{"id":15949,"date":"2020-12-15T18:20:01","date_gmt":"2020-12-15T18:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/?p=15949"},"modified":"2020-12-21T18:26:52","modified_gmt":"2020-12-21T18:26:52","slug":"alumnus-creates-film-for-amazon-prime-video-using-smartphone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/2020\/12\/15\/alumnus-creates-film-for-amazon-prime-video-using-smartphone\/","title":{"rendered":"Alumnus creates film for Amazon Prime Video using smartphone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>\u2013By Zion Sealy for <a href=\"https:\/\/news.fiu.edu\/2020\/alumnus-creates-film-for-amazon-prime-video-using-his-smartphone\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">FIU News<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Award-winning filmmaker Gabriel Rhenals &#8217;16 produced his first full-length feature film \u201cFor My Sister\u201d\u2014<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/My-Sister-Stephanie-Maltez\/dp\/B08LMTJDF2\/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&amp;keywords=for+my+sister+movie&amp;qid=1606328433&amp;sr=8-2\">now streaming on Amazon Prime Video<\/a>\u2014on his smartphone. In 2019, Rhenals was looking for a simple, cost-effective way of creating the movie; he decided to film the entire production using his Samsung Galaxy S9+.<\/p>\n<div class=\"responsive-embed widescreen\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"For My Sister (2019) - Trailer #1\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_Opicgw0I1s?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>\u201cThere was a giddy excitement to how fast, effective and cost-efficient that choice made the whole filmmaking process compared to traditional means and that thrill never left me, even on the most trying days,\u201d says Rhenals, a graduate of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/communication.fiu.edu\/\">FIU&#8217;s Department of Communication<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Since graduating from FIU, Rhenals has been honored for various productions. His short film, &#8220;The Promotion&#8221; was featured on South Florida PBS on their premiere episode of FilmMakers in 2019. In addition, his other short film, &#8220;Leo&#8217;s Love Letter&#8221;, was awarded Best Opening Night at the Love Your Short Films Festival in 2016 and Best Screenplay at the\u00a0FilmGate Miami\u2019s I\u2019m Not Gonna Move to L.A festival in 2016.<\/p>\n<p>Filmed entirely in Miami, \u201cFor My Sister\u201d follows a young woman named Evie as she fights to help her sister, Tris, with depression\u2014a condition that has brought tragedy to their family in the past. Viewers are taken into a near future where a technology company uses time-traveling nano-drone technology to capture their clients\u2019 recent past. Evie uses this premise to portray herself as the one displaying mental episodes in order to protect her sister, while avoiding stigmatization of her mental illness.<\/p>\n<p>Rhenals\u2019 inspiration for the film comes from hearing countless stories from his friends and strangers about their struggles with mental illness.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt&#8217;s a very relevant and pressing issue in our society, particularly as Miami-Dade County has the highest percentage of people living with severe mental illness over any other metropolitan area in the country,\u201d Rhenals adds.<\/p>\n<p>Casting was key for Rhenals. The film\u00a0team casted\u00a0more than 30 actors and actresses from the South Florida area\u2014all of whom knew of the film through word-of-mouth. However, for the main roles, he was clear on who he wanted to play Evie and Tris even before the script was written: actresses he&#8217;d worked with in the past and knew their styles would fit perfectly.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI knew of no pair of actresses more talented and up to the challenge than Stephanie Maltez and Cristina De Fatima,\u201d Rhenals says. \u201cI&#8217;d collaborated with them on my final short film \u2018The Promotion.&#8217;\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/news.fiu.edu\/2020\/_assets\/bts---stephanie-maltez-and-cristina-de-fatima.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"516\" height=\"344\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The film featured many FIU alumni\u2014De Fatima \u201920; William Guevara\u201920; Natalie Ramirez\u201908, &#8217;15; and Maltez \u201919, a graduate\u00a0of the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/sipa.fiu.edu\/\">Steven J. Green School of International &amp; Public Affairs<\/a>. Throughout filming, they met mainly at an apartment where they filmed scenes and sequences to bring the whole production together.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis was an opportunity I could not refuse,\u201d Maltez says. \u201cI knew I could trust that this film would not only be completed but also done well and with a lot of care.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cast members say the production created a welcoming and fun environment, the result of many of them having worked together in the past. For Matez, the chemistry was perfectly unmatched; and, for De Fatima, it made everything easier to really bring the characters to life.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy favorite part of the experience was preparing mentally and emotionally for the climax moment of my character arc,\u201d De Fatima says. \u201cI was able to apply my technical training and I think I was able to truly embrace exactly what Tris was going through.\u201d<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"float-image-right aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/news.fiu.edu\/2020\/_assets\/for-my-sister---poster-hi-res.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"512\" height=\"758\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The full film is available now on Amazon Prime Video;\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/My-Sister-Stephanie-Maltez\/dp\/B08LMTJDF2\/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&amp;keywords=for+my+sister+movie&amp;qid=1606328433&amp;sr=8-2\">click here to view<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2013By Zion Sealy for FIU News Award-winning filmmaker Gabriel Rhenals &#8217;16 produced his first full-length feature film \u201cFor My Sister\u201d\u2014now streaming on Amazon Prime Video\u2014on his smartphone. In 2019, Rhenals was looking for a simple, cost-effective way of creating the movie; he decided to film the entire production using his Samsung Galaxy S9+. \u201cThere was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":15953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[369],"tags":[453,415,451,12,374,393],"class_list":["post-15949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-spotlight","tag-alumni","tag-alumni-association","tag-college-of-communication-architecture-the-arts","tag-fiu-alumni","tag-school-of-communication-journalism","tag-young-alumni"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15949"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15949"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15954,"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15949\/revisions\/15954"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fiualumni.com\/stay-connected\/alumni-news\/newsroom\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}