"The Mercury Cycle" Making College Filmmakers' Dreams a Reality

Whether they are lured by the glamour and prestige of Hollywood, or by a desire to pursue crafting the moving image as an art-form, students from California to Connecticut enroll in college film programs with the intention of making their mark on the cinema. In program after program, these students are expected to absorb the basics of filmmaking through analyzing acclaimed films, learning shooting, editing, and lighting techniques, and producing short films of their own.
Despite the large number of college students who study film however, very few actually take the initiative to make their very own feature-length film. Quinnipiac University student Vincent Grippi is one of these few.
Grippi wrote the script and screenplay for “The Mercury Cycle,” a feature about an insecure college student, who after discovering a bizarre cult, takes pills which take him on a trip into his past. Grippi wrote the script in a matter of days over the summer, and returned to college in the fall to try to make his idea a reality.
While Quinnipiac may lack the name-recognition in film enjoyed by such institutions as N.Y.U. and U.C.L.A., the school has its share of aspiring filmmakers, and in the extracurricular Quinnipiac Film Society (QFS), Grippi found a group of students that was excited and motivated to make a feature-length film of their very own.
Grippi said the crew has found success in putting the film together because they all have great strengths in certain areas. “We all get together to share this one passion, to make a real movie, something that you wouldn’t even find at an N.Y.U. or an Emerson, something that is far more sophisticated than that,” he said, “Just combine our determination with our passion for film, and we’d be able to make something beautiful like this.”
Grippi assumed the role of executive producer, the person who is in many ways most responsible for the day-to-day organization and operation of the film. After finding a dedicated crew, and holding auditions to find a cast that would be willing to work on the film for free, The Mercury Cycle was almost ready to get underway, but then Grippi and all the others faced one of their first major challenges.
“Literally two days before we were about to start shooting, we found out there was a huge issue with our lead actress we had been working with for four months at that point,” Grippi said, “it ended up resulting in us having to let her go.” Without their female lead, he was forced to rearrange the shooting schedule, and make multiple trips between New York and Connecticut to hold auditions for the suddenly vacant role.
Grippi said that despite some of their difficulties, so far things have worked out for the best. “I think that the girl we ended up getting, in the long run, is far better than the original one,” he said, “so sometimes a difficulty is more of a blessing in disguise.”
Moving on after the cast shakeup, filming is well underway, and Grippi and the other members of the film’s team have been focusing on marketing the feature to the Quinnipiac community and beyond. They have set up a websitehttp://www.themercurycycle.com, contacted local media, held a fundraising dinner, made t-shirts, and promoted the movie during a QFS trip to the Sundance Film Festival. They even plan on making Facebook pages for the film’s characters. Grippi said the hard work promoting the film has paid off so far.
“It has gotten to the point where I swear that people I have not met before on campus, when they’ve heard someone call me ‘Vincent’ or in my class when my name is called, they ask me if I’m the same ‘Vincent Grippi’ from ‘The Mercury Cycle,’ which is radical,” he said.
For those students involved in the production of the film, the desire to be a part of a feature-length movie has demanded heavily of their time and effort. Entire weekends are dedicated to filming scenes, and countless hours during the week are spent organizing, communicating, and performing the various duties that make the action possible; from booking venues to sewing costumes. All this must also be done, of course, while maintaining a college-level course load, with all of its readings, exams, papers, and projects. For all the demands on the time and effort of cast and crew, Grippi said they have only grown closer.
“Every day, it’s a blessing to be able to work on it,” he said, “I want everyone to understand how hard these kids are working, and how much of a team everyone has become. We’re like a family now, it’s great.”