Grace is fourteen.
Grace makes beautiful drawings.
Grace is a good girl.
... things are about to change.
Grace Running is based on my belief that art is a way to find your power. Fourteen-year-old Grace is confined by what she is already good at, but needs more, needs to break out of an upholstered rut, despite her Mother's contentment with the way things are. With a great performance by then 14-year-old Sydnei Murphy.
In the "old days" (before iPhone) I had a line of business from my association with a great local talent agency, formerly known as Kids Unlimited Talent (now KUTalent) creating audition videos for more than 75 different actors, primarily kids. That's how I met Sydnei Murphy and her great parents. I'd shot two audition videos with Sydnei and so I knew she had the energy to portray a girl who discovers running.
So, I asked Sydnei to consider doing the lead role in this film over the summer school vacation. She was interested and her parents were supportive but her Mother mentioned that were already some weekends that they knew they would have to be away. Much to my amazement, I discovered that these weekends were track meets! It turns out that Sydnei (and her older sister) were both track stars. In fact, Sydnei later attended Duke on a track scholarship.
This was also the first film, I believe, shot for me by the amazing Aravind Ragupathi, and shot on the famous Canon 5D Mark II.
