The Story
BUNNY is a drama about Buckley, a sensitive and troubled young man with long furry rabbit ears - a living part of him since experiencing childhood trauma. Buckley longs to escape the confines of the remote, run-down caravan site where he assists his alcoholic grandfather in caretaking duties. With only each other for support, the role of dependent alternates from one to the other. The onsite community plays along with Buckley’s delusion in an act of kindness and acceptance. A group of young outsiders are less tolerant. They challenge Buckley and his way of life, culminating in a violent altercation. Buckley is forced to confront his delusional worldview and risks losing the final bond to his dead mother.
Cast
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BUCKLEY / Connor Newall
Connor Newall has had a meteoric rise from Glasgow schoolboy to international model whose "unique beauty" stares out from the front covers of style magazines around the world. Initially discovered by casting agent Claire Catterson when scouting for new acting talent to feature in the Scottish government campaign One Knife Many Victims. Connor is now one of Scotland's most recognisable faces and was the subject of the BBC documentary Scotland's Model Teenager. His first love is acting and the sky is the limit for this grounded teenager.
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PETE / Gilly Gilchrist
Gilly Gilchrist is a well known face on film and television screens. A stalwart on Scottish television for years in the likes of River City and the classic crime drama Taggart, he is now known for his work on Fortitude and with David McKenzie (Perfect Sense, Starred Up, Outlaw King). Gilly has also appeared in HBO's Rome, BBC's In Plain Sight, Garrow's Law and Versailles.
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DARREN / Conor McCarron
Conor McCarron is a multi-award winning actor from Glasgow. Once described as "the new De Niro", Conor was cast as the lead in Peter Mullan's NEDS at an open audition despite having no formal acting training. This led to a London Critics Circle Film Award for Young British Performer of the Year and the San Sebastian International Film Festival Silver Seashell for Best Actor as well as being nominated for Most Promising Newcomer BIFA and Best Actor BAFTA (Scotland). He has since appeared in BBC drama Murder and the features For Those in Peril and Catch Me Daddy.
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ERIN / Erin Armstrong
Originally from Renfrewshire, Erin trained at Paisley’s PACE Youth Theatre. Her break came in Brian Welsh's TV movie Glasgow Girls. Since then she has appeared in BBC’s mini-series Rillington Place and has had regular roles in TV series World’s End and BBC's Shetland.
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SANDRA / Daniela Nardini
Daniela Nardini is a BAFTA winning Scottish actress, noted for her leading role as Anna Forbes in BBC's iconic This Life. Daniela has since won a Scottish BAFTA for her role in New Town, and other recent credits include Gillies MacKinnon’s BBC drama Gunpowder, Treason and Plot and the features Sunshine on Leith and Sunset Song.
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CALLUM / Conor McCarry
Conor McCarry is known for his role as Dessie Toner in ITV series The Loch. Recent credits also include Outlander, Rillington Place and The Night Manager.
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CHRIS / Sean Connor
Sean Connor has been performing on stage and in commercials for 15 years. Recent screen credits include the indie features Schemers and Cleek.
Crew
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Shaun Hughes - Writer/Director
Shaun Hughes is a Scottish filmmaker with an MA in Film Directing (awarded with distinction) from Screen Academy Scotland, and an MFA in Fine Art. His graduation film No More Shall We Part won a BAFTA New Talent award for Cinematography. He has been nominated for two other short films. Shaun's work has played in domestic and international film festivals including Reykjavik Int’l Film Festival, Aesthetica Short Film Festival, and Glasgow Short Film Festival. In 2013 Shaun was one of ten Directors selected for GMAC film’s Foot In The Door programme, where he met Producer David Brown. Shaun was an active participant in both Reykjavík and Edinburgh Int'l Film Festival Talent Labs in 2015. After making the shortlist for Scottish Shorts 2016 Shaun has recently completed a self funded short, The Hanging Branch, which will begin it's festival run soon. Shaun is currently writing his first feature film.
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Alysia Maciejowska - Producer
Alysia Maciejowska’s recent producer credits include sci-fi short Perfect Worlds (w/d. AJ Sykes) and Going Away (w/d. Simon Price). She has produced & directed films for corporate clients and prior to that worked in the camera dept as a Clapper Loader, Focus Puller and Operator on features, dramas and commercials, including Puffball (d. Nicolas Roeg), Low Winter Sun (d.Adrian Shergold) and Spooks s4 (d. Alrick Riley/Antonia Bird). She graduated from Glasgow University in 1999 with an MA (Hons) in Anthropology and Film & Television Studies and spent one year at Melbourne University, studying Cinema Studies. In 2005 she founded the practical how-to and advice platform for women BookshelfBoyfriend.com, and later managed and developed social enterprises in the cultural sector, before setting up a digital marketing agency. She participated in GFF17 Film Producer Accelerator & EIFF17 Talent Lab.
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Dave Brown - Producer
Dave Brown has worked in film and television since 2006. His debut short, A Bird in the Hand, won the 2013 Glasgow Southside Festival and was screened around the world. He has gone on to produce the acclaimed period drama Family Portrait, which screened in competition at the London Short Film Festival 2017 and at Glasgow Short Film Festival and the live action/animated short The Inescapable Arrival of Lazlo Petushki, which won the 2017 Scottish BAFTA for Best Short Film. David has also production managed The Rat King for SFTN and has worked on a range of other film productions as an Assistant Director and Production Assistant, including Outlaw King. David was also part of the 2017 EIFF Talent Lab, was selected for the Foot in the Door development course by GMAC Film, as well as the Producer Accelerator Programme through Glasgow Film.
Andrew O'Connor – Director of Photography
Andrew O’Connor is a freelance Director of Photography and lecturer at Screen Academy Scotland. Currently shooting his first feature, he has worked as a freelance DoP, Operator and AC on a variety of productions including shorts, documentary, music videos and commercials. His shorts have been broadcast by BBC Wales and S4C, and screened at festivals including, EIFF, GSFF, LSFF, Raindance, Encounters and Aesthetica. His short Fi A Miss World received a Welsh BAFTA nomination in 2014 and his previous collaboration with Shaun Hughes, The Still Heart Beating was nominated in 2015 for a Scottish BAFTA New Talent Award for his cinematography.
Florian Nonnenmacher - Editor
Florian Nonnenmacher began his editing career in Munich, Germany, working for TV production companies such as MET Film and TV Production Ltd and Bavarian Broadcast Corporation. Wishing to concentrate on film he moved to Glasgow, Scotland, to undertake the Digital Film and Television course at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Upon graduating Florian worked as editor on several drama and factual films that have screened nationally and internationally, including the award winning short films The Inescapable Arrival of Lazlo Petushki, 1745, The Third Dad and Hula, and Edinburgh International Film Festival’s 2015 closing feature film Iona.
Matt Cameron – VFX Lead
Matt Cameron has been active in the world of visual effects since 2008. He studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, graduating in 2010 with a first class BA honors and an MSc in 2011. His graduation short Meta (2010) was nominated for two BAFTA Scotland New Talent Awards in 2011 including technical achievement for VFX. Matt has worked as a digital artist on films such as Dunkirk (2017), Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) and Interstellar (2014) working with London based companies including, Double Negative, The Mill, Escape Studios and Industrial Light & Magic. Throughout this time he has maintained relationships with various Scottish production companies including Blazing Griffin, recently working as Visual Effects Supervisor on their feature Anna and the Apocalypse (2017).
Andrea Boccadoro – Composer
Andrea Boccadoro is an award-winning composer for film, theatre and visual media. Born and raised in Rome, he moved to London in 2013 to attend the Royal College of Music, where he received a Distinction MMus in Composition for Screen. Commissioned by film productions and games developers he has worked on projects supported by Creative Europe, Bravo FACT, Film London and The Hospital Club Foundation. Recent work includes a score for the feature Speaking in Tongues (d. Nathan Deming, USA). In 2015, Andrea won a Jerry Goldsmith Award for his chamber piece Song For Adele. His film score for The Porter Brothers (d. Wilhelm Kuhnhe) was a 2016 Jerry Goldsmith Award nominee for ‘Best Original Score for a Feature Film’. www.air-edel.co.uk/representation/andrea-boccadoro/
Elevator Audio – Sound Design and Mix
Elevator Audio is the partnership of audio post engineers, Jack Coghill and William Aikman. Working primarily out of their 5.1 dubbing theatre at Glasgow's Glue Factory, they have a broad range of credits from feature film, documentary, broadcast drama and large scale museum and art installations. Both have Masters degrees in Sound and years of experience working in the industry, including stints in post houses Savalas and 422. Recent work includes 1745 (Gordon Napier) and Creeling (Sam Firth). They are confident they can work with Shaun to bring to fruition his vision and produce a world-class sound mix for Bunny.
www.elevator-audio.tv
The Location
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Principle photography was completed in December 2017. We shot over six days on location in Glasgow and on the West Coast of Scotland. Our main location was a small caravan park at Upper Skelmorlie in North Ayrshire overlooking the beautiful Firth of Clyde.
Faced with limited daylight hours and every type of weather the Scottish Winter could throw at us, it was a tough but enjoyable shoot. Against the odds, everyone was in good spirits and we wrapped on schedule!
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We were fortunate enough to receive development support and production funding from the Scottish Film Talent Network (part of the BFI Network) under their Scottish Shorts 2017 scheme. However, we always knew this was going to be a very ambitious project, including the need for prosthetics, visual effects and filming on a remote location in the middle of Scottish winter.
We were extremely grateful to have the support and encouragement of our wonderfully talented cast and crew, who all believed so much in the project they were prepared to waive their fee, with everyone working on an expenses only basis. We could not have got this far without that support and now we are looking for your support to help us get through the final phase and complete the film.
What We Need
We are currently closing in on a final cut with the amazing double BAFTA winning editor Florian Nonnenmacher and we need your help to make Bunny the very best film it can be. To this end, we have the incredible Matt Cameron (Anna & The Apocalypse) leading our visual effects team; this takes time, manpower and most importantly money. We will then move into the sound dub with the incredible Elevator Audio, and develop our score with award-winning composer Andrea Boccadoro. Finally we'll work with our talented colourist Beth Woodruff to supplement the great work of our cinematographer Andrew O'Connor and lock in the final aesthetic of the film. Once we've completed the film we then want to get Bunny to get to as wide as audience as possible. Film festivals are integral to any film's success and submission fees are costly.
