Carlos Ferrão is a writer and author for film, prose and multimedia. He was born in 1977 in Lisbon, Portugal but has travelled all over the world, currently settling in London. He holds a BA in film from the prestigious National Conservatory of Arts in Lisbon.
He has written and directed a handful of short films which you can see in this site and hopes to publish his first novel in the near future. In the field of multimedia, he has written and produced e-learning and website materials for corporate international clients during the past 8 years. These range from product to compliance training in the banking, automotive and other areas.
Films
I've made several short films while doing my BA and later at the New York Film Academy. Since then, I've written/produced/directed a handful of shorts. I make them because they are fun and the best way to practice and learn for bigger projects.
Necromantic
This is a script I wrote and intended to shoot, but then opted to let someone else shoot it. Nonetheless, I'm very pleased with the final film, as it's a good film overall, and kept most of my script intact.
Closed Circuit Love
"Closed Circuit Love" is, in its essence, a love story. It is set in contemporary times and addresses such issues as voyeurism, jealousy and the universal feeling of not really knowing our partners.
C-1905
The challenge was to create a 60-second film to celebrate the 100th birthday of Einstein. I shot this at my granny's house using a PD170 camera and still photography lenses. I tried to do too much in just 1 minute, but I really like this film nonetheless.
Torn Portrait
This was a lot of fun and very inspiring. I hadn't made a film for a long time and wanted to see if it was possible to do it all by myself. So I borrowed a consumer-grade palmheld DV camera from a friend and shot this in one Saturday morning. This is a very personal film in a way. The locations are either inside or next to my flat in Olaias (Lisbon, Portugal). The cabriolet was loaned by a friend. The husband is one of my oldest and best friends. The killer used to be my brazilian jiu-jitsu teacher. And so on... Needless to say, everybody had a blast doing it.
Blogs
These are the blogs I've created and update.
Meditations XXI
These are my meditations about arts, politics, society, ethics, morals, and everything else that I think about. It is an open letter to my future self. A potential soliloquy that hopefully will engage other thinkers out there.
Business Traveller
A serialized novel in different media. Updated weekly. I hope to revise and rewrite this into an actual 200 page book. Let's see how that goes.
This Mind is Buddha
My film production "company". Not an LLP or anything of that kind, but a good way to label all I produce. This blog is used to update crew and cast about what I am working on. Easier than email!
Prose
One day I'd love to write and publish novels. It's the medium that gives writers the most freedom, but very hard to reach the readers and get published. Maybe some day... While that doesn't happen, I write short stories. There really is no market for short stories these days, but they're fun to write and that's good enough for me!
You Held a Sun - A damned man's last attempt at happiness (16 pages).
Akihiro's Night Out - A reclusive Japanese boy gets an unexpected visitor (6 pages).
Who is Carlos Ferrão - Abstraction via insomnia and Google image search (4 pages).
Gold - Close-up of a girl painted in gold (1 page).
Endurance - Love in a blank room (1 page).
Obsession - Don't kiss and don't tell (1 page).
They Stood Around Doing Nothing - Phone call between concerned citizens (2 pages).
Odalisque - Born unto a purpose (1 page).
Marionette - A very special show comes into town (1 page).
A Child's Body - Not paedophilia (1 page).
Scripts
Film Scripts
I don't consider myself a scriptwriter. The idea of writing something which I won't direct later is very strange. Having said that, there are a few scripts which I found challenging and fun to write but don't appeal to me as a director.
Black and White Dreams - This and its application went all the way to the shortlist for the Haringey film fund, but was beaten in the film. Since then I have grown to dislike this script as being too manipulative and obvious. It's well-written though, if I may say so myself! (9 pages).
Necromantic - I wrote this to shoot it myself so I could apply to the CUT! competition for the TV channel Zone Horror. It's a 2 minute horror script which I believe to be very effective given the limitations. It ended up being shot by JP Frazier and will be ready to enter the competition in mid-June 2008. Let's hope it wins! (3 pages).
Closed Circuit Love - One of my favourite scripts. It all started with the song "Free Love" by Barry Adamson. This ended up being filmed although the film itself is only about 80% of the original material (9 pages).
Sergei - Faux documentary about an illegal immigrant stranded away from home. Based on a true story! Never got to direct this and probably never will. If you want to give it a go, godspeed to you. Just let me know about it (10 pages).
Comic Scripts
I suppose I should call them sequential art not comics! I can't really draw but I love writing for other people to draw.
Flip into Infinity - A one-pager to test the waters in this format. Art by Gary Bainbridge. This PDF has both script and art so it's cool to see how it developed (1 page script + 1 page comic.
ProjectK
"Project K" is my name for a trilogy of short films I will be making in 2008, the latest likely finishing in 2009. These are the rules and themes common to all:
- All have to be named after a place that starts with the letter "K";
- All have to somehow relate to this place, but that relationship can be in spirit, theme or metaphor. If you don't think there's a connection, you must look harder, it's there;
- All have to be around 15-30 minutes in length. I'm not a fan of short shorts and making features requires a sort of financial and organizational commitment I cannot make at this moment.
Why rules for a privately-funded, "vanity" project? It is the opinion of most artists that rules and obstacles stimulate the mind to come up with creative solutions to overcome them. This works very well for me. Why 3 places with the letter K as its initial? Why not? "Knossos" and "Khanbaliq" came naturally and the coincidence struck me. From there to "Kosovo" was an easy leap.
Knossos
A variation on the myth of the Minotaur. Knossos was the palace where, as myth and archaelogy would have it, King Minos lived. This film is in many ways a melodrama, with an emphasis on the illusions humanity creates to fulfil its needs and desires.
Khanbaliq
The relationship between nomad and settled people in the Chinese border on the 12th century, as played by young Londoners - a taxi driver and a mini-cab phone receptionist. A love story then.
Kosovo
Scientific racism, cosmology, metaphysics, two young boys, and an unreliable mentor. The beginning of the end of the world.