Drawn Together Torn Apart
In this whimsical tale, a young artist's fantasy becomes reality when he awakens to find the girl from his sketch has come to life. As he marvels at this miraculous creation, a sudden gust of wind snatches away the drawing, causing his dream girl to vanish as quickly as she appeared. They are drawn together and torn apart.
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Kaden CooperDirector
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Kaden CooperWriter
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Elle SeguinProducer
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Kaden CooperKey Cast
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Chloe BriereCast
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Project Type:Short, Student
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Runtime:2 minutes 13 seconds
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Completion Date:August 1, 2024
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Production Budget:1,000 USD
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Country of Origin:United States
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Country of Filming:United States
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Language:English
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Shooting Format:Digital
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Aspect Ratio:16:9
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:Yes - USC School Of Cinematics
Kaden Cooper is a Venice, California-based filmmaker born of classic artisan experience and progressive technology. Currently attending Wildwood School, Kaden developed his skill set from the intensive programs at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and Rhode Island School of Design's Pre-College Programs.
Included within Kade's directing repertoire are the short films "A Night of Retribution," "Drawn Together Torn Apart," and "Trust on Hold," all completed in 2024. His documentary "The Art of the Title" won Best Editing at the Wildwood Film Media Arts Festival, showing his skill in both direction and post-production.
Merging illustration, VR art, and AI-assisted creation into one backdrop, Kade brings a very unique, multidisciplinary approach to filmmaking. He has also interned at Prologue, where he contributed to Gore Verbinski's "Good Luck Have Fun Don't Die," and gathered valuable insight into professional film production.
The innovative streak in Kade's work involves the use of virtual reality in live artistic performances and working on AI tools for video production. As a director, he brings together visual storytelling expertise and a keen sense for emerging technologies in filmmaking that expressively push creative boundaries while remaining deeply engaging.
Director's Statement
"Drawn Together Torn Apart" has grown out of my lifelong fascination with the thin line separating art and reality. Raised on a steady diet of cartoons and comics, I spent hours upon hours drawing characters and pondering, what is the nature of the relationship between creator and creation? What if the line between imagination and reality could blur? What if an artist's most ardent wish could manifest through his work?
The challenge in making this a reality came at a Summer Film Intensive Program at USC, where I had a week to cast, shoot, and edit the whole film. We could work with an extremely small crew of three people, day and night shoots included, for which extra coordination and efficiency were absolutely necessary. Every crew member was bound to take on multiple jobs; the tiny size of our crew would have it that every individual was important in making the production a success.
What actually gave this project more personal flair was the fact that I needed to create from scratch an entire artistic world for the main character. Every drawing, every sketch, and every piece of artwork viewed in this film was done by me. That made our set into a living gallery of the inside of the character's mind. The set design was particularly challenging; we needed to create an authentic artist's space that would serve the story but also be practical for filming. Every art piece had to be placed very carefully to create the character and also to serve the narrative progression, as it would trace the evolution of the artist's work culminating in the creation of the girl who comes to life.
I learned a few valuable lessons through this process pertaining to the level of professionalism applied to filmmaking's complex nature. Each location needed the correct permits, and every scene needed to be choreographed down to the wire regarding USC's safety rules, which didn't allow for stunts. Little did we know, this created a weird hitch regarding what we thought to be a pretty harmless romantic scene-a bird's eye view shot of the couple running across a bridge. We hadn't initially considered that this would fall under USC's definition of a stunt. This experience taught me the value of understanding every nuance of production rules and how even some of the most seemingly straightforward scenes can have regulatory implications.
What really gave the film its sense of fairytale was this particular collaboration with my sister Kiki Cooper, who wrote an original song for the film entitled "Drawn Together Torn Apart." As Kiki drew inspiration from classic Disney romance themes, particularly that of "Once Upon a Dream" from Sleeping Beauty, she created a perfect piece for the ethereal space that lies between art and reality. Her original composition serves as a bridge to our story, embracing both the mundane and magical elements, helping to transform static art into living, breathing reality. Much like Aurora's prophetic dream of true love now coming true, our film contemplates that magical moment when imagination crosses into the tangible world, and Kiki's music does a beautiful job underlining that journey.
The logistic difficulties regarding the management of different light conditions were somewhat unique with such a small crew. We had no extra hands to change lights or equipment, and switching from day to night sequences often required careful planning for rapid setup. Surprisingly, this weakness forced us to be more resourceful with equipment and better with scheduling. What might have seemed like a limitation actually pushed us to search for more innovative solutions and actually contributed to the intimacy of the film.
Being the filmmaker and having created all the artwork that appears throughout the film really made for an interesting connection with the material. The artwork wasn't just props or set dressing, but an integral part of storytelling, each piece containing its own narrative that contributed to the larger story. The original song "Drawn Together Torn Apart" by Kiki was not some background scoring; it was another character in the film that helped to voice the unvoiced emotions and magical moments alone, which words and image could not articulate.
"Drawn Together Torn Apart" is a reminder not only of the magic in creativity but also in the power of artistic collaboration-most surely within family. I credit making this film and all the artwork that went into it-so much enhanced by my sister's original score-for teaching me some very important lessons about how different art forms can work together to create something greater than the sum of their parts. Through this family collaboration, with our limited resources, came our own modern fairy tale speaking to an ageless theme of art transcending its boundaries to touch real life.
The final film is a true fusion of arts: filmmaking, drawing, and music together explore the line that separates creation and creator. Just goes to prove that often the most real stories come out when you open yourself to every part of your artistic soul-even when those chains on your ankles are waxing a little tight. Whether it was handling a small crew, making original artwork, working with the production regulations, or co-authoring the music, every one of these various challenges played its significant role in shaping our story of a dream coming into reality.