Visual Music, Ink.
It can be said that music is the storyteller driving the narrative of our lives. Whether walking, driving in a car, peddling a bicycle or crammed into a subway, we sit with earphones secured subtly nodding to the personalized soundtracks of our lives. There is a certain rhythm of cause and effect which permeates our daily experience. Music acts as the substance anchoring style. It is a generational voice, and a medium for setting trends.
Visual Music Ink, an up and coming southern Connecticut based independent media company started and run by North Haven resident Gina Capristo-Gajdosik, stands to mirror this philosophy.
“Our brand is the fusion of visuals and music in all media platforms. Long and short music video, films, television, the internet and applications, video gaming, you name it. We are only limited to what we can think up,” says Gajdosik.
With a BS in Communications from the University of New Haven, Gina has worked in media production, the radio and record industries since 1985. Her first experience with film came in 1998 while volunteering as a production assistant on an independent film shoot in Meriden. Work on other film shoots and commercials led her to discover her true passion, outside the technical aspects of film.
“It was the writing that really turned me on,” she says. “I knew that’s what I wanted to do.”
She subsequently got into producing, a “natural progression”, she says, “when you want to get your work onto the screen.”
Gina got her first taste of this progression in 2003, while on location in Edinburgh, Scotland for the shoot of Loved Alone, a short film she wrote, financed and produced herself. The film, a vignette centered on forbidden love and the fires that we set as a result of it, was directed by the internationally acclaimed Indra Bhose and boasted a talented cast including Beth Winslet, sister of Academy Award winner Kate Winslet in the lead role.
Screened in a number of US cities and reviewed highly by several magazines such as the UK’s The Mirror, Italy’s Il Nuovo and New Haven’s own The Advocate, the film was a critical success, a terrific learning experience, and a breakthrough for Gina. Soon thereafter, she experienced a creative zenith, undertaking projects ranging from a biopic of the whirlwind life of 20’s Italian opera singer Enrico Caruso, to writing the pilot for The Rise and Fall of Lisa Fox, a syndicated TV show about a woman’s survival in the unscrupulous upper corporate rungs of the music industry, and several others.
With this creative portfolio expanding, her new company’s niche seemed obvious.
“I realized there was this common theme, most likely because music has always been a huge part of my life,” Gajdosik says.
Even as an underground DJ in the 1980’s, she recalls her childhood as the likely origin for this love affair with music. The youngest of three girls, she remembers as a five year old her two older sisters bringing home their prized copy of Meet the Beetles.
“My journey began at that moment,” she says.
For the past six years, Gina has been working tirelessly perfecting the screenplay for (Make Me) Blush, an artful, and energetic pseudo rock opera set in the backdrop of New York City, that will mix a rich soundtrack with ten original songs, and two dance sequences with such thematic elements as dreams, surrealism and personal identity to tell the story of a modern woman’s mid-life crisis, fueled by a struggle to accept her newfound sexuality, embracing and adapting to her starkly changing life.
With support of a partnership with the Baldwin Entertainment Group, notable for producing such Oscar nominated films as 2004’s Ray, (Make Me) Blush is currently undergoing a final script revision, is in negotiations with director Mary Lambert and will soon be attaching talent. As VMI’s flagship film,
it is scheduled to begin shooting early next year and will purportedly be released later in 2010.
Though still in its infancy, Gina has great plans for her company, including visions of an attached record label, an online publication, graphic novel tie-ins to projects and many others. Though branching out is no small endeavor, she is prepared to implement whatever is necessary for the growth of the company
“I have a combination of a business head and a creative head, but it’s all the same to me.”
For more information about Gina, Visual Music Ink, (Make Me) Blush or any other projects visit their website www.visualmusicink.com currently under construction.
For info on Loved Alone, visit, IMBD: Loved Alone
