“Betrayed” – The Trailer

I’m very excited to announce the launch of “Betrayed“, a short thriller co-written and directed by Joshua Grossberg and starring Seth Gilliam (The Wire), PJ Sosko, and Cara Buono (The Sopranos). Betrayed, one of the first narrative works to be shot on the Canon 5D Mark II, follows husband and reporter James Vance (PJ Sosko) who mysteriously disappears, but not before leaving a cryptic video diary leading law enforcement to unravel the crime of his demise.

The making of Betrayed begins about a year ago when I shot my first video (a music video of my younger sister, Etana) with the 5DII. As I was sifting through the raw footage, my friend/filmmaker Josh Grossberg happened to be in my neighborhood and stopped by for a visit. Excited that I’d just finished shooting my first video, I showed Josh some of the footage and he was blown away with the quality produced by the inexpensive DSLR. It was at that point we began to discuss the idea of collaborating to create a film.

Together we reached out to our friends and suddenly we had dozens of talented and eager crew members willing to volunteer their time to make this film. It should be noted that the overall cost was kept quite low, especially for film standards.

As a still-photographer, I certainly learned a great deal from this experience. Making a film is far more complicated than taking a still image and requires far more time, patience, and persistence to get to the end. The ambitious 4-day shoot involved numerous company moves which meant dozens of crew members had to work together to move all gear, props, etc. to multiple sites to shoot additional scenes….at times moving everything/everyone to different Burroughs throughout NYC all in the same day. Needless to say, after four 16-hour days with little sleep and nonstop work, everyone was exhausted by the end.

After the principle photography was wrapped in the Fall of 2009, there were numerous pick-up shots and scenes that still needed recorded. I also led visuals as part of a smaller crew working with the cast to record the remainder of the film over the next few months.

As if shooting the film wasn’t enough, then came another hurdle, post-production. After many revisions, editing of the short was finished in late fall; subsequently the trailer was recently completed. The short itself is being submitted to film festivals worldwide with the goal of raising the financing needed to shoot the feature-length version.

The past year has been full of adventure, learning – and much stress. I’m glad to finally be able to give you all a peek!

Hope you enjoy the trailer!

Here are some production stills I took while working on the project:

Betrayed Behind-The-Scenes for Blog – Images by Robert Caplin