Author: Adrian Țofei

Hi, all, we’re closing the blog section of We Put the World to Sleep‘s website, so this will be my last post here, you won’t be getting any future updates to your inbox.

Therefore please follow or subscribe to my other channels to stay up to date with We Put the World to Sleep and all my other projects. Find all my social media links and more on Linktree: https://linktr.ee/AdrianTofei

Thank you,

Adrian Țofei

Due to a serious privacy issue with the WhatsApp group, I have decided to exchange it for a Telegram channel, which is much better and safer than WhatsApp: t.me/AdrianTofeiNews

Join at the link above to be the first to get the most important news about my projects, before I share them on social media. Compared to WhatsApp, other members CANNOT see your phone number or contact you, they won’t even know you’re there, as members are invisible from each other and can’t interact with each other. You’ll just get my posts.

Plus another cool feature: I can do exclusive livestreams directly in the channel! And I promise I will as soon as I have big news to share. Join the channel to not miss any, as social media is hit-and-miss and you don’t always see my posts.

Join even if you support me on Patreon.com/AdrianTofei, as my Telegram posts will be different. On short: Telegram = top news before they become public, and Patreon = private updates that never become public. In other words, if something big happens, you won’t get it on Patreon, you’ll get it on Telegram, and later, after some days, I will share on Patreon private exclusive insights about the event.

Sorry for the bother if you’ve already joined the WhatsApp group, I just didn’t know how problematic it can be. Please exit and join the Telegram channel instead.

Thank you,

Adrian

Join this new WhatsApp Group I’ve created to get all the important updates about my movies: chat.whatsapp.com/GSAIDc2ip4ACVE9Kwjm5xB 

I won’t post everything I post on social media, only the top news, so you won’t get notifications often, but when you do, you’ll know it’s big!

Best way to make sure you don’t miss anything important!

I have just finished shooting the absolute last scene of my upcoming apocalyptic feature film We Put the World to Sleep! 🥳

I’ve been working on this movie since 2015, so almost 7 years in the making, shot in 12 cities spread over 3 countries (Turkey, Romania, Ukraine), tons of obstacles and setbacks but also great new ideas popping after every session of shootings. All in all, this has been the most difficult and ambitious project I ever did.

I wanna thank the incredibly talented cast, Duru Yücel-Țofei, Erisse Peterson, Andreea Enciu and Danha Yunes, the wonderful executive and associate producers Duru Yücel-Țofei, Danha Yunes, Jay Sorensen, Ada Taylor Hart, Ricky Chen, Teresa Bailey Campbell, Eli Griffen, Denis Ariel, Marcel (anonymous), Sarp Onat Yücel, Jacob Hair, Naomi Goff, Mladen Adamovic, Ben MacCormack, Brian Trevor Jones, Mine Yucel and Haydar Yucel, as well all my great Patreon supporters listed on the movie’s website and IMDb!

Hi, all, and Happy New Year!

I’ll be holding an exclusive live stream + Q&A this Friday, January 7, at 11am PST / 2pm EST / 7pm GMT at this YouTube private link: youtu.be/rrh5eRYMzZ4

Set your reminders or watch the replay afterwards in case you cannot attend live, I’ll be sharing lots of cool insights and exclusive news about all my projects including We Put the World to Sleep!

See you soon,

Adrian

Celebrating my birthday with an exclusive live Q&A together with all of you, my Patrons, top fans and supporters, was the best thing ever! Thanks a lot, everyone who attended! If you missed it, you can always watch the replay: https://youtu.be/utOth_QvwCA

Thank you so much as well to all of you who became my Patrons in the last couple of days, my Patreon jumped from $150/month to almost $230/month overnight, such a nice surprise and lovely support! Literally $20 short of my next $250 goal that would cover half of the urgent expenses related to my film projects!

I also plan to do more live exclusive videos in the following days & weeks! I’m considering various themes from general AMA (Ask Me Anything) to personal life, stories from my childhood, secrets, what I think of your favourite films, to more in-depth professional stuff for those of you into filmmaking & acting.

And by the way, since good news never come alone, haha, I’ve just been invited to do a celebrity AMA (Ask Me Anything) live session on Reddit Horror! So exciting! Big horror names like Clive Barker, Greg Nicotero or Radio Silence did AMAs in the past. A great opportunity to connect with over 2 million horror fans on Reddit! The AMA will be posted on https://www.reddit.com/r/horror/ at 12 Midnight EDT US time Friday-going-to-Saturday, when everybody will be able to post questions and I’ll answer live (no video this time, just text-based, that’s how Reddit works).

Adrian Țofei

“We Put the World to Sleep” has been listed #52 in top 100 most anticipated films of the year that should be seen at the Cannes Film Festival: https://bit.ly/3bllosc

This respected French publication gives Quinzaine des Réalisateurs (Directors’ Fortnight) as a potential section for my film. As some of you may know, Cannes this year didn’t happen because of the pandemic. I’ll have the movie ready in time to submit it to the next edition and fingers crossed, hoping to be selected.

The movie has also been listed in the official catalogue of upcoming Romanian films at page 45: CNC.gov.ro/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/RomanianFilms_19_20_v.pdf

The catalogue was presented at the Berlin European Film Market & should go to Cannes & other festivals once they resume activity after the pandemic. It was put together by Ştefan Dobroiu for Romanian Film Promotion with the support of the Romanian Film Centre & the Romanian Filmmakers Union.

Erisse Peterson is missing from the cast because she was not part of it when the catalogue was made. Happy to announce that she rejoined the project recently and you’ll see her in the movie in a very interesting & unexpected way!

I you would like to support my work on this film and on the entire trilogy, you can always do it on https://www.patreon.com/AdrianTofei

As some of you may already know, I work with no script, a lot of improvisation, living in character, building the story in the editing process, therefore it’s impossible to get support from big investors and production companies. I mainly rely on you, the people who appreciate my films and trust my method.

Don’t be ashamed to contribute the minimum amount of $1 a month if you wanna help, but can’t afford more, most creators on Patreon make thousands of dollars a month from $1 contributors, which allows them to keep creating. 🙂

By supporting my filmmaking work on Patreon.com/AdrianTofei you also get exclusive updates & behind-the-scenes, private links to watch my movies before release & contribute to the final versions with your feedback, IMDb official credits and invitations to attend the premieres.

Stay safe,

Adrian

 

Hi, everyone! I’m currently working on an ambitious meta-cinema trilogy made of “Be My Cat: A Film for Anne“, “We Put the World to Sleep” & “Dr. Frankenstein“, and then I’ll be re-editing all three films (which have intertwined universes & characters) into one single ultra-realistic, meta & metaphysical movie.

 

But I can’t do it alone. I need your support. Join me on Patreon.com/AdrianTofei

 

My filmmaking method consists of working for months on an alternative psychological reality for the actors including myself, partially living in character, so that when we start improvising, I mainly need to record the unfolding events and to make sure the improvisation goes in the right direction. There is no script, only plot points. I shoot tens of hours of footage guerrilla style and then I watch the footage like a documentary filmmaker would and I create the details of the story in post-production during a long editing process. This method of filmmaking leads to incredibly creative and realistic results in terms of both acting and storytelling, but it’s impossible to work in the system this way. Since there’s no script, I have no traditional ways to convince investors and production companies to finance my films, other than the success of my previous works. Therefore I rely on your support: the people who appreciate my films and trust my method.

 

I usually do crowdfunding campaigns to raise the movies’ budgets, but those are not designed to support me during all the months of continuous development and editing processes. I usually work 12 hours a day and there’s no way for me to have another paid job, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to finish my films. I’m currently about to start editing We Put the World to Sleep, it’s going to last months, during which I also need to promote it and to develop my third movie, Dr. Frankenstein. So I decided to join Patreon and ask for your monthly support to be able to successfully continue all my projects.

 

And here’s what you get for supporting me on Patreon:

 

1. You get to watch my movies for free before anyone else (via private screener, worldwide) and even contribute to the final versions with your feedback!

 

2. You get exclusive behind-the-scenes for Patrons only, exclusive updates and invitations to attend the premieres as part of the team!

 

3. You get officially credited onscreen and on IMDb with Thanks, Special Thanks, Very Special Thanks, and even as Associate Producer or Executive Producer!

 

Become my Patron today with $1/month or more and please share: Patreon.com/AdrianTofei

 

Thank you so much!

Hi, everyone! The biggest film site in Europe, Cineuropa, published an exclusive article about We Put the World to Sleep: Adrian Ţofei in post-production with apocalyptic indie flick We Put the World to Sleep

Check it out for exclusive new info about the movie and my filmmaking method, the way we shot the film and how I plan to complete it!

And for those of you wanting to learn even more, here’s even more exclusive info that I sent to Cineuropa at their request, which they couldn’t publish due to lack of space:

 

The language is English because that’s the only common language of our characters Duru and Adrian, just like in real life. I met my wife in Turkey at the end of 2015 in a film festival.

The film project was put on hold for two and a half years, a period when we were scammed by a fake producer to work on various fake film projects. More details here: https://adriantofei.com/international-con-artist-andrea-corbella/

The movie’s universe intertwines at some point with the universe of my first movie “Be My Cat: A Film for Anne“. And my next movie movie “Dr. Frankenstein” will be intertwined with both “Be My Cat: A Film for Anne” and “We Put the World to Sleep”, forming what I would like to call a meta trilogy due to the meta structures of all three films. I might also re-edit all three films into a single new movie of maximum two hours.

“We Put the World to Sleep” was born out of my desire and ambition to combine the found footage realism of “The Blair Witch Project” (detailed in my 2013 Found Footage Manifesto) with the metaphysics of “2001: A Space Odyssey”, which are two of the films that impressed and influenced me the most.

My filmmaking method is working for months or even years on an alternative psychological reality for the actors (or for myself, partially living in character all that period), so that when we start shooting and actors start improvising, I only need to record the unfolding events in that alternative reality which I prepared months in advance. There is no script. Only some plot points. I shoot the film like a documentary filmmaker shooting real events. Tens of hours of footage (almost 100 in We Put the World to Sleep’s case), and then I look at all the footage like a documentary filmmaker and I start creating the story in post-production in the editing process.

This improvisational method of filmmaking combined with the found footage or mockumentary concepts can lead to incredibly creative and realistic results both in terms of acting and filmmaking, but it’s almost impossible to work in the system this way. Since there’s no script, I have no “classical” or “official” way to convince investors and production companies and other film entities to finance my film. The only proof I have is the success of my previous movie, which is my first film. Be My Cat went to a lot of festivals, won a lot of acclaim and awards, but didn’t reach the top 10 festivals, and that limited the financial success by limiting the distribution offers I got.

And by the way, I sometimes get questions about festivals – it’s not that distributors care about awards and festivals for the value of the movie, it’s all about publicity and money: big festivals and awards mean big publicity, which means lots of people will wanna watch the film, which means a good chance of money for the distributor, which means they’ll pay you some money, which means you survive to make another movie. Everything is connected. Of course there’s also star power, but I don’t have stars in my films.

I’m also passionately researching and updating on a regular basis two lists of top 100 film festivals plus submission tips – one for genre festivals and one for all international festivals – which I initially made as a submission guide for my own projects, but then I decided to make public, and such a good decision that was – now I’m happy to see that thousands of filmmakers around the world are using lists to find the best festivals to submit their films. And I’m using the lists myself as well, of course. I would love to premiere “We Put the World to Sleep” in a festival like Sundance, Toronto, SXSW, Cannes, Tribeca, Telluride, Berlin, Venice, AFI Fest, Sitges, Fantasia or Fantastic Fest – that’s where I hope to find good distribution deals so that I can later say to potential investors, supporters, producers and actors: hey, I made my first two feature films without a script and they both won international acclaim, the second one also made good money, therefore join my team in supporting my next feature, let’s try to push a found footage film to the Globes and the Oscars! Foolish dreaming, some may say, but I say it’s possible in the right circumstances. Wish me luck! 🙂