THE RIDDLE - Honorable Mention | AGBO’s No Sleep ‘til Film Fest 2021

Directed by Alessandro Serradimigni and Joe Daru, “The Riddle” is an honorable mention in AGBO’s inaugural No Sleep ‘til Film Fest filmmaking competition.
Synopsis: Two friends wanting to enter a 48-hour film festival, can't seem to click on an idea. With the clock ticking and no hope in sight, they are stuck in the ultimate pickle.
Director Bios: Alessandro "AxiA" Serradimigni and Joe Daru have teamed up on over a dozen short films that have amassed over ten million views and won multiple short film competitions.
AxiA, is an Italian born film director. At the age of 25, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue his passion in the film industry. Beginning as an actor, his first experience was as a recurring character on the TV show, Decker, with Tim Heidecker. Since then, he’s directed numerous commercials, music videos, and short films. AxiA has worked on projects with SPLICE, the Academy Awards, & Johnny Depp.
Joe is a Thai-Chinese/American writer & actor who's credits include The Gray Man, The L Word, This Is Us, Shameless, SWAT, The Rookie, among others. A former international & professional baseball player, Joe moved to Los Angeles four years ago to pursue his love for acting & creating. As the son of a diplomat, Joe has also lived in Thailand, Barbados, Laos, Hawaii, Florida, Washington D.C., and New York.
Making of “The Ridde”: Axia and I have put together a handful of our own passion project short films over the past few years. First starting with one-minute shorts to now, in the middle of a fifteen-minute short. We complete the short films and post them on our social media and youtube channel and have been fortunate to have had won some awards at other film festivals and also have a couple go viral (our covid themed short film got over 10 million views. I'll attach the youtube link with our short films below!)
Axia texted me on April 16th around noon saying "Dude, someone messaged me this link to a 48-hour film festival and he thinks we could win it". I replied "Dope, I'll check it out". While walking on the treadmill I indeed did "check it out". Shortly after finding out more information, I called Axia and said "Dude, this thing is this weekend. They give out the prompt tonight at 7:30. What you got going on the next few days?"
Axia replies "I'm shooting a music video tomorrow (Saturday) from 4 p.m. until about 3 a.m. and work on Sunday all day after 11 a.m. ANYWAY, after convincing ourselves to step up to the challenge, we ended up meeting at 7:30 p.m. and waiting for the prompt. After running through some ideas and figuring out what direction we wanted to head down, we wrote out a rough draft. Next, we called Parker and he was down to shoot! (YAY!) I quickly ran to Ralphs, bought a few jars of pickles (I ate a lot of pickles that night) while Axia brought the gear over to my place. We set up and shot from midnight until around 4:30 a.m.
The next day we had an 8 a.m. wakeup call and went through the footage/began to make selects. The project slowly started piecing together well. At around noon I had to leave to go coach my baseball team (I coach a 10u travel baseball team). Axia continued to tighten up the edit, colored, mixed sound, and worked the MAGIC that he's great at. We then sent the edit to Joe Hodgin to score the music.
The next morning we did the final touches and the project was complete! A fun challenge!
We are very proud to put out these short films while "balling on a budget" and working with no crew. Hopefully sometime in the near future we will be able to produce fun and exciting feature films, like the ones your production company does!
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ABOUT NO SLEEP ‘TIL FILM FEST
AGBO’s “No Sleep ‘til Film Fest” is a 48 hour short filmmaking competition, which invites emerging creators to make a bite-sized film, three minutes or less, based off of the provided creative prompt. The judges for the festival included AGBO Co-Founders and Chairmen Anthony and Joe Russo, Vice Chairman Mike Larocca, Co-Presidents of Story Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, and President of Creative Angela Russo-Otstot. The top three winners will receive script writing software from Final Draft and will join the AGBO Storytellers Collective, an alumni network of participants from other AGBO fellowship programs. Additionally, the first-place winner will receive camera equipment from RED and a storyboard sketch of their film from storyboard artist Anthony Leonardi. The second-place winner will receive an electric bike from Story Bikes.
ABOUT AGBO:
Founded by award-winning, record-breaking directors Anthony and Joe Russo, AGBO is an artist-led entertainment company focused on creating content borne of innovative story universes across film, television, and digital platforms. The company is headquartered in downtown Los Angeles, CA.