and a Sound mixer, Jose Torres, and I had enlisted 4 theater actors from New York: Daniel Asher, Katherine Hinchey, Melissa Miles, & Damian Mooney. In October of 2006 we piled into a van and drove the roughly 130 miles to Connecticut to film for a weekend.
The two day shoot went extraordinarily well and after getting back to NYC I hooked up with an editor and a composer and eventually had a finished film. Sadly, the film never took the indie film world by storm. It didn’t make the festival rounds and basically just lives on the internet as a memory of my first stab at filmmaking. BUT it was a fantastic learning experience and the lessons I took away from that shoot (and while working with an extraordinary DP) have been instrumental on almost every project (and definitely every film project) I have done in the 20 years since.
Because Skin.Flesh.Bone. was filmed before the days of ubiquitous smart phones, the photos that exist from the shoot are old fashioned analog polaroids. Above is a collage of behind the scenes photos that my sisters (screenwriter & production manager) put together as a memento of my first filmmaking experience.