Zahra Gor­don

It has been a lit­tle over a year since the award-win­ning short film Pothound was re­leased by hus­band and wife pro­duc­tion duo Christo­pher and Leizelle Guin­ness. Al­ready, the own­ers and op­er­a­tors of Bep­per­ton En­ter­tain­ment have re­leased an­oth­er project like­ly to achieve sim­i­lar suc­cess. Their short film Cap­tain T&T, launched on­line on May 29, tells the sto­ry of a boy who as­pires to be a su­per­hero. The film's stars in­clude Kden Hee Chung (Thin Foot), Blair Cameron, Sher­win Mar­celle and Christo­pher's grand­moth­er Lu­cille Poon Kwong, who al­so ap­peared in Pothound.Most im­por­tant­ly, the film al­so stars one of the cou­ple's beloved mon­grels, Runty Mag­ic. The star of Pothound was an­oth­er beloved mon­grel named Bub­bercin.

In an in­ter­view last week, Christo­pher said the in­spi­ra­tion for the film came from "child­hood mem­o­ries, dai­ly sit­u­a­tions and the so­cial and po­lit­i­cal cli­mate of present day T&T."It's all packed in­to a com­ing of age sto­ry with a su­per­hero twist. Like most of my work, it has au­to­bi­o­graph­i­cal el­e­ments by de­fault," he said. The film was writ­ten, di­rect­ed and pro­duced by Christo­pher and Leizelle.Cap­tain T&T has al­ready been se­lect­ed as a Staff Pick on the video shar­ing Web site Vimeo and is sched­uled to screen at the Aru­ba Film Fes­ti­val and the trav­el­ling fes­ti­val, Caribbean Film Cor­ner. How­ev­er, Christo­pher's plans for the film are sim­ple. "(My plans for the film are) for it to be seen by as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble, es­pe­cial­ly Trin­bag­o­ni­ans. The mes­sages are most ap­plic­a­ble to us, the nu­ances more sig­nif­i­cant."The tools used to cre­ate the film were al­so sim­ple ac­cord­ing to Chisto­pher, with a lot of im­pro­vis­ing be­ing em­ployed."In­stead of a crane, a lad­der would do. Where wa­ter hos­ing was need­ed, Zi­plock bags did just fine. Every lit­tle thing adds up."

The core tools were a DSLR cam­era, glide cam and glide track as well as GO Pro.In Cap­tain T&T, Thin Foot at­tempts every­day to tap in­to su­per­hero pow­ers such as su­per­hu­man strength and mind pow­ers, he must al­so bat­tle the vil­lains or neigh­bour­hood bul­lies who try to harm his dog. Thin Foot's aim to use his pow­ers for good are part of the film's over­ar­ch­ing mes­sage."There is a mes­sage of love, of hope. Our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to live a right­eous life, use what in­flu­ence we have for good from the man on the street to the head of state."Cap­tain T&T shares sim­i­lar mes­sages with Pothound, which ad­vo­cat­ed an­i­mal pro­tec­tion. Cap­tain T&T al­so pro­motes a non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion, Sum­mer He­roes T&T, in the same way Pothound pro­mot­ed the T&T So­ci­ety for the Pre­ven­tion of Cru­el­ty to An­i­mals. Sum­mer He­roes T&T is char­i­ta­ble or­gan­i­sa­tion us­ing art ther­a­py in out­reach pro­grammes for chil­dren liv­ing in homes and cen­tres through­out T&T."They both (both films) ad­vo­cate kind­ness to­wards an­i­mals. Both sto­ries are in­ter­twined, they share some of the same char­ac­ters and some of the sce­nar­ios over­lap."How­ev­er, in Pothound, an­i­mal pro­tec­tion is the main theme ver­sus Cap­tain T&T which has a more holis­tic mes­sage pre­sent­ed pre­sent­ed in a sim­ple child­like man­ner," Christo­pher said.

He added: "Much like Pothound, we want­ed to con­nect the film to an ini­tia­tive that will ben­e­fit from any pub­lic­i­ty the piece gar­ners. The film shares many of the ideals of Sum­mer He­roes, about find­ing one's self and do­ing good so the con­nec­tion was most nat­ur­al."While Bep­per­ton En­ter­tain­ment films have an artis­tic qual­i­ty vi­su­al­ly, Leizelle, 31, does not con­sid­er her­self an artist and Christo­pher says he "will like to be an artist when he grows up."Bep­per­ton is an "au­dio/vi­su­al de­sign, film and an­i­ma­tion cre­ative com­pa­ny" which the cou­ple found­ed in 2010.Both had worked ex­ten­sive­ly in ad­ver­tis­ing be­fore both win­ning nu­mer­ous awards. Christo­pher is al­so a for­mer pres­i­dent of the Caribbean Ad­ver­tis­ing Fed­er­a­tion. De­cid­ing to run their own busi­ness al­lows them to bal­ance work with "pas­sion projects.""The bread-win­ning work usu­al­ly in­volves bring­ing some­one else's idea to life, some­times you are af­ford­ed cre­ative con­trol, some­times not so much, which is fine."It's just im­por­tant for us to com­mu­ni­cate our per­son­al ideas as well, present our voice. And that's where the pas­sion projects come in­to play."

The name Bep­per­ton came from Christo­pher's nick­name Bep, which he ac­quired for the "habit of falling asleep dur­ing less than in­ter­est­ing movies." For Leizelle, Bep­per­ton is the "cus­to­di­an of dreams, a col­lo­qui­al ver­sion of the Sand­man." Since its found­ing Bep­per­ton has won more than 60 awards, how­ev­er, Christo­pher and Leizelle re­main prag­mat­ic about what these awards mean."Awards are a good val­i­da­tion, like hey some­one else like our stuff too. See, trust us with your busi­ness. But be­yond that it's best to turn prof­it or do work that you are proud of," Christo­pher said.To view Cap­tain T&T, vis­it www.cap­tain­tandt.com

Pothound Awards

2012 Vimeo Awards Fi­nal­ist

Best Short Film:

Mostra de cine Lati­no Amer­i­cano de Catalu­na

Gold AD­DY Award: Cin­e­matog­ra­phy

Gold AD­DY Award: An­i­ma­tion

Sil­ver AD­DY Award:

Non Tra­di­tion­al Ad

Sil­ver AD­DY Award: Pub­lic Ser­vice

Asians on Film Fes­ti­val–Best Cin­e­matog­ra­phy–Short Form

The In­die Fest: Award of Mer­it

AIFF: Best An­i­ma­tion Feb 2012

Pothound Of­fi­cial Se­lec­tions:Pothound was screened at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Film Fes­ti­val, Mar­tinique Film Fes­ti­val, Caribbean Tales Film Fes­ti­val, TTFC T&T Di­as­po­ra Film Fes­ti­val, New York City In­ter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, New York In­ter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, World Kids In­ter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val, Sao Paulo In­ter­na­tion­al Short Film Fes­ti­val, Salen­to Finibus Ter­rae Film Fes­ti­val, Cor­ti da Sog­ni Film Fes­ti­val, Fan­dana Film Fes­ti­val, Por­to­bel­lo Film Fes­ti­val, Short and Sweet TV Lon­don Screen­ing, Asians on Film Fes­ti­val and the in­ter­film Berlin Shorts At­tack.