Casey Gates Frey directed and co-wrote (with Daniel Frey) this short film, Crystal. The sci-fi romantic comedy centers on a neurotic young woman who thinks she’ll never find Mr. Right–until she gets access to a top-secret, artificially-intelligent matchmaking app. It promises to use Big Data, machine-learning neural-networks, and every other tech tool that nobody really understands, in order to find her perfect man…if such a thing actually exists. The film explores the difficulty of finding love in the age of Instagram, and poses the question: Does our technology know us better than we know ourselves?
Casey Gates Frey is a writer and director currently on staff at Elizabeth Banks' WhoHaHa, a digital platform promoting women in comedy. When she’s not spotlighting comedians or making viral videos, the writer-director creates her own work through a film initiative titled Lady Brain, for which she received a BlogHer “Voice of the Year” award in 2016. Her career in media landed her an on-set digital producer role for NBC’s The Good Place, where her work contributed to a 2019 Emmy nomination for Achievement in Interactive Media Within a Scripted Series. Her pilot The Bump was a semi-finalist in The 2019 Black List x WIF Episodic Lab, and most recently advanced to the semi-finals of the 2020 Pitch Competition at the ATX Television Festival.
CreditsProduction Casey Gates Frey, director/producer/co-writer; Daniel Frey, producer/co-writer; Eric Dern, producer; Andric Booker, DP; Houston Jones, assistant director; Sam Simonds, Maddie Downes, production design assistants; Thia Schuessler, hair & makeup; Sarah Schuessler, costume consultant . Editorial Alec Helm, editor. Graphics/Animation Evan Sorosky Music Ben Stanton, composer. End Credits Song: “Jackie and Delilah” by Whiskerman Sound Design Erik Magnus, sound designer. Telecine Joseph Yao, colorist. Audio Rose Bladh, sound mixer. Cast Manon Mathews, Kunal Dudheker, Kyla Garcia, Jamie Wollrab, and Brick Patrick
Director Gia Coppola Teams With Mejuri For “A New York Minute”; 1st Episode Takes Us To The Grocery Store
Mejuri, known for turning fine jewelry into an everyday luxury, has partnered with director Gia Coppola (The Last Show Girl, Palo Alto) and The Directors Bureau in Los Angeles, for the first time reimagining the brand’s story as episodic content. In a series of microfilms, co-created by Coppola and premiering following New York Fashion Week, Mejuri eschewed a typical celebrity campaign and cast us as voyeurs to a group of aspiring young women--real people, not actors--at the crossroads of their adult lives against the backdrop of New York City.
Titled “A New York Minute,” the series features five real-life friends, who include one perfectly imperfect heroine named Emma. The women celebrate ordinary moments and interactions which reveal, sometimes retrospectively, the extraordinary within the mundane. Adjacent to the brand’s own community, the 30-something year old cast includes Laura Love (Emma), Rebecca Ressler, Natalie Vall-Freed and Rozzi Crane. Mejuri’s jewelry makes an appearance as the best supporting actor.
“When I met with Gia and The Directors Bureau team, there was instant creative and personal chemistry and a natural alignment on the desire to push and blur the lines between marketing, storytelling, and the construct of what a ‘campaign’ could be,” said Jacob Jordan, chief brand officer, Mejuri. “Gia was able to push that idea into something that truly feels new and artful, with a realism and relatability that almost feels jarring. Gia was such a perfect collaborator and partner, someone I had complete trust in to be a catalyst for Mejuri’s values of celebrating women as their truest selves. I can’t wait for us to continue to tell the next chapters of this story.”
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