They say that truth is stranger than fiction, but what about fiction within the context of truth? Commercial director/DP Bobby Sheehan has just completed his first feature length film; a fiction meets non-fiction, pseudo-documentary effort called Seed.
It was just kind of a big experiment where we wanted to see what would happen if we took a fictional character and had him come into contact with real people, said Sheehan, who executive produced Seed with his wife Sara Feldmann Sheehan through their production company, New York-based Working Pictures.
Seed is the story of 40-something Francis Seed (played by John Michael Bolger) who is on a journey to find peace within himself in his last days on earth. We are never told what he is dying of, but we get the sense that it is of his own unhappiness. Mr. Seeds parents are no longer alive; he has no family of his own and he is so focused on his impending death that hes forgotten how to live.
Throughout the course of the film, the protagonist meets people whom he looks to for answers and advice. The scattered meetings are edited together like a collage and what unfolds is real life, unscripted stories as told by real people in light of Mr. Seeds fictional dilemma. A junkie who gets clean, a stroke survivor, a liberal rabbi, a band leader named Dethy, an old black man named Simon and a transvestite who has survived the AIDS epidemic are just some of the characters who color Sheehans film. The result is a reaffirmation of life for Mr. Seed, who realizes that its not too late to start living.
Sheehan is no stranger to chronicling the everyman experience. Hes directed several dramatic PSAs for The Partnership For A Drug-Free America and has demonstrated the ability to get genuine responses out of just about anybody. As a director I have found a way to build trust in people so that they can just tell their story, said Sheehan. But they do more than Ajust tell their story; they pour out their souls, they cry, they tell the truth. Sheehan has become the Barbara Walters of the commercial world and has now extended that role into filmmaking.
Sheehan admitted that not every character in his movie was a complete strangerasome were friends and others were actors giving improvised performances, but he picked a varied cast to illustrate that Mr. Seeds struggle is everyones struggle.
Unfortunately, during the course of filming, Bolgers father died of a heart attack. Though the subject matter of the film hit very close to home, Bolger insisted that they continue shooting the film, which was subsequently dedicated to John Francis Bolger.
Seed was shot around Sheehans busy commercial production schedule with New York-based Grenade, the creative collective Sheehan formed last fall (now affiliated with L.A.-based Ace Entertainment and Concrete Productions, Dallas). In less than a year, the docu-film production traversed the country, including shoots in rural Vermont, Connecticut, New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Florida. After amassing 18 hours of footage, Sheehan hauled his work to Alex Albanese, an editor with Grenade who has cut a lot of the directors work in the past. Albanese completed the offline edit at Spin Cycle Post, New York.
New York-based Oculus handled the visual effects and postproduction on the piece. Sheehan had experimented with several filmmaking techniques like bleach bypassing, cross-processing, infrared film and time-lapse photography so Oculus was there to help guide him through the complicated completion process. Sheehans choice to render some of the movie in black and white and other segments in sharp contrasting colors resulted in a textured and moving documentary that reaches far beyond the conversation.
Seed made its premiere March 13th at the Inaugural Film Fleadh (Irish International Film Festival) in New York. Currently Sheehan is looking for a distributor for Seed. In the mean time, he is in Toronto shooting a spot for WalMart via Publicis, Toronto.
