Drawing from his work on three feature films, two shorts, and one awards show, filmmaker Sean Bradley has developed a fitting cinematic mantra: “The bigger the challenge, the more exhilarating the experience.” By that logic, his directorial debut RIGHT OF THE MERIDIAN-a dark comedy about an accidental murder in fictional Meridian, VT that he also co-wrote-must have been a wild ride. The film’s January premiere at Loews Boston Common was the perfect bookend to a year and a half of challenges; it announced, writ large on the proverbial marquee, that Bradley had arrived.
Bradley first uncorked his passion for film by slipping in through the back door as a producer. In his first year at Emerson College in Boston, he produced the pre-show for the EVVY awards, the college’s version of the Emmy’s recognized as the country’s largest student-run production. The experience primed Bradley for his foray into film. He met cinematographer Alex Lehmann, now a fixture on his crew. And the following year, when the 20-year-old aspired to crew the independent Brazilian feature A FRONTEIRA, he was named a producer on a recommendation given to the director from his pre-show post. Bradley admits with a boyish smile: “That was completely a miracle. I just wanted to be on the film as a production assistant.”
The acclaimed film, an Audience Choice Award winner at the Latin USA Film Festival in New York, led to a second producer credit on Flipside Features’ HENCE, THE STARS. Producing offered Bradley a valuable introduction to directing: “As a producer, you work so closely with the director but, luckily, you’re not that person.” Finally ready to be that person in 2002, he drafted his own blueprint and founded Coppermine Films, penning and directing one short and releasing another. Last spring, in the midst of pre-production for MERIDIAN, he returned to his roots as one of the producers for the EVVY awards.
Bradley will have much to celebrate when he turns 23 this April, and walks at Emerson’s commencement in May. Yes, until he completes his internship requirement (he’s already touched down in Tinseltown), Bradley is officially a student. Albeit one with a stellar professional resume.
Indeed, the entire crew of MERIDIAN is comprised of Emerson students, and not all are seniors. On set, however, you’d never peg this driven bunch as pupils. Learning as much from each other as they taught, his crew was selected explicitly for their caliber. Bradley, citing professionalism as a key criterion, “picked the best we’ve worked with.” He needed the best-all of his projects have existed beyond the classroom walls. So he surrounds himself with those who echo his ambition: “We’re a group of people all falling in the same style of working on these bigger films. We’re not trying to do films at the student level, but take that next step and commit to being an independent production company.”
Long before Bradley had a script, this production began as a group effort. An Ireland scouting trip convinced him to abandon his original script and shoot locally to maximize his budget (which, incidentally, is the biggest with which he’s worked by far). Unable to adapt the script, he asked producer Emily Holleran to co-write a new story. Along with his assistant Julia Foresman, the trio traipsed all over New England, trucking more than 1,500 miles in three days. The trip’s purpose “was not to location scout, but to free [their] minds to come up with concepts, ideas, and characters.” In fact, people they encountered literally translated into characters. Bradley reflects: “By the end of the trip we had a good idea of where we were going, and Emily and I wrote for three months. It’s a backwards process, but I think it was the best approach.”
Armed with a script and a cast of nearly fifty, Bradley and company hunkered down in the Montpelier, VT area to shoot for five weeks. The Coppermine crew made quite a splash in a state capital of 8,000. From invading breakfast nooks to unleashing screaming sirens in the wee small hours of the morning, their presence was conspicuous. Still, the locals were “more than kind” and Bradley, who adores on-location work and prizes small-town shoots, would “love to do it again.”
Despite the natives’ cooperation, the production hit a few hurdles-notably, losing the lead actress in mid-July. With a whopping 28 (nearly half) of her scenes in the can, Bradley had to let her go. He gave the lead to producer-turned-writer Holleran, who would have been cast initially had she not been a producer. Once again, his crew stepped up. Assistant Director Amanda Harrington reworked the schedule to stay on track for their August 7 wrap. The crew sacrificed their days off, volunteering a solid month of 16-20 hour days with, at most, five hours of sleep a night. And producer Stephanie DeCourcey tackled more responsibilities once Holleran joined the cast. Hours after Holleran assumed the lead, she proved her acting mettle to Bradley and everyone on set: “It ended up being a blessing in disguise. And we still finished on time.”
Giving a nod to his crew’s enthusiasm and leadership, Bradley extols a “sense of family.” This band of undergraduates has accomplished something more than a quality film. For their pioneering project, they shot a feature on Super 16mm film stock that boasts a Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound mix to boot, thanks to the vision of Sound Designer Douglas Carney. When Coppermine shops MERIDIAN to major studios’ independent divisions and, next fall, film festivals like Sundance, it will be seen as its creators intended-as a competitive independent production, not a student film.
As for Bradley, whose next classroom will be in the film industry’s trenches, his first feature will always mean more than a notch on his resume. His most indelible memory? “No sleep,” he deadpans, “I’ll look back on it and think about being awake for two months. That, and it’s good to be young.”
For more information on RIGHT OF THE MERIDIAN, including the latest distribution and festival news, check out www.meridianmovie.com.