Feature Pitch
Pianos and Rooftops
A writer brought us his feature script in search of a director. We took a crew to New York and shot these visuals for the pitch, so it carried the tone we are imagining and brought the viewer inside the world of the film.
The Pitch
Building the World
We shot these visuals for a feature pitch. A writer came to us with a feature he had written and wanted Joshua Miller to direct it. A script can carry the story, but it cannot carry the tone, the color, or the way a scene is meant to feel. So we went to New York and shot that. It gives the pitch something real to stand on and pulls whoever is watching into the world we are imagining for the film.
A feature is an expensive thing to ask someone to imagine. Every person who reads the script builds a different version of it in their head, and most of those versions are not the film. Visuals settle that.
So this is not a trailer and it is not a short. It is scenes from the film shot the way the film would be shot, close enough to the real thing that nobody has to take our word for it.
Nobody greenlights a paragraph. So we went to New York and turned the script into visuals.
C&I Studios · New York City
Preproduction
Before the First Frame
A pitch lives on paper before it lives anywhere else. We built the deck around the synopsis, our casting vision, and the background on how the script came together and where the story was drawn from. Then we scouted, because on a film like this the locations carry half the look. We found the rooftops and the piano loft in Harlem, and those two spaces shaped everything we shot after.
The Project
This is what we do.
Every project we take on is different, and we treat it that way. What stays constant is the team behind it: filmmakers who have carried productions from first concept through the shoot, post, and final release, and who know how to make the right call at every turn. Pianos and Rooftops is the part of that work where a feature stops being a script and becomes something you can watch.
The Shoot and the Edit
Finding the Look, Then the Feel
We shot across Harlem with our own crew and cinema gear, going after the frames that tell a room what this movie is. The edit is where it turned into a pitch. We cut it for tone, built the sound and the music around that, and graded it so it plays like scenes from the film rather than a reel of nice shots.
On Set
Inside the Loft
Most of the interior work happened in one room. There was a grand piano under a wall of windows with the sheers pulled across the glass, and that light did most of the work for us. We shaped it where the frame needed it and otherwise left the room the way we found it. These are two clips from that day.
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Let’s Work Together
Your Project, Start to Finish
No two projects are alike, and we build each one from the ground up. What carries over is the team: filmmakers who have taken productions from a first idea through the shoot, post, and release, and who know the right call to make at every turn. Whatever you are making next, we will bring that same care and carry it all the way through.