Private Project

Frisky

Frisky is a comedy about two twenty-somethings who move to San Francisco to chase their career, but end up chasing tail instead.

When two twenty-something women move back to San Francisco, where they had met on exchange years earlier, their high career aspirations quickly become sidelined by their sexual interests. While wildly crass and charismatic in their public personas, they are in fact fundamentally at odds on many levels. Their opposing beliefs surrounding responsibility and romance, combined with their close quarters while crashing in an acquaintance's living room, find them thrust onto a fast track to discovering the strength of their friendship. Based on true events, Frisky is an honest, tongue-in-cheek look at what it is to be a woman in the limbo years between college and "the real world".

WINNER: Best Feature - 10th Broad Humor Film Festival, Los Angeles 2015
WINNER: Best Feature - Austin Revolution Film Festival 2015
WINNER: Female Filmmaker of the Year - Austin Revolution Film Festival 2015
WINNER: Best Comedy Feature Film - Cinema Constant 2015

  • Claudia Pickering
    Director
  • Claudia Pickering
    Writer
  • Claudia Pickering
    Producer
  • Willow Polson
    Producer
  • Monica Ammerman
    Key Cast
  • Claudia Pickering
    Key Cast
  • Brandon Wardle
    Key Cast
  • Cameron Hunt
    Key Cast
  • Nicklaus Dzienny
    Key Cast
  • Oran Stainbrook
    Key Cast
  • Christiana Charalambous
    Director of Photography
  • Julien de Benedictis
    Editor
  • Katie Nash
    Art Director
  • Project Type:
    Feature
  • Genres:
    comedy, drama
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 38 minutes 27 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    March 26, 2015
  • Production Budget:
    5,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    1:2.35
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Austin Revolution Film Festival
    Austin, Texas
    September 25, 2015
    World Premiere
    Best Feature Film - Director's Choice, Female Filmmaker of the Year
  • 10th Broad Humor Film Festival
    Los Angeles, California
    September 26, 2015
    California Premiere
    Best Feature Film
  • CinéWomen
    Paris, France
    October 17, 2015
  • Eyecatcher International Film Festival
    McAlister, Oklahoma
    November 12, 2015
    Oklahoma Premiere
  • Videodrunk Film Festival
    Toronto, Canada
    December 4, 2015
  • Cinema Constant

    Best Comedy Feature Film
Director Biography - Claudia Pickering

Sydney-born filmmaker, Claudia Pickering began her foray into filmmaking through acting, which lead to creating comedy sketches, short films and webseries’, the first of which was a music video titled Sebring which included Danny Trejo, AKA Machete (Rodriguez), who choreographed and performed a synchronised dance for the clip. She has trained at the Upright Citizens Brigade in Los Angeles, NIDA in Sydney, and New York Film Academy having been awarded a talent-based scholarship; as well as studying screenwriting at NYU and holding a master’s degree in architecture from UNSW. She has since written and produced two feature length films, 'Frisky' and 'Winning Formula', of which she directed Frisky, and both have received international festival success including Official Selection at the Chicago Comedy Film Festival, Best Feature Film at the 10th Broad Humor Film Festival in Los Angeles, Best Comedy Feature at the Atlanta Underground Film Festival and the Director's Choice for Best Feature Film at the Austin Revolution Film Festival . Pickering won the 2015 Tropfest Tropvine competition with a stop motion animation of a giraffe telling a dad joke, was shortlisted for Tropfest 2015 with her dark comedy about food fraud ‘Potluck’ Starring Adam Spencer and Emma Leonard, and regularly creates sketches with her comedy troupe, Frothpocalypse.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Frisky means a whole lot to me - it is based entirely on true events drawn from my life and experiences moving to the United States from Australia. It quite literally embodies the saying “one day we’ll look back on this and laugh”.

Due to the honest nature of the film’s origins, and in an effort to maintain its rawness and minimise the opportunity to emotionally edit its content, I set out to create the film as quickly as possible. 'Frisky' was written in 6 weeks, shot in 15 days and edited in 6 weeks.

I aimed to give the film a real-life aesthetic which Christiana Charalambous, our DP, nailed through the use of a lot of intimate and sometimes voyeuristic hand-held shots. I wanted the audience to feel like they are in the room with the characters, going through their struggles and victories. This sense of real life in San Francisco was also heightened by the wonderful work of our art director, Katie Nash, with her hawk-like attention to detail and vast local experience. The same can be said for our brilliant editor, Julien de Benedictis who has masterfully fused all the debauchery into a story where audiences might care deeply for the characters and relate to their journey.

How fortunate I was to find such an incredible cast to work with, who brought whole hearted honesty to their performances.

Our production was perhaps a little unorthodox in it’s structure: We had an all female crew on set during production (apart from one stand-in sound recordist for a few days), and it was a community project where everyone involved has been given equity in ownership based on their proportion of time contributed. I think that both of these factors have given the film a very unique energy.
I can proudly say, without a doubt, that creating this film with my talented cast and crew was the most positive, energising and inspiring experience of my life to date.

I hope you enjoy it as much as we enjoyed creating it! And if you take anything away from it, let it be this: The strongest friendship bonds are formed over burritos.