THE TEAM
Jake Tishler, Director:
Jake hails from Columbus, Ohio and immediately left, gaining a Film Theory degree from the University of Rochester. After living in New York City for two and half years working the gamut of jobs from file room clerk to Assistant Editor at a small movie studio he decided to return to school.
At Chapman University Jake relishes the experience and experimentation with short films that being a student allows. With each new short film he attempts to explore different elements of genre and story structure. His new film, with the supported of a fantastic team, will scrutinize a pertinent political issue through the sharp lens of an unusual story supported by well defined characters.
Andrew Whalen, Writer:
Andrew has written for magazines and blogs, but mostly writes for ambitious new media productions. His past projects have included collaborating on a grant-supported documentary about London surveillance, and co-writing a short film based on Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. For his most recent project, a stereoscopic 3D short, he both wrote and played as a robot who believes himself a man.
With Material Support, Andrew has written a personal and harrowing story that doubles as an expression of specific political grievances and evokes the universal and recurring paranoia that can grip a society to undermine its once cherished values. Material Support works to speak to the mood of our times and the questions it forces us to ask of both ourselves and our country.
Dhia Rabiai, Producer:
Growing up in Tunisia, Holder of a B.S. in Markets Finance and having worked in the audiovisual field, Dhia Rabiai believes that a producer should master both the artistic and the technical sides of the movie producing industry. For this reason he enrolled in “Chapman University” to study an M.B.A (entrepreneurship) joint M.F.A (Film and T.V. producing) degree. He has lately worked in “Current TV” before organizing the first ever “Tunisian Film Festival in Hollywood.
Charles Gibson, Cinematographer:
Charles J. Gibson was born in Cincinnati and started making movies in his early teens with friends. He obtained a BA in Communications and Electronic Media from the University of Cincinnati. Afterward, with camera in hand, he set forth on across the Atlantic to work abroad in London. His next stop on a whirlwind world tour was South Korea where he taught English to children.
Never keeping still, Charlie hit the road as a Tour Manager for the band, Bad Veins in 2010 before returning to school. In between duties as cinematographer on Chapman University films, he shot tour footage for the band Frightened Rabbit and is currently cutting it together. After completing a family drama, Charlie yearned to shoot a film that veers from the norm and makes a strong thematic statement. He is eager to compose unique imagery in desolate locations to help build a story with deep emotional and political implications.
Andres De La Torre, Editor/Sound Designer:
Andrés received his BA in Audiovisual Communication and a Master’s Degree in Multimedia Communication from Francisco de Vitoria University in Madrid. In 2006 Andrés scored the innovative Spanish animation feature “Going Nuts”, the first film in the world made with peanuts as the characters. It won the Ateneo Coste Cero Award in 2008 and was nominated for the Jerry Goldsmith Award in two categories.
After more than eight nominations to international film music awards and several reviews on specialized magazines to endorse the career of this young Spanish composer, he decided to move to the US in 2010 to deepen his craft of Sound Design at Chapman University. Material Support will mark a change for the type of films Andrés has worked on before. The moral issues it illuminates with the strong and distinguishable characters resonate with the social conscience, especially today where the line between right and wrong is thin and blurred.