First of all tell us about how you guys met.
We are all friends who initially met at school 4 years ago but have remained friends throughout our careers. Isobel and Brandon are from England, Ydalie is from South Africa and Itzel is from Mexico. We all have interesting stories about where we grew up and how we find living and working in America. Working together creatively has really helped our careers as we are all motivated to see our projects succeed so we put the effort in and we really see the results from film festivals.
What made you guys start working together creatively.
We are all writers as well as actors and in our spare time we have shared our work with each other. We wanted to keep working on our craft and so we would often meet up and write with each other. It was our project ‘Night Shift’ that really made us passionate about making our writing come to life. We started creating all these films with the help of our Producer Ricky Cruz. Originally from South Africa himself he shared with us his experiences with moving to America and together we found we all had similar experiences and stories. Ricky Cruz was the Director for ‘Night Shift’ and had amazing ideas on how to shoot this, especially since it all took place inside a car.
How was the support from your parents and family?
We all have incredibly supportive family and that is important. They are all so proud especially when we see success like we have with our Project ‘NightShift’
Tell us about your upcoming project ‘Night Shift’?
It follows a typical night for an Uber driver and how he handles this group of girls who realise their friendship is falling apart. It shows how fragile and fake some friendships in LA can be. We wanted to show how LA has a tendency to create awkward situations and Uber is always an interesting setting for those. Uber drivers normally have the craziest stories.
What makes this role different from your previous acting ventures?
We have tried for a more dark comedic stance with this film. Before, our projects have normally been more dramatic. We are also making fun of the kind of people we witness from living in LA, so it was entertaining as actors to be able to portray those characters in a simple, and comedic way. Brandon who plays ‘Cody’ the Uber driver, really portrays the awkwardness that Uber drivers face in certain situations. Ydalie plays Anne, a character who pretends to love the environment but is all talk and no action, Itzel plays Rachel a character who hides her emotions but has a lot of opinions and Isobel who plays Danielle, a character who says and does a lot of things before thinking them through. All these characters we have based on the stereotypes we have seen on a regular basis in LA and added an awkward setting to really create an atmosphere.
Any final date for the release and on which medium it will be available?
Currently this film is still circulating in film festivals and we have received so much success already. We don’t have a medium where it will be available just yet as we want to finish out this year in festivals first.
What kind of response are you expecting?
Hopefully more of the same that we already have had! We have Won Best Indie Short Film at the Festigious International Film Festival, Won Best Dark Comedy at The Top Shorts Film Festival, and Won Best Ensemble at the Actors Awards Film Festival. We are also Finalists at the New York Film Awards and have been given and Honourable mention for Best Dark Comedy at the Los Angeles Film Awards. We are hoping for more success in the future.
So what’s the best way to stay updated about this project and the other ones you will be doing in future?
You can always follow our progress on IMDb by just typing in ‘Night Shift’ or you can follow any of our careers on Instagram. Isobel- isobel_hyland Ydalie- yds20 Brandon- brandonkoen Itzel- sandraitzells and Ricky- rickrockrocked
