In late 2009, I was excited to hear from Zack Parsons - an amazing author who I'd collaborated with for the end video on That insidious Beast. He was working on his debut novel - at the time working under the temp title of "Unlimited" - and he wanted to include strong cross-media collaboration with other artists. Joss Hass would be creating a series of incredible paintings of key scenes and characters, and Conelrad would create an eerie album of dystopian electronica based on the book's themes. Zack wondered if I would be interested in creating any videos for this project - to which I replied something along the lines of... Hells ya!

Liminal States is the story of three people made immortal after discovering a mysterious pool of unknown origin, hidden deep under the surface of the New Mexico desert. The pool resurrects them to life and perfect health every time they die. But It has unexpected side effects, which they discover when duplicates begin emerging from its waters...

I produced a number of viral teaser + trailer films to accompany the ARG that Zack created for the pre-launch of the book. But the biggest and most important thing - at least, for me - was a live action short film. I'd been I'd been planning to get more into (live action) directing for a while. But it seemed like such a gulf of knowledge to cross - and so damn expensive - that I kept putting it off. The big turning point was meeting the director Gareth Edwards at a talk. I loved his film MONSTERS, but more importantly his example made me realise I'd just been making bad excuses for not doing it sooner.

Due to a somewhat turbulent evolution (combined with a total lack of money!) the film had a somewhat strange path from conception to completion - all in the space of just 3 and a bit months! But for all its flaws, I'm proud of what we achieved.

Liminal States - Short FIlm credits
Director Dan Sollis
Producer Ben Jones
Cinematography Arturo Vasquez
Writers Zack Parsons, Dan Sollis
Starring Joseph Capp, Nathan Nolan, Annabel Topham
Casting Emily Tilleli, Rosie Andrews
Makeup Cadi Nichols
Sound recordist Rob Branch
Camera assistants Benn Peacock, Lydia Stott
Editor Ben Boullier
Music Conelrad
Sound Design Scott Marshall, BAM Sound
Visual Effects Dan Sollis
CG sculpting Rod Seffen
Production assistant Rachel Blewitt
Artworkers Rosie Andrews, Dan Sollis, Mark Jores, Paul Middlewick
Camera rental FAVA

"Liminal States"
Short Film + Viral Films
Dir. Dan Sollis,
Virals: September 2011 - May 2012

Short Film: April 2012

Based on the Novel "Liminal States" by Zack Parsons