So many movies, so little time

There ain’t no flops at SILVERDOCS

Wednesday, June 7, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo (Above) Online gamer Andrew Neel and his filmmaking partner Luke Meyer profiled a Baltimore group who take over a park or farmland and spend the day fighting, conquering and nation building in ‘‘Darkon.” Click here to enlarge this photo (Left) Filmmakers Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing created a documentary about children and faith in ‘‘Jesus Camp.”

Partners Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing had a simple idea. They wanted to make an indie film about ‘‘children and their faith,” says Grady, a former D.C. resident whose parents live in Silver Spring. Searching the Internet, the filmmakers, who made headlines last year for their indie ‘‘Boys of Baraka,” found a summer camp designed to prepare children to change the world through their Christian ministry. Soon ‘‘Jesus Camp” was baptized.

Sometimes filmmaking requires mixing business with pleasure. Making a commercial for cable’s VHI, Micah Perta taped punk rocker John Plough cutting and slicing a vinyl record, then using a paper clip as a needle to play it. Along with co-producer Rob Grobengieser, the D.C. native ended up making the commercial as well as a musical short that blends the actual musician’s recording along with his sounds in ‘‘Bump, Tick, Scratch.”

Then there’s online gamer Andrew Neel, who went nuts when he heard about a Baltimore group whose members transform themselves from mundane stay-at-home dads and Starbucks Coffee barristers to live action heroes. Seems every other weekend, some 200 to 300 costumed play-actors take over a park or farmland and spend the day fighting, conquering and nation building. High-tailing it down to Maryland to meet the potential film stars, a couple of years and hundreds of videotape hours later, Neel and his partner Luke Meyer have made the feature-length film ‘‘Darkon.”

Fortunately, all four films, along with some 96 other documentaries from 22 countries, can be experienced at the fourth annual SILVERDOCS AFI⁄Discovery Channel Film Festival from Thursday, June 13, through Sunday, June 18, in Silver Spring. With Discovery Channel anteing up a million bucks to finance the film festival, the goal is to get people into one of the sparkly theaters at AFI or next door at Round House Theatre, says Carrie Passmore, Discovery Channel’s Senior Vice President.

This year’s ‘‘celebrities ‘r’ us” roster includes could-be-running-for-president Al Gore discussing technology in his keynote speech: ‘‘The Future of Real.” (His film ‘‘An Inconvenient Truth” won’t be shown.) SILVERDOCS will honor Martin Scorsese, best known for his dramatic hits like ‘‘Taxi Driver” and ‘‘Raging Bull,” but also beloved for his documentary ‘‘The Last Waltz,” which will be shown at the outdoor theater. Some corporate bigwig could have been enlisted to interview Scorsese, Festival Director Patricia Finneran notes, but instead, indie auteur Jim Jarmusch, maker of ‘‘Broken Flowers” and ‘‘Dead Man,” was summoned to get down and dirty with the director.

While name brands make the world spin, most of the 20,000 SILVERDOCS moviegoers, are hankering for the films, shorts and classes. This year, SILVERDOCS feature specials will include ‘‘DOCS Rx: A World of Documentaries on Global Health” and a celebration of South Africa’s 30th anniversary of the Soweto uprisings. And with such strong musical themed entries, organizers decided to add a yearly competition at the festival.

But who are these people willing to spend hours behind a lens, sitting in an editing room and hoping somehow, somebody will see their work? In fact, for most indie filmmakers, this job is more a labor of obsessive love than any kind of moneymaking-living-in-Malibu business venture. It requires enormous ingenuity to make a movie as well as a living. ‘‘Darkon” filmmakers Neel and Meyer struggle to work it out while living in Brooklyn’s arty Williamsburg area. Both graduated from film school, then went on to make shorts, music videos and most importantly, business connections.

Nicholson came into the movie making business just three years ago. The Greenwich Village resident may have been raised on a 40-acre farm on the outskirts of Baltimore, but she hit advertising big-time by creating ads for the likes of the beverage company Snapple. Laid off, she says, when 9⁄11 changed the world, she chose to freelance. Currently, she is in Prague filming an ad for the newest James Bond film.

On a whim, Nicholson took a couple of moviemaking classes at New York University three years ago, where she produced a 10-minute short about a dog grooming school. Hearing the audience laugh, she says, was the ‘‘best feeling in the world,” and she was hooked.

Micah Perta knows how to make his day job work. He used some of the footage he shot making commercials for Cable TV’s VHI to create his short. But even with the perks, he’s ambivalent about the day job. This D.C. native hates the cacophony a TV creates in his home, so it’s banned. As for his view of the value of his ad campaigns, he quips, ‘‘I don’t do toilet paper commercials.” Instead, he says, his ads sell ‘‘something cool” and then he makes an even cooler indie short.

Watching movies

It may be a good thing that SILVERDOCS is evaluating how technology is changing the industry. And yes, perhaps it’s great that people now can watch movies on everything from a tiny Blackberry to a 64-inch high-definition TV, but for now, Nicholson sees many of the Internet sites as a ‘‘mess.” She hopes that eventually they will be more carefully curated, helping the audience cull out the good from the downright horrible.

Grady believes all these options might help some unknown filmmaker break out from the pack, but doesn’t believe more technology means better movie making: Think cable TV’s penchant for airing reruns.

For these artists, the best indie filmmakers ‘‘let the people and the place tell the story. What seems ridiculous on the surface, once it gets familiar, you love it,” Nicholson explains.

Luke and Neel try to ‘‘keep away from offering a point of view.” At first, viewers may laugh at the ‘‘Darkon” actors parading around parks dressed in homemade armor, but members of the group ‘‘take pride in being different,” Luke says. He hopes viewers will be ‘‘interested in the philosophical implications, and how we all role play.”

Grady didn’t know what to expect at the evangelical summer camp in Missouri. With no background in this religious movement, the Jewish filmmaker admits, ‘‘it was completely foreign” and ‘‘extremely challenging to edit.”

She wasn’t interested in offering a particular viewpoint, noting that religious fervor isn’t a unique phenomenon worldwide. Still, seeing this intensity in American kids wearing Gap sweatshirts was quite another matter. Grady has learned that no matter how unbiased she tries to be, the audience notices every glance or wink in an effort to decide what the film really means.

And while indies have spawned reality TV squared, the filmmakers hate the genre.

‘‘It has made filming harder for filmmakers,” Grady points out. ‘‘People are leery of being filmed, fearing that they will appear bad.

‘‘People ask ‘what character am I going to be,’” she continues.

Yes this indie business is tough, but at least they don’t have to deal with Richard Hatch or Omarosa.

The fourth annual SILVERDOCS AFI⁄Discovery Channel Film Festival is set for Thursday, June 13, through Sunday, June 18, at AFI, 8633 Colesville Road, Silver Spring. Visit SILVERDOCS.COM or call 877-DOCS-TIX.