Movies You Made: "Phasma Ex Machina" written & directed by Matthew Osterman

I posted What Movies Have You Made the other day - and it turns out a lot of GITS readers have been involved in the writing, producing, acting, and/or directing of an independent short or full-length feature film. Matt Osterman is one of them:

It actually all started with a story I heard about Thomas Edison where near the end of his life he attempted to create a device to communicate with the dead. Nobody is really sure if he was going senile, being swindled by spiritualists, or if he really thought he was onto something, but he died before he could finish it and the device is more or less relegated to the dustbin of history. Anyway, I thought it would be an interesting experiment to contemporize it and build a complete and new narrative around the idea of a working machine. I took the science of the supernatural very seriously, but I also knew how incredibly important it was to get the drama, characters, and story right. After 18 months of writing (and re-writing and re-re-writing) we shot the film over 19 days in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. We finished the edit a month or two ago and are currently submitting to festivals in hopes for a good run in 2010. We were also incredibly lucky enough that the script was a finalist for the McKnight Screenwriting Fellowship and the rough cut was one of ten films in the nation to be accepted into the very awesome IFP Filmmakers Labs in NYC.

Here’s a proper synopsis:

What would you do to bring someone back? How far would you go? Phasma Ex Machina explores the grey area between life and death and how science may be the bridge between the two. A young man named Cody, tasked with raising his younger brother James after the death of their parents, plunges himself into the murky science of the supernatural. Ignoring his responsibilities as a caretaker, Cody invents a machine he intends to be a conduit to the other side. In his pursuit to build the device he befriends an affable electrical engineer named Tom who has his own tale of love and loss. Cody eventually reaches an unintended level of success that not only threatens his safety, but also the well-being of James and Tom. He quickly learns that the supernatural isn’t all that super and humans can be even worse.

Finally, if people like the concept and trailer, we sincerely ask them to check out the fun stuff we have on our blog and/or follow us on Facebook or Twitter. We need all the help we can get!

Website: phasmamovie.com
Facebook: facebook.com/PhasmaExMachina
Twitter: twitter.com/PhasmaExMachina
My email: matt@mattosterman.com

Here is the trailer for "Phasma Ex Machina," written and directed by Matthew Osterman:



And here is some face time with Matt in a behind the scenes piece:



If you have any comments or questions for Matt, post them here.

Also if you have a full-length movie or short film that you wrote, directed, produced and/or acted in, and would like me to promote it on GITS, post background info and link here, or email me:

scottdistillery@gmail.com

Same time tomorrow for more Movies You Made!