Get Together
- Role
- Producer
- Format
- Interactive film
- Year
- 2022–2023 · TMU
- Budget
- $8,492
- Awards
- Best Senior Film & Best UX/UI, 45th TARA Awards
A live-action interactive film where the audience steps into Val's first university party and makes her choices.
Your first university party
Grab a ball. Every cup you sink tells you a bit more about the film.
Pick a cup to throw at
Watch the trailer
The project
Made with RTA Media Production students after the lockdowns, Get Together gives audiences back something they'd lost: a party. Instead of watching the protagonist, you are her, navigating a shaky friendship and a love triangle one decision at a time.
What I did
Get Together was my first official producer role, on a team of nine who named me the "Production Mom." I set the deadlines and kept every department moving, from development through post.
I developed the outline and script with the team, then built the shooting schedule and call sheets so cast and crew came in prepared for every day of the shoot. We cast Val, Amanda and Liam through auditions and chemistry reads with RMW Casting. I also designed the interactive interface.
Inside the Eko editor
Designing the choices
Every branch in the film was built on four design pillars. The core loop is simple: two choices appear on screen, the player picks one, and Val follows it, changing both what she does and who she becomes.
- Loyalty
Stay with Amanda and work things out, or run off with Liam. That one choice decides whether the night's mystery and the friendship ever get resolved.
- Jealousy
The catalyst for the tension between Val and Amanda, and what makes their conflict feel relatable.
- Critical thinking
The more drinks the player makes Val take, the blurrier her path gets, so every playthrough is personal.
- Consequence
The mysterious loud noise, and how the player treats Amanda, shape how the night ends.
The party didn't stop at the screen
Get Together was made for a generation that had just spent its first years of university in lockdown, so we planned the campaign the same way we planned the film: as something people could step into. The production bible maps out a whole world around the story, from a Snapchat geofilter and social pages written in the characters' voices to a Discord community and IRL events.
Two of those events helped pay for the shoot: the Get Together Cup Pong Tournament in October 2022, and Neon Night, a club night at Call Her Juliet on King West three weeks later. Together with our Indiegogo campaign, they funded our final budget of $8,492.
The rest came from our community. The school's Equipment Distribution Centre loaned our gear, our crew were fellow students, and our cast volunteered or joined through ACTRA's partnership with Ryerson (now TMU).
The making of
Watch the making-of · EPK by Snowhouse
Behind the scenes
Credits
- Presented by
- Really Big Group Productions
- A film by
- Maria Lypyavka
- Produced by
- Deniz Haciyusufoglu
- Cast
- Val
- Katarina Fiallos
- Amanda
- Leigh Truant
- Liam
- Karn Kalra
- Mystery Man
- Hudson Greenough
- Stoner
- Ryan Muharrem
- Drunk Girl
- Shayli Liederman
- Crew
- Director
- Maria Lypyavka
- Creative lead
- Shayli Liederman
- Director of photography
- Matthew Oliveira
- Camera operator
- Colin St. Jean
- Key grip
- Marco Muia
- Editor & colourist
- Myra Rahim
- Audio lead & music composer
- Nicholas Muia
- Marketing lead
- Ryan Muharrem
- Social media manager
- Julianna Balsamo
- Script supervisor
- Addison Holley
- Make-up & hair artist
- Tanya Karavayeva
- Make-up & hair assistant
- Ciao-ling Hong
- Production assistants
- Aliyaan Amlani-Kurji & Olivia Sasso
- Behind the scenes
- Veronica Chiu, Irene Dusenge & Sonya Khurana
- Sound recordists
- Jacob Michaud & Matthew Major
- Assistant sound recordists
- Mersum Khokhar & Zach Caton
- Sound editors
- Nicholas Muia & Matthew Oliveira
- Assistant sound editors
- Razan Marachli & Brianna Wong
- Foley artist
- Matthew Oliveira
- Audio team
- The Sound House
- EPK & making-of
- Snowhouse
- Motion graphic designer
- Geneva Hines
- Casting
- RMW Casting
Background actors
Alyssa Arstad, Andres Camachao Aceves, Andrew Oliveira, Bailey Rand, Benjamin Redhill, Brianna Burns, Camille Griffiths, Carlo Lozito, Deniz Haciyusufoglu, Devin Machado, Esther Denijs, Ethan Chanda, GiJeong Jang, Grace Khalil, Hina Mir, Ivy He, Jack Brentnall, Jaimie Levett, Julianna Balsamo, Leah Good, Mahima Singh Panesar, Marc Rende, Maria Hogan, Maria Lypyavka, Matthew Oliveira, Matthew Wiseman, Maysee McLean, Myra Rahim, Nazir Awad, Nicholas Muia, Nicole Kourakos, Ryan Muharrem, Sana Petersen, Sarah Gargaro, Sarah Rimer, Shayli Liederman, Sophia Palumbo, Wayun Luo
Thank you
Panago Pizza, Basil Box and St. Urbain Bagel for feeding us; The Sound House; and The Creative School and RTA School of Media at Toronto Metropolitan University. Filmed in Toronto, Canada.
Human-made. No generative AI was used in the creation of this project.