Section Eight's Ana Feliciano Talks Torture and Scaring People in Drive-Thru's

We sat down with Ana Feliciano to find out more about her experience working on the film, Section Eight, which was honored 1st Runner Up at the Sacramento Film Festival's 10x10 Filmmaker Challenge. The film edged out 21 other films to be included as one of the top three audience favorites for the evening. At the film's conclusion, the audience's silence broke into cheers, no doubt due to the incredible performances by lead actress, Ana Feliciano, and supporting actors, Ronald Brokenbrough and Brad Clark. This is just the beginning for Feliciano as she has recently been involved in national commercials, and is set to star in an upcoming independent film project, Widow. In addition, she's also re-energizing her modeling career.

Section Eight tells the story of a former P.O.W., (Ana Feliciano), who must try to come to terms with the losses she's sustained after the relentless physical and psychological torture she has endured at the hand of her captors.

Section Eight was no walk in the park to shoot, given the rules of the 10x10 filmmaker challenge. The project had to be conceived, written, shot, edited, and ready for its debut within 10 days. What had been planned as a two-day shoot over a Saturday and Sunday was unexpectedly squandered by conflicting schedules from a rival filmmaking team working within several of the same locations. The first evening's shots were intended to begin production around 7:00 pm, but had to be shoved back to 1:00 in the morning.

Spirits were low and both cast and crew were very tired from a day of waiting and from so many missed opportunities throughout the day. It was under these circumstances that lead actress Ana Feliciano was supposed to "make magic."

To make matters even more complicated, Feliciano was going to have to pretend to be interrogated and tortured by someone who wasn't even going to be on set that evening. "Brad's scenes were shot separate from mine," says Feliciano, "and so we had Joaquin (the cinematographer) running Brad's lines with me. It was really tough because I am supposed to be absolutely terrified and tortured but of course Joaquin happens to be one of the sweetest guys on earth, not a mean bone in his body."

Even the director was ready to pull the plug on the entire production, but then Feliciano took the bull by the horns and almost single-handedly re-energized everyone on set. She managed to keep everyone's spirits high and still had enough pep later on to make an early morning run to a local drive-thru (in full make up and blood-soaked top) in hopes she could get a comedic rise out of the unsuspecting restaurant staff. "Maybe it's Maybeline? Or maybe it was the fine work of makeup artist Laura Tapia!" Feliciano laughs. "It was so surreal seeing myself like that. Even at 3:30am on the drive home, I just HAD to share the artwork...The guy [at the window] about fainted. As calmly as possible he asked if I was ok and if there was someone he could call."

When all was said and done, Section Eight proved a success, in spite of production difficulties, mostly due to the high energy that everyone brought to the production over that Saturday and Sunday. One thing's for sure: if Ana Feliciano can survive torture, and a grumpy director, she can survive anything.