The Cutting Room Floor

LOGLINE

Kate is an aspiring young film editor who finally catches her big break editing a romance feature film. With her job, relationship and sanity on the line, can she pull it off under the deadline or will she lose it all?

SYNOPSIS

Kate is an assistant editor working on a Hollywood romance film when her mentor, the lead editor, must leave the project due to a worsening medical condition. Kate is then unexpectedly promoted to lead editor and finds herself editing her first feature film under an impossibly tight deadline. As Kate steps up to this huge undertaking, her relationship falls apart. She avoids coping with her recently broken-off engagement and, in turn, loses herself in the work...literally. The romantic footage triggers her memories of her own relationship and she relives its timeline in flashbacks that become muddled with the movie’s footage. With the pressure of a looming deadline, stress and sleep deprivation consume Kate, and the line between memory, reality, and footage become blurred. Kate works through these personal obstacles as she finds catharsis through the editing process and imagines how she would “edit” her relationship. Through this process, she gains the courage to believe in herself and her work. She is victorious as she comes into her own as an editor.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

As a writer and director, I always aim to tell stories of ambitious women who are much more than the one dimensional “strong woman” we see on screen nowadays. I aim to explore female identifying characters who are more nuanced. Women who are dealing with the reality of the pressures we face in society. They say women can have it all...but can we? The pressure to both start a career and a family all in your twenties and thirties is crippling. Most films that depict a woman dealing with this crisis show a male gaze inspired “hot mess” but what about the women with their shit together on the outside, who are struggling on the inside? Telling their story is the goal of THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR. Our protagonist, Kate, is ambitious but is still suffering from the outer pressures of society and inner pressure of self-doubt. She is facing obstacles both in the workplace (doubt from older men that she, a young woman, can take on such a big job) and at home (pressure from her fiancé to give up her career to be a housewife). As a writer/director, I always aim to tell stories of ambitious women who are multifaceted with fear, hope, vulnerability, and most importantly a dream. I hope this film can resonate with a wide audience of not only women but anyone who feels they must choose between their dreams and society’s expectations.

PITCH DECK

Victoria deMartin. Writer & Director

Victoria DeMartin is an award-winning writer and director from New York whose six short films have screened at film festivals nationwide, most recently at Austin Film Festival in 2021. Her historical short film, WINTER RYE, also starring Laura Piccoli, aired on PBS-KCVR and won Best Short Period Piece at The Garden State Film Festival and won Grand Prize at Cornell University’s Centrally Isolated Film Festival. Her 2019 short film SKINDIVING, also starring Piccoli, received a special premiere screening at HBO Headquarters hosted by Ghetto Film School. Victoria's industry experience includes assisting writer/director, Gideon Raff (creator of HOMELAND) on his series THE SPY (Netflix), NOW&THEN (AppleTV+), and feature film THE RED SEA DIVING RESORT. Victoria also worked in post-production on Showtime Network’s BILLIONS. Most recently, she wrote and directed a short film, THE AUDITION, commissioned by Nikon for their new z6iii camera commercial campaign. The screenplay for THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR recently won First Place in the Golden Script Fellowship. Victoria’s screenwriting accolades also include: Best TV Pilot in the 2020 JHRTS Screenplay Competition, 3rd place (TV pilot) in the 2022 Golden Script Competition, Top 4 Finalist for the 2021 Sun Valley Film Festival High Scribe Award, Second Rounder for the Sundance Episode Lab, and a Finalist for Cinequest Screenwriting Competition in 2023. Her pitch for her series "En Tournant" won Lee Daniel's Pitch Please Contest hosted by Ghetto Film School at IFP Week (now Gotham Week). Apart from film and TV, Victoria is a pre-professionally trained ballerina and has been dancing for 25 years now. Her ballet training informs her filmmaking process in terms of her musicality, storytelling through movement, and the choreography found in blocking scenes.

Paul Kmiec. Producer

Paul is an award-winning filmmaker and educator based in San Francisco. He received his BFA in Filmmaking from the SUNY Purchase Film Conservatory in New York and his Master's in Film & Television from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. Notable, his films have won at Austin Arthouse Film Festival, Santa Cruz Film Festival, and Provincetown Int. Film Festival.

Danielle Eva Schwob. Producer and Composer

Danielle Eva Schwob is an award-winning composer and creative producer. Her film work includes MOTHER!, MANHATTAN NIGHT, INDIGNATION, NBC’s SMASH, and Sir David Attenborough's CONQUEST OF THE SKIES. She has also been a Sundance Institute Composers Lab Fellow, an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composers Award Finalist, and a participant in BMI’s Scoring for the Screen, and is a Board Member of the Hollywood Radio and Television Society as well as a voting member of the Recording Academy.

Ben Leong. Producer

Ben Leong is a development and production executive, with experience bringing stories to screen for both television and film. Ben was a Producer on Victoria's short film: KNICK-KNACKS and at BRON Studios worked in Business Affairs on films such as BOMBSHELL (2019) and PIECES OF A WOMAN (2020).

Julia Best Warner. Actress and Co-Producer

Julia is an actress and producer who has starred in RATCHED (Netflix). Her most recent short film “Guilty Pleasures” premiered at the Palm Spring Film Shorts Festival. Her theater credits in Pittsburgh and New York City include The Great Gatsby, Oblivion, Evita, Punk Rock, and Every Brilliant Thing to name a few. She produced and directed the independent series “The Baby Sitters Pub” that can be found on Youtube, and most recently produced an independent pilot “Real Live Girl”, directed by actor and director David Corenswet. Julia plays Naomi in THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR.

David Vollrath. Director of Photography

David Vollrath is a cinematographer whose work spans narrative, documentary, commercial, and music videos. He has shot commercial campaigns for companies such as American Eagle, Tock and Japan Airlines, as well as music videos for artists such as Ben Platt and Kaskade. He shot the 2015 documentary FRESH DRESSED which premiered at Sundance Film Festival and later aired on CNN. His films have also screened at festivals such as Tribeca, South by Southwest, Rhode Island Film Festival, Hollyshorts, and numerous shorts have been selected as Vimeo Staff Picks.

Tricia Holmes. Editor

Tricia Holmes is a film editor with a career spanning 10+ years in features, shorts, television series, and pilots. As an Assistant Editor, she worked on film and television shows such as THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL, among others. As a feature editor, Tricia has edited films such as A LITTLE PRAYER (2023 Sundance premiere) and THE SAME STORM (2021, starring Sandra Oh).

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