Perla Haney-Jardine: Laduree

Perla goofs on set after a scoop of birthday cake ice cream.

The star of our short, Perla Haney-Jardine, had just turned 12 the week before we arrived in Asheville. An Asheville native, Perla first came to our attention after seeing her as the younger daughter in Michael Winterbottom’s GENOVA (Colin Firth, Catherine Keener). Impressed with her depth, we decided to contact her to see if she would be interested in playing Laduree for our short. Not only did Perla agree, but her family graciously offered to help us arrange shooting in their hometown of Asheville.

Throughout our shoot, Perla amazed us with how grounded she was. Despite the fact that we had interrupted her “regular life” (her last day of school was the day before we began shooting, and the day after we wrapped, she was off to D.C. for a school trip), Perla was never fazed by the occasional chaos that surrounded production. Whether she was working next to a stinky bale of recycled plastic or braving the rain, Perla moved through everything very calm and centered, still very much a real kid at heart.

Jennifer MacDonald: Sensual Mom

If it weren’t for Jennifer MacDonald (Chusy’s wife and Perla’s mother), it’s unlikely that the Asheville shoot would have gone as smoothly as it did. Jennifer volunteered to cast and scout locations. And because we knew of her work on ANYWHERE, U.S.A. with a lot of non-actors and last-minute locations, we decided to write some flexibility into the characters and locations we scripted. That way, it would be easy to change based on what Jennifer found for us.

Not only was Jennifer the heart of our connection to Asheville (introducing us to her friends at the Sweet Biscuit B&B, hooking us up with a fantastic caterer) but she also appeared in the short herself as the “sensual mom" (above). She's also one of the smartest people you'll ever meet. Jennifer speaks over four languages and is planning to go to Morocco for intensive study of the Arabic so that she can help women filmmakers in Middle Eastern countries produce and distribute their work.

Chusy Haney-Jardine: Straight Shooter

As if producing a short in four weeks wasn’t daunting enough, we had no idea how we were going to build a camera department from 600 miles away. Luckily, Perla’s father, Chusy Haney-Jardine, generously offered to serve as our Director of Photography and loan us his equipment for the shoot. Chusy, a multi-talented artist who might best be described as a Venezuelan Sean Connery, is actually an accomplished filmmaker himself. His film ANYWHERE, U.S.A. (co-written with his wife Jennifer MacDonald and featuring Perla) received a Special Jury Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

We originally planned to shoot on an HVX camera with a 35mm lens adapter to give our footage a film look; however, we couldn't get our hands on an adapter that would match Chusy's lenses. But when we arrived at Chusy's little bungalow-studio, he had another trick up his sleeve: the Canon 5D, a 35mm still camera that also shoots 1080i-HD video. After watching some of his footage, we couldn't resist. While using it meant we had to record sound separately (and synch it up later), it was fantastic in low-light situations and made our images pop in an exciting way. In the end, it gave SAVE THE FUTURE a more “commercial” look befitting the style of a PSA and was well-worth the extra hassle.