Winter-2022

film because it’s really more sad than scary.The main character has gone through hell. She’s made some bad decisions and is about to make an even worse one. The story was compelling and dealt with the lengths a mother would attempt to recover a lost child.” Another valued member of the team was producer Vincent Cardinale. “Vinny grew up in Monterey and was associate producer on the HBO movie “The Fallout,” Marchese says. “He worked extremely hard on our movie and was a true ‘boots on the ground’ producer.” With Frazier on board, the search was on for a lead actress. The cast of the western she had recently completed, “Murder at Yellowstone City,” included Anna Camp.“Anna had done a lot of light comedy—she was usually cast as a cutesy blond type—but hadn’t done much drama,” Marchese says.“Kelly was asking Anna about her opinion of various actresses for the role, and she gave us great advice, but no one rose to the top. We were almost at the point where we were going to have to put on the brakes. But then Anna said, ‘Hey. What about me?’” The director was amazed, thinking she wouldn’t be interested in a low budget film with a first-time director, set THOMAS MARCHESE ’ S DIGITAL ART PHOTOBASHING 146 C A R M E L M A G A Z I N E • W I N T E R 2 0 2 2 L ike his recent film, Thomas Marchese’s art contains dark undertones. But the man himself is gregarious and outgoing. “That’s the kind of art I like. It’s my vibe,” he says. “You don’t have to be a bleak person to create it.” These haunting images were created by Marchese using a digital technique known as “photobashing.” He begins with an AI generating platform called Midjourney.“Midjourney has been fed millions of images to ‘learn’ from so that it can produce its own unique interpreta- tion of whatever you are asking of it,” he says. Every element in the imagery it generates is completely unique. “I then use that starting point to photo bash the final image into exis- tence, taking bits of stock imagery, 3D models and hand-painted elements into Photoshop to both augment what’s already there, and to add entirely new elements.” As a filmmaker and family man, Marchese leads a busy and sometimes stressful life, and creating images like these in his spare time is a relaxing and rewarding creative sideline. For more images visit www.aiarcana.com . A Pacific Grove native, Marchese has harbored a lifelong interest in film, but his life took other turns, including stints as a musician and newspaper publisher in Seattle and a Soledad homicide detective.