Act now! DP soon! Read!! Heed!!!
You currently have opportunities, dear player, to get your feet wet on the home front as a pair of new indie projects from unheralded sources have plopped themselves down on the C-U Blogfidential radar. Of course we’ll decipher the readings for you because that’s what we’re here to do! Besides, we like to stare at the little flashing red lights because they’re proof positive that, a-hem, we are not alone.
Thanks to Cameron Counts of the Central Illinois Film Commission, we learned that a mystery filmmaker had set up a casting session in Decatur for a mystery film the same day as our INFORMANT! sojourn. Timely e-mails and phone calls resulted in an after-movie excursion featuring yours truly, man of action Sanford Hess, Thomas C. Card of Pounded Pavement Productions, and the latter’s assistants Jenna and Charlotte. Over dinner, drinks, and discussion at retro supper club Bizou in the downtown, Card lifted the veil about himself – a Decatur native who works in New York City as a product and fashion photographer with an artistic portfolio on the side – and the project, which dramatizes a local kidnapping that took place in the early Nineties.
As of this writing, CUBlog is unsure what personnel still need to be brought aboard for the film, which had been scheduled to start shooting by Halloween according to Card. The original Craigslist post detailed about twenty acting roles as well as numerous crew positions including [in their words] “Crew Camera Man (Sony EX3 Cameras experience), Script Supervisor, Production Assistants, Gaffer, Key Grip, Soundman, Wardrobe Designer, Hair + Makeup, [and] Prop Designer (knowledge of guns is helpful).” Write info [at] poundedpavement [dot] com or call Card at (917) 447-3269 or Jenna at (917) 488-3777 if you’d like to find out more. Card has visited MICRO-FILM Country at least once since then, so the game is still afoot for his untitled first feature.
Mere days later, the plot thickened when CUBlog acquaintance Christopher DeSouza contacted us about a completely different project in need of a Director of Photography as well as a Sound Designer. According to DeSouza, this “joint venture between a small local production company, Next Process Films, and the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity” will be filmed in the spring or summer of 2010 on the University of Illinois campus. He says they’ve been searching for their DP in the Chicago area but would prefer to hire a camera person based in downstate Illinois for the “three to four week shoot.” Contact DeSouza at cdesouza2 [at] gmail [dot] com or (773) 301-3096 if interested.
He describes the “Untitled Vigilante Project” as such: “A young student journalist is unwittingly saved by a vigilante after she is attacked by an assailant on her routine walk home. This causes her to seek out the vigilante, in hopes of finding out more about the mysterious Good Samaritan. All the while, forces gather to hinder her pursuits as a mounting threat looms over the campus as a whole.” CUBlog will unload more details about both projects as they come to light.
~ Jason Pankoke