An independent movie by homegrown talent

Day 2 on set of “The Cafe” in Staten Island. Pictured: Bindiya Patel (Writer/Director), Justin Drobinski (Cinematographer), Ryan Moloney (Assistant Director), Brian Oh (Assitant Camera Operator), Rob Albrecht (Sound). What better way to shoot a very promising upand coming independent movie than to take advantage of the areas in which you grew up to capture the film? Friends and business partners Bindiya Patel, director and a graduate of Boston University, and Adrianna Merlucci, producer and fellow graduate of Boston University, utilized their knowledge of their home areas of Danbury, Connecticut and Staten Island, New York, respectively, for their latest short film project, “The Café.”

Both Patel and Merlucci created the production company, Limelight19 Entertainment, while they were still attending college. They graduated in 2008.

In “The Café,” which focuses on a dancer who struggles with her self image and a young financial analyst, the time period of the movie creatively jumps between 2008 and 2011 .

Day 3 on set of the “The Cafe” in Bethel CT during a backstage scene. Pictured: Anna-Nora Bernstein (Roxy Delongpre), Danielle Lozeau (Aria Whitacre), Laura (Ballerina), Justin Drobinski (Cinematographer). With this creative time-frame change, the audience will be able visualize the before, during, and after effects of the main character, Aria (played by Danielle Lozeau), as she becomes a bulimic, then receives help and is able to overcome it, and what could have been if she had met financial analyst Braden (played by William G. Kean).

“When looking for locations, we tried to search our network of connections to help us find something that would be economical for us as well as logistically close to New York, since we were going to transport cast and crew from there,” says Patel on how she and Merlucci scouted out locations for their shoot.

If most of the shoot had been done in the Greater Danbury area, which was a possibility that Patel and Merlucci were considering, the rest of the cast and crew, who were mainly from the greater Manhattan area (including Merlucci herself), it would have required much transportation back and forth each day, affecting the maximum filming capacity for the week that Ms. Patel is back on the east coast from her new home of Los Angeles, California, where she has worked for Disney for the past couple of years.

This meant that cast and crew had to be prepared for long days of shooting and little rest until filming was complete. The week of shooting, we also weathered one of the bigger storms of this winter for the Greater Danbury area, which affected getting to and from the locations each day.

Nonetheless, the cast and crew were ready and willing to go “full speed ahead,” regardless of any potential setbacks, in order to complete the filming process.

“As far as experiences go, it was definitely interesting to film in the middle of a snowstorm! But we made it through,” Patel laughs.

Indeed, the cast and crew made it through the week, and they are very excited to see what comes next. Hopefully, this production will be as successful as Limelight19’s last one, a webseries called Square One, which is being showcased at the Connecticut Film Festival next month, with Patel and Merlucci also being invited to be on the panel.

It might be a little soon to tell, but all of the above could very well be a sign of big things to come for these young aspiring filmmakers.