New holiday movie spoof was filmed in SLO County. Here’s how to watch it
Imagine that you’re trapped in a Hallmark Christmas movie, but you and your budding love interest can’t figure out how to escape.
That’s the tongue-firmly-in-cheek premise of “Christmas Couple: Unwrapped,” a new film released Dec. 18 on YouTube.
The spoof of traditional holiday films was collaboratively created in Cambria, from concept to completion, by three Coast Union High School graduates and TFT Films founders who have previous filmmaking credentials.
They were joined in their efforts by a student-to-grad screenwriter, six actors, a student production team, the school’s Coastin’ Studios and two mentors who are listed in the credits as the film’s executive producers.
Dan Hartzell, a high school instructor, inspires his pupils to study and participate in the exciting, creative, entrepreneurial worlds of film and multimedia industries, while Gary Stephenson of Cambria worked for Dick Clark for years and produced for Nickelodeon, NBC and the Disney Channel.
Speaking of the TFT Films co-founders, Stephenson said that “I was blown away by the level of talent and professionalism these guys already had” while they were still in high school.
The Cambria Community Council provided funding for “Christmas Couple: Unwrapped” and TFT’s collaboration with Coast Union, according Hartzell.
That funding and local support is crucial, Hartzell said, because students interested in creative fields need professional guidance and an outlet for proving their mettle.
“We live in a very rural district, and the movie industry is not directly outside our front door,” he said. However, many industry professionals own homes in Cambria, and tapping into that talent has been key to Coastin’ Studios success.
“Kids who know what they want to do and are not afraid to pursue it may now have potential connections and lifelines, which makes it a little less scary” to take a confident leap into those fields, Hartzell said.
New Christmas movie made in Cambria
The first clue that “Christmas Couple: Unwrapped” watchers will get to screenwriter Jackson Bruce’s ability to poke fun at himself and his creation is the name of the female lead in the Christmastime tale: Noël.
The film is based on Bruce’s original concept, and while other students helped with early drafts, he did nearly all of the writing. TFT partner Darien Jewel helped Bruce distill those drafts into the final version in record time, according to director and editor Julian Mercado.
Bruce said that the true joy of screenwriting was “just being able to create a story and then see it come to life. It’s true, it’s a wonder to have sort of a half idea and turn it into a palpable, viewable experience.”
Clocking in at 40 minutes, “Christmas Couple: Unwrapped” follows a holiday romance.
“Noël is your average big city girl who wants nothing more than to get out of the small town of Wintercrest,” the film’s synopsis says. “Jake is your stereotypical wholesome yet attractive man who may discover that the only thing he loves more than Christmas is Noël. Under expected circumstances, they would make the perfect Christmas couple, but someone screwed the pooch and now they’re realizing how ‘expected’ their lives are.”
“It was fun to make a Christmas film so extremely generic, even the characters realize they’re in a Christmas movie,” Jewel said. “The story follows the characters as they try to escape.”
The three co-producers of “Christmas Couple” are currently 19-year-old film-production students at Woodbury College in Burbank and partners in the TFT Film company they founded while still at Coast Union.
Mercado was joined by cinematographer Magnus Marthaler and Jewel, who also handled the many preproduction tasks, from casting to lining up Cambria locations for shooting the scenes.
Marthaler and Joselin Esparza also served site scouts. Among the film’s shooting locations, all in Cambria, are West End Bar and Grill, and Linn’s Fruit Bin on Santa Rosa Creek Road.
The producers couldn’t have known it at the time, but their race to finish the film in late 2019 so they could capture holiday scenes at the Cambria Christmas Market helped the team avoid the problems of shooting scenes after the COVID-19 pandemic exploded and triggered massive shutdowns and strict guidelines.
Monir Boutros was prop master for the filming, which Mercado estimated took five 12-hour days of shooting.
The film’s leads are Libby G. Parker and Michael Estridge of San Luis Obispo, whose talent “blew us away,” Mercado recalled.
TFT auditioned “some amazingly talented high school students,” he said, but in Parker and Estridge, “we had found our Jake and Noël in the first round of auditions.”
Other cast members include John and Renee Linn, Steve Kniffen and Bruce’s dad, Rick Bruce, a well-known North Coast actor and magician.
What’s next for Coast Union High School grads
Mercado said TFT Films’ most recent stand-alone project was “Don’t Freeze,” a short horror film premiered on its YouTube channel on Halloween.
“We are currently working on a few films for the spring that will bleed into the summer,” he said.
Mercado said TFT Films currently is negotiating “about our next collaboration with Coastin’ Studios.”
He and his fellow producers are “always working on something new,” Mercado said. “We try collaborating with students from Coast Union as much as possible. The arts, multimedia and entertainment pathway at Coast has prepared them so well to work with us so professionally with very industry-standard equipment.”
Work during the pandemic has been “especially hard,” he said, but their meetings “are all done remotely and our shoots follow all the guidelines to ensure the safety of the cast and crew.”
How to watch ‘Christmas Couple: Unwrapped’
You can watch the trailer for “Christmas Couple: Unwrapped” at https://youtu.be/fg1JADdRNkQ and see the entire movie for free at https://youtu.be/xIwuVEB8FfE.
Buy DVD and BluRay versions of the film — for $10 and $15 plus tax, respectively, plus $7 shipping — at https://christmascouple.square.site.
You can donate to Coastin’ Multimedia and Recording Studios, Coast Union High School’s arts, multimedia and entertainment career technical education program, at https://christmascouple.square.site/product/donate-to-coastin-studios/19.
According to the site, donations to Coastin’ Studios “directly impact students through college tours, guest speakers, industry tours, updating industry-standard software and equipment, and assisting in our business-sponsored projects.”
Coastin’ Studios is “a student enterprise providing work-based learning to Coast Union students,” the site said. “TFT Films has worked in partnership with Coastin’ Studios to provide film-production experiences to CUHS students.”
Check out TFT Films’ first movie, “Astray,” at www.thefilmtrilogy.com.
This story was originally published December 24, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "New holiday movie spoof was filmed in SLO County. Here’s how to watch it."
