Lavinia Postolache is a first-time producer. As such, the experience of making April X, and now having it attract all this attention due to Connor Storrie’s rise to fame from Heated Rivalry, has been very exciting. Fangirlish talked to Postolache about what a producer even does, casting Connor Storrie and seeing him blow up.
“It’s absolutely very exciting for us,” she shared about the fact that the film is now anticipated by so many. “It’s been such a challenging journey because it’s a sci-fi, it’s a high concept, it’s bold and intimate, and the CGI part in post was such a journey for me, and I got to learn so much about development, pre-production, filming.”
Postolache came at this with beginner’s eyes. “This was my first time producing a feature film, but I just learned how to deal with the unknown and find solutions, and resilience was my strength.”
April X is, like Postolache herself pointed out, “very different from what Connor is doing now.” But she also remarked that is a testament to his fans, who are “embracing every style of film and he’s so good at doing comedy, sci-fi, thrillers, drama.” And that extends to this film.
But don’t be fooled, Postolache wasn’t that surprised Storrie blew up. “We were actually looking to discover new talent. We didn’t want to spend all our budget on a name, because we shot in so many locations; it’s not in a studio, so we wanted to also give some room to the CGI world and have beautiful cinematography. So, we hired two casting directors, one in Romania for the Romanian cast and one in the US.”
Still, that’s not how they found Storrie. “Connor, I met him through my manager. We were both represented by the same manager. This was before Heated Rivalry, this is his first lead role. Then while we were filming, when we were in post, he booked Joker, Criminal Minds, Heated Rivalry. And being an indie film, it takes longer for the post. And so, all this came out.”
Now, it’s April X’s turn. “What I really liked is that the film festivals embraced the film. While we were in post, we were already submitted to film festivals. Rhode Island, the film was not completed, and we won Best Sci-Fi Film there. Then sales agents approached us. Our distributor, Vertigo, was on board early on, before Conor’s fame. So, for us, it’s such a huge statement that they believed in this film before any celebrity was attached.”
Storrie and Lilly Krug have amazing sibling chemistry in the movie. And Postolache shared that they tried to find two actors who could be believable as siblings. “I’m a single child. I don’t have brothers and sisters. And I’ve always studied in airports, brothers and sisters, their relationships. And this was one thing that me and the director discussed early on: that especially twins, they have such a special relationship. They have deja vus, and they’re connected. So, we did want to bring this on camera.”
“And that was challenging, to find two characters that could create this magic, especially that they’d never met before. We booked them and they came straight to Romania and we’re like: let’s see how it goes. And we’re very happy.”
Finally, we asked Postolache what her role as producer entailed, because there’s a lot of misconceptions out there about what a producer even does and why; even though some producers are just a name, some do more than that.
“There can be people that can just have a name. They can bring someone in or do a favor, and then they get a producer credit. My work was bringing finance. I brought the majority of the finance, securing locations. I brought designers for wardrobe. I brought Connor as cast… and just dealing with every single issue.”
“I mean, I was on set every day while also doing accounting, also dealing with the line producer to stay on the budget. They didn’t have anamorphic lenses in Romania. So, we had to fly from a different country. All this is a lot of responsibility that I learned as I went through to find solutions. And I’m happy with the work. I like doing this.”
Basically, thank Lavinia Postolache for the film you see and for believing in Connor Storrie before anyone else did.
April X is in theaters on October 2.
