Movie Magic!

While I worked Easter Brunch yesterday, Ryan and our friend/collaborator/DP/business partner Renzo Spirit Buffalo shot the final shots of Ryan's short film, "Billy." Ryan conceived of, wrote, stars in and produced the short. I helped him brainstorm about it, held a boom, schlepped a few bags and produced, largely in name only. This was definitely Ryan's labor of love. Our friend Larry Tobias appears in it in an HILARIOUS turn, and he helped shoot the inside shots. Ryan's friend Elizabeth Durham also appears in it, and is wonderful. The whole thing cost about $600, but it looks like a million damn dollars. It's a simple story, well told by good actors and a DP who made every single outside shot look like it was shot on a $250,000 camera. It doesn't hurt that Renzo has shot big studio feature movies on $250,000 cameras before...

Anyway, all that's left to do now is post-production: editing, music, titles. The stuff Ryan does at work every day. I think he'll probably have a rough edit within a couple of weeks! His first movie. Our production company's first personal project! As Ryan said at our wrap dinner celebration last night - "My whole life I've dreamed of making my own movie, and now I've done it!" I'm SO proud of him. He had an inspiration for a character about 4 months ago, and now he has his first short film shot and ready for editing. He believed in it and made it happen: on his days off, after long days at work, before long days at work - whenever he could steal some time. He borrowed cameras, rented equipment, got friends excited and involved in the project. He schlepped all around the city, asked for favors, bartered trades. Whatever it took, he made it happen. The power of the creative spirit and the determined will. There's still a lot of work left to do, but the hardest part has been completed, the rest is just lovingly laying it out on a timeline and letting it tell its story. And then, of course, marketing the hell out of it. Creativity meets the real world! As the movie progresses, I will document it here!