Girl Clock!: An Interview with Director Jennifer Ussi
July 19th 2010 03:28
By David O'Connell
David O'Connell writes the website Screen Fanatic as well as contributing to InFilm Australia. He lives in a house weighed down with thousands upon thousands of film scores and VHS tapes slowly dissolving to dust. His favourite directors include Billy Wilder, Sidney Lumet, Patrice Leconte, Alfred Hitchcock, Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese and David Cronenberg. He also greatly admires French and Swedish cinema (even the ones without naughty bits).
Last week I reviewed the winning, lovable Australian comedy Girl Clock! which is currently in a state of limbo. Director Jennifer Ussi and her team are attempting to find distribution for this little gem and hopefully before long they'll be rewarded for their persistance and most importantly, the incredible passion they've brought to this project.
Jennifer herself had a career change in her early thirties, from international marketing to the film industry. Working as Sales and Marketing Director at a luxury Resort in the Caribbean when Ridley Scott filmed ‘White Squall’ on the island and the crew stayed in her resort, she ‘fell’ into the industry and hasn’t looked back since. She moved to Los Angeles where she worked as an assistant Art Director for a couple of years, on everything from Kraft Food to Budweiser and Coca Cola commercials. But Australia called, so she moved to Melbourne to do her Bachelor’s degree at the Victorian College of the Arts. Since then she has written, produced and directed several short films and educational documentaries, and gathered a Masters Degree in film in the process. Jennifer’s short films “The Unique Oneness of Christian Savage” and “Caravan” have been in more than 50 international film festivals between them, including Cannes, and won over a dozen major awards.
Her films and educational videos are now being taught in high schools throughout the English speaking world. In between making films, Jennifer has produced television and high end commercials in China for clients such as Volvo and Peugeot. She is also a successful writer, with an award-winning feature drama ready for production, and has recently been commissioned to write a thriller screenplay for an Australian producer.
Girl Clock! is Jennifer's feature debut and recently I had an opportunity to ask her a few questions about it.
Firstly, I just wanted to ask about how you initially funded your film. And how long a process was that before production began?
It was actually quite a quick process from idea to screen – 6 months to be exact! I had the light bulb moment for the story in October, found the incredibly wonderful Adam Couper to co-write by November, and we shot in the May. During the 6 months of script development we also raised money – we shot on $200,000 which was all privately funded. My business partner and the Casting Director, Margaret Casey, is very well networked in Brisbane, and I had a few contacts with a LITTLE bit of money, so I did a investment proposal, had a couple of investment presentations, and we managed to get enough to shoot. Of course, that meant we all worked on deferred payments, and there was a whole lot of begging and pleading involved, but I had set a goal to shoot in May no matter what. And we did.
Veronica Neave is the real star of the film as Christine. Casting that role must have been so crucial; how did she get involved and was she always a clear-cut choice?
You know, the sad thing about the cast is that they are all incredibly talented, and very well known as theatre actors, so the fact that most distributors won’t pick it up because they are not famous is incredibly frustrating. I think part of the reason this film works so well with the audience is BECAUSE the 3 leading ladies are real. BECAUSE they’re not famous. Their issues; aging, empty nests, biological clocks – are more believable because the cast is believable. I mean, would Meg Ryan REALLY be believable with an ageing ‘I’m becoming invisible” type of issue?!!
But to answer your question. Veronica Neave IS truly a star. On AND off screen. Yes, her role was crucial, and I auditioned in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, but no one really touched Ronnie. Margaret, the Casting Director, had shortlisted her, and Adam Couper (who is a well known theatre actor and stand up comedian) sung her praises. The first time she auditioned I actually had a bit of ‘anti-chemistry’ with her. I didn’t feel comfortable with her, but she was so damn good, and Margaret and Adam (who read for us during all the auditions) cracked me around the head and so I asked her to come in again. The second time there was no anti-chemistry, AND she was fantastic, for a number of reasons. Firstly, she’s an amazing actor. Secondly, she fit the look of the character that I had in my head. Thirdly, she is a gorgeous, sexy actor with a ‘freak of nature body’ as Catarina Hebbard says, and just looked great on screen. It was a no-brainer really! She’s a down to earth, humble, modest, easy to work with, professional and dedicated actor and I can never find enough good things to say about her!
And how did you get the voice of Agro for the role of Keith? (His naked dancing was a real highlight BTW!!)
Choosing Agro – Jamie Dunn – was quite interesting actually. I had no idea who he was. I saw his headshot amongst a hundred others and fell in love with his look – I thought he looked EXACTLY like Keith should look. We weren’t sure he could act, as he’s never done film, and we sure weren’t sure he’d work for deferred payment, but we took a chance, asked him, he auditioned – he was the ONLY actor I auditioned for that role – he was FANTASTIC! And he worked for deferred payment. He even went and bought his own clothes from Lifeline for the role! He would work until 3am on the shoot, drive back up to the Sunshine Coast (about an hour and a half), do his radio show, sleep on the side of the road, and drive back to Brisbane to shoot. Just wonderful to work with, absolutely wonderful.
What has the whole process of getting the film out there been like? I can't imagine how much frustration and despair must be associated with it at times.
Frustrating doesn’t even touch the depth of the difficulty and rollercoaster that we have experienced getting the film out there. We did distributor screenings in Sydney and Melbourne. The film wasn’t finished yet, but we went ahead. A large distributor picked us up straight away – held onto us for five months, and then dumped us. The devastation!!! In the meantime, we realized we had to re-post the film – recut it as it was too long and an all-round crappy cut, re-grade, re-online and get the music (we had songs, but not a score) done, as well as the sound design and sound mix. The whole process of finding more money began again. In the meantime, I had met and fallen head over heels in love with my now new husband, and he believed in me, and the film, so much, he put in the money we needed. We reposted the whole film, but still had no distributor. So we decided to self-distribute, just in Brisbane, as a trial run to prove to distributors that this film had incredible word of mouth, real audience appeal, and didn’t need an A-List cast. The idea was to do a limited release in Brisbane that would be the same as doing a series of Word of Mouth screenings. Without a single penny in P&A, we released, and it worked brilliantly. We ran in Brisbane for 9 weeks – 3 times a day, 7 days a week. VERY unusual to have such a long run – we ran in 3 cinemas for the first 3 weeks, then just the original cinema – an indie called Blue Room Cinebar. The manager told us that – other than Sex in the City and James Bond – they have never had such an interest, excitement and excellent box office!
The main theme about how women approaching that touchy age around 40 deal with the maternal drive vs. career - as well as the paucity of suitable men out there! - isn't one that gets much attention in Australian cinema. The film obviously has very personal elements for you?
I’m not sure that the 40 woman gets ANY attention, anywhere! It’s all part of the invisibility that we face when we reach this age. The funny thing is, I’m 46 and am absolutely the happiest I have ever been in my life. I think I am at my peak, and I know so many other women of my age who feel the same way. The maternal drive vs career is definitely a universal issue, but I think also that it’s not about baby versus career. It’s often just the fact that you haven’t met the right partner, or your biological clock just never kicked in, or you just sort of kept putting it off for various reasons. My clock kicked in at 40 – for the first time ever, but it was actually because of a medical problem (a small tumour on my pituitary gland that made my baby wanting hormone go into overdrive) – once I was on medication and my hormones were regulated, the clock went dormant again. Thank heavens! But thank God! When my clock kicked in I went absolutely nutty – ALL I wanted was a baby! I had no partner, and really didn’t want one, cause I was busy with my own life, I just wanted a baby. I realized that almost every woman on the planet goes through the same insanity – REAL insanity – and that at the end of the day, it’s actually quite funny. And then my friends around me were going through other issues – kids that just won’t leave home, wrinkles and sagging and drooping and not getting second looks in the street anymore. These are HUGE issues, life altering issues, and, although we laugh at them because we’re at that age where we CAN laugh at them, they’re really quite serious. Why wasn’t there ANY movie out there that really said – hey girls, we all have these issues, let’s just remember – we’re middle aged and magnificent!
I love the film's very skillful balance of humour and pathos which are very true to life. Both elements are perfectly weighted, I think. It must be so easy to overstep the mark and go for easy laughs at the expense of the more serious undertones.
Well, actually, my strength is drama! I have never done a comedy before, not even wrote one, so actually, it was harder for me to get out of the more serious undertones and lighten it up with some good laughs! But, at the end of the day, I really thought my journey of trying to get a baby without a husband or a partner was really funny, and I find so much of life is actually really funny, that it did get easy to play the comedy. But we are all light and shade. We can laugh a lot, but we also cry a lot. And Queenie van de Zandt (Margo) and Ronnie are amazing comediennes, so they brought their magic into it, and together – with Adam Couper’s writing of course - we were able to find that balance.
What was your working process like with co-writer Adam Couper?
Adam had never written a screenplay before, but he had written a lot of comedy, and used to be a stand-up comedian, and was lead writer on ABC’s ‘Backberner’. He loved the concept, so came on board immediately. We would brainstorm, he’d go and write a draft, together we would ‘fix’ it, then have a reading with a bunch of actors that he’d wrangle. His strength was the dialogue – it’s AMAZING dialogue – mine was the structure and using visuals instead of words. He was great at comedy, I was good at emotion. So I think together we worked well, strengthening each other’s weaknesses throughout. We’re working now on another script, though this time he’s doing all the writing; and it’s coming out fantastically. I’m quite excited really.
I really loved the score too (I should mention that I'm quite unnaturally devoted to film music, being a passionate collector with over 4000 film scores on CD clogging my shelves!! It's fair to say that I'm always conscious of the score in any film!) What's your connection to composer Loïc Valmy and how did his involvement come about?
I’m so glad you are making mention of the score. Loïc Valmy is so talented. I met him a couple of years ago when he was the judge (along with Margaret Pomeranz) of the Heart of Gold Film Festival in Gympie (he lives on the Sunshine Coast). One of my shorts, ‘The Unique Oneness of Christian Savage’ was in it, and he awarded it Best Australian Film and Best Children’s film. He really loved the film and we stayed in contact. When Icon dumped us, AFS picked us up, then dumped us too. Then Mushroom Pictures picked us up, on the condition that the score was completely re-done. (It hadn’t actually been done, we were using Blair Joscelyne’s original songs (Blair is an incredibly talented composer based in Sydney), but Blair had never had time to do a proper score). Mushroom closed their picture division down, so we were once again without a distributor, but the good thing was that we had already started the re-scoring. And what an amazing job. Loïc works for the FILM. He understands every nuance, every beat, every thought that a score needs to have to enhance the film, rather than overtake the film. He never gives up. We really struggled with the last song – it had to have so many beats, it had to be quirky and fast and slow and stop and start (but Jennifer, I’m not even sure that’s musically possible!) and he never gave up until he got it exactly right. I think he did 12 versions. Then hit it, perfect, and insisted we should put a statue up of him! He has scored dozens of French films, but Girl Clock! is his first Australian one, so I hope that he gets the recognition he deserves from the Australian film industry, and gets a million films from here on out!
And finally, where is the film at right now in terms of the whole arduous process of trying to ensure that it finds the audience it deserves?
We’re basically almost at Square One. Except we have a finished film, and a fantastic trial run at theatres with great screen averages to prove that this film doesn’t need A-List actors. And the story of My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a big inspiration to us. Basically, they couldn’t find a distributor either – for the exact same reasons we can’t; mainstream and commercial (therefore needing multiplex exhibition) but with no A-List actors. Finally, after months and months of screening in scout halls and Greek clubs and heaven knows where else, Tom Hanks started championing them. The rest, as they say is history! And so is their $350 MILLION box office takings. We need a champion! (the $350mil wouldn’t be bad either…) I don’t know Tom Hanks, actually I don’t know any Tom at all, the most famous person I know is actually IN the movie (and we’ve already established that doesn’t count), so I am hoping to reach out and ask reviewers – like your good self! – to champion the film.
In mid August (I’m off on honeymoon in a few days, and it’s the MIFF, so have to delay it a bit), I’m hoping that I can put my plea out to the reviewer community to come and watch the film at the screenings we’ll arrange in Sydney and Melbourne, and together we can show a distributor that Girl Clock can be the next Kenny – a heartwarming, hilarious, quirky film that touches the audience, has great word of mouth, and can have the box office results that they need and want.
For more information about Girl Clock! visit the film's official website here.
David O'Connell writes the website Screen Fanatic as well as contributing to InFilm Australia. He lives in a house weighed down with thousands upon thousands of film scores and VHS tapes slowly dissolving to dust. His favourite directors include Billy Wilder, Sidney Lumet, Patrice Leconte, Alfred Hitchcock, Brian De Palma, Martin Scorsese and David Cronenberg. He also greatly admires French and Swedish cinema (even the ones without naughty bits).
Director Jennifer Ussi (second from right) with her three stars, Caterina Hebbard, Veronica Neave and Queenie van de Zandt.
Last week I reviewed the winning, lovable Australian comedy Girl Clock! which is currently in a state of limbo. Director Jennifer Ussi and her team are attempting to find distribution for this little gem and hopefully before long they'll be rewarded for their persistance and most importantly, the incredible passion they've brought to this project.
Jennifer herself had a career change in her early thirties, from international marketing to the film industry. Working as Sales and Marketing Director at a luxury Resort in the Caribbean when Ridley Scott filmed ‘White Squall’ on the island and the crew stayed in her resort, she ‘fell’ into the industry and hasn’t looked back since. She moved to Los Angeles where she worked as an assistant Art Director for a couple of years, on everything from Kraft Food to Budweiser and Coca Cola commercials. But Australia called, so she moved to Melbourne to do her Bachelor’s degree at the Victorian College of the Arts. Since then she has written, produced and directed several short films and educational documentaries, and gathered a Masters Degree in film in the process. Jennifer’s short films “The Unique Oneness of Christian Savage” and “Caravan” have been in more than 50 international film festivals between them, including Cannes, and won over a dozen major awards.
Her films and educational videos are now being taught in high schools throughout the English speaking world. In between making films, Jennifer has produced television and high end commercials in China for clients such as Volvo and Peugeot. She is also a successful writer, with an award-winning feature drama ready for production, and has recently been commissioned to write a thriller screenplay for an Australian producer.
Girl Clock! is Jennifer's feature debut and recently I had an opportunity to ask her a few questions about it.
Firstly, I just wanted to ask about how you initially funded your film. And how long a process was that before production began?
It was actually quite a quick process from idea to screen – 6 months to be exact! I had the light bulb moment for the story in October, found the incredibly wonderful Adam Couper to co-write by November, and we shot in the May. During the 6 months of script development we also raised money – we shot on $200,000 which was all privately funded. My business partner and the Casting Director, Margaret Casey, is very well networked in Brisbane, and I had a few contacts with a LITTLE bit of money, so I did a investment proposal, had a couple of investment presentations, and we managed to get enough to shoot. Of course, that meant we all worked on deferred payments, and there was a whole lot of begging and pleading involved, but I had set a goal to shoot in May no matter what. And we did.
Veronica Neave is the real star of the film as Christine. Casting that role must have been so crucial; how did she get involved and was she always a clear-cut choice?
You know, the sad thing about the cast is that they are all incredibly talented, and very well known as theatre actors, so the fact that most distributors won’t pick it up because they are not famous is incredibly frustrating. I think part of the reason this film works so well with the audience is BECAUSE the 3 leading ladies are real. BECAUSE they’re not famous. Their issues; aging, empty nests, biological clocks – are more believable because the cast is believable. I mean, would Meg Ryan REALLY be believable with an ageing ‘I’m becoming invisible” type of issue?!!
But to answer your question. Veronica Neave IS truly a star. On AND off screen. Yes, her role was crucial, and I auditioned in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, but no one really touched Ronnie. Margaret, the Casting Director, had shortlisted her, and Adam Couper (who is a well known theatre actor and stand up comedian) sung her praises. The first time she auditioned I actually had a bit of ‘anti-chemistry’ with her. I didn’t feel comfortable with her, but she was so damn good, and Margaret and Adam (who read for us during all the auditions) cracked me around the head and so I asked her to come in again. The second time there was no anti-chemistry, AND she was fantastic, for a number of reasons. Firstly, she’s an amazing actor. Secondly, she fit the look of the character that I had in my head. Thirdly, she is a gorgeous, sexy actor with a ‘freak of nature body’ as Catarina Hebbard says, and just looked great on screen. It was a no-brainer really! She’s a down to earth, humble, modest, easy to work with, professional and dedicated actor and I can never find enough good things to say about her!
And how did you get the voice of Agro for the role of Keith? (His naked dancing was a real highlight BTW!!)
Choosing Agro – Jamie Dunn – was quite interesting actually. I had no idea who he was. I saw his headshot amongst a hundred others and fell in love with his look – I thought he looked EXACTLY like Keith should look. We weren’t sure he could act, as he’s never done film, and we sure weren’t sure he’d work for deferred payment, but we took a chance, asked him, he auditioned – he was the ONLY actor I auditioned for that role – he was FANTASTIC! And he worked for deferred payment. He even went and bought his own clothes from Lifeline for the role! He would work until 3am on the shoot, drive back up to the Sunshine Coast (about an hour and a half), do his radio show, sleep on the side of the road, and drive back to Brisbane to shoot. Just wonderful to work with, absolutely wonderful.
What has the whole process of getting the film out there been like? I can't imagine how much frustration and despair must be associated with it at times.
Frustrating doesn’t even touch the depth of the difficulty and rollercoaster that we have experienced getting the film out there. We did distributor screenings in Sydney and Melbourne. The film wasn’t finished yet, but we went ahead. A large distributor picked us up straight away – held onto us for five months, and then dumped us. The devastation!!! In the meantime, we realized we had to re-post the film – recut it as it was too long and an all-round crappy cut, re-grade, re-online and get the music (we had songs, but not a score) done, as well as the sound design and sound mix. The whole process of finding more money began again. In the meantime, I had met and fallen head over heels in love with my now new husband, and he believed in me, and the film, so much, he put in the money we needed. We reposted the whole film, but still had no distributor. So we decided to self-distribute, just in Brisbane, as a trial run to prove to distributors that this film had incredible word of mouth, real audience appeal, and didn’t need an A-List cast. The idea was to do a limited release in Brisbane that would be the same as doing a series of Word of Mouth screenings. Without a single penny in P&A, we released, and it worked brilliantly. We ran in Brisbane for 9 weeks – 3 times a day, 7 days a week. VERY unusual to have such a long run – we ran in 3 cinemas for the first 3 weeks, then just the original cinema – an indie called Blue Room Cinebar. The manager told us that – other than Sex in the City and James Bond – they have never had such an interest, excitement and excellent box office!
The main theme about how women approaching that touchy age around 40 deal with the maternal drive vs. career - as well as the paucity of suitable men out there! - isn't one that gets much attention in Australian cinema. The film obviously has very personal elements for you?
I’m not sure that the 40 woman gets ANY attention, anywhere! It’s all part of the invisibility that we face when we reach this age. The funny thing is, I’m 46 and am absolutely the happiest I have ever been in my life. I think I am at my peak, and I know so many other women of my age who feel the same way. The maternal drive vs career is definitely a universal issue, but I think also that it’s not about baby versus career. It’s often just the fact that you haven’t met the right partner, or your biological clock just never kicked in, or you just sort of kept putting it off for various reasons. My clock kicked in at 40 – for the first time ever, but it was actually because of a medical problem (a small tumour on my pituitary gland that made my baby wanting hormone go into overdrive) – once I was on medication and my hormones were regulated, the clock went dormant again. Thank heavens! But thank God! When my clock kicked in I went absolutely nutty – ALL I wanted was a baby! I had no partner, and really didn’t want one, cause I was busy with my own life, I just wanted a baby. I realized that almost every woman on the planet goes through the same insanity – REAL insanity – and that at the end of the day, it’s actually quite funny. And then my friends around me were going through other issues – kids that just won’t leave home, wrinkles and sagging and drooping and not getting second looks in the street anymore. These are HUGE issues, life altering issues, and, although we laugh at them because we’re at that age where we CAN laugh at them, they’re really quite serious. Why wasn’t there ANY movie out there that really said – hey girls, we all have these issues, let’s just remember – we’re middle aged and magnificent!
I love the film's very skillful balance of humour and pathos which are very true to life. Both elements are perfectly weighted, I think. It must be so easy to overstep the mark and go for easy laughs at the expense of the more serious undertones.
Well, actually, my strength is drama! I have never done a comedy before, not even wrote one, so actually, it was harder for me to get out of the more serious undertones and lighten it up with some good laughs! But, at the end of the day, I really thought my journey of trying to get a baby without a husband or a partner was really funny, and I find so much of life is actually really funny, that it did get easy to play the comedy. But we are all light and shade. We can laugh a lot, but we also cry a lot. And Queenie van de Zandt (Margo) and Ronnie are amazing comediennes, so they brought their magic into it, and together – with Adam Couper’s writing of course - we were able to find that balance.
What was your working process like with co-writer Adam Couper?
Adam had never written a screenplay before, but he had written a lot of comedy, and used to be a stand-up comedian, and was lead writer on ABC’s ‘Backberner’. He loved the concept, so came on board immediately. We would brainstorm, he’d go and write a draft, together we would ‘fix’ it, then have a reading with a bunch of actors that he’d wrangle. His strength was the dialogue – it’s AMAZING dialogue – mine was the structure and using visuals instead of words. He was great at comedy, I was good at emotion. So I think together we worked well, strengthening each other’s weaknesses throughout. We’re working now on another script, though this time he’s doing all the writing; and it’s coming out fantastically. I’m quite excited really.
I really loved the score too (I should mention that I'm quite unnaturally devoted to film music, being a passionate collector with over 4000 film scores on CD clogging my shelves!! It's fair to say that I'm always conscious of the score in any film!) What's your connection to composer Loïc Valmy and how did his involvement come about?
I’m so glad you are making mention of the score. Loïc Valmy is so talented. I met him a couple of years ago when he was the judge (along with Margaret Pomeranz) of the Heart of Gold Film Festival in Gympie (he lives on the Sunshine Coast). One of my shorts, ‘The Unique Oneness of Christian Savage’ was in it, and he awarded it Best Australian Film and Best Children’s film. He really loved the film and we stayed in contact. When Icon dumped us, AFS picked us up, then dumped us too. Then Mushroom Pictures picked us up, on the condition that the score was completely re-done. (It hadn’t actually been done, we were using Blair Joscelyne’s original songs (Blair is an incredibly talented composer based in Sydney), but Blair had never had time to do a proper score). Mushroom closed their picture division down, so we were once again without a distributor, but the good thing was that we had already started the re-scoring. And what an amazing job. Loïc works for the FILM. He understands every nuance, every beat, every thought that a score needs to have to enhance the film, rather than overtake the film. He never gives up. We really struggled with the last song – it had to have so many beats, it had to be quirky and fast and slow and stop and start (but Jennifer, I’m not even sure that’s musically possible!) and he never gave up until he got it exactly right. I think he did 12 versions. Then hit it, perfect, and insisted we should put a statue up of him! He has scored dozens of French films, but Girl Clock! is his first Australian one, so I hope that he gets the recognition he deserves from the Australian film industry, and gets a million films from here on out!
And finally, where is the film at right now in terms of the whole arduous process of trying to ensure that it finds the audience it deserves?
We’re basically almost at Square One. Except we have a finished film, and a fantastic trial run at theatres with great screen averages to prove that this film doesn’t need A-List actors. And the story of My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a big inspiration to us. Basically, they couldn’t find a distributor either – for the exact same reasons we can’t; mainstream and commercial (therefore needing multiplex exhibition) but with no A-List actors. Finally, after months and months of screening in scout halls and Greek clubs and heaven knows where else, Tom Hanks started championing them. The rest, as they say is history! And so is their $350 MILLION box office takings. We need a champion! (the $350mil wouldn’t be bad either…) I don’t know Tom Hanks, actually I don’t know any Tom at all, the most famous person I know is actually IN the movie (and we’ve already established that doesn’t count), so I am hoping to reach out and ask reviewers – like your good self! – to champion the film.
In mid August (I’m off on honeymoon in a few days, and it’s the MIFF, so have to delay it a bit), I’m hoping that I can put my plea out to the reviewer community to come and watch the film at the screenings we’ll arrange in Sydney and Melbourne, and together we can show a distributor that Girl Clock can be the next Kenny – a heartwarming, hilarious, quirky film that touches the audience, has great word of mouth, and can have the box office results that they need and want.
For more information about Girl Clock! visit the film's official website here.
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Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
Comment by David O'Connell
Screen Fanatic
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
Though i don't have much interest in the film i found some of the answers very revealing in a stae of play way.
Comment by David O'Connell
Screen Fanatic