A team of aspiring movie makers from South Jersey banded together last year to enter a short film challenge called the 48-Hour Project in Philadelphia.
At the outset of the event, entering teams drew out of a hat to find out what genre their film would be and were given a list of elements to be included in the finished project.
From that point on the clock was ticking. The teams had just 48 hours to brainstorm the ideas for their film, write a script, build sets, rehearse, film, and edit their project.
“I said, ‘as long as we don’t get Musical/Western/Dance we’ll be cool,’” said Amy Charlesworth, one of those filmmakers, realizing after the fact that she had jinxed her team.
“And you know, one in 400-something chances, we sure got it. I said, ‘I never should have said that!’ But we pulled it off.”
The resulting film was “The Devil Wears Spurs” a seven-minute Musical/Western/Dance short with a twist ending that included the additional challenge of needing to write and record an original song for the musical and to choreograph dance/fight scenes.
Despite the quirky mix of elements, the group did pull it off, submitting their finished film in less than two days and receiving awards nominations in five categories after the short’s screening at the project’s festival.
The group Charlesworth worked with on the film is Paulsboro’s Independent Content Studio (ICS), and the organization is working to create their own brand of Hollywood magic, and a community of creative filmmakers, right in the heart of Gloucester County.
Michael Lucas, who is also a co-owner of the All That’s Good Production Co., said he started Independent Content Studio as a way to help create a local network of film professionals.
With All That’s Good, his company has worked on projects all around the country and internationally, but even when his team gets hired to work closer to home, he said they often see projects bringing in more experienced workers from out of town.
“Over the last few years, we’ve seen that when people do come here (for film productions), they hire us, but then they don’t really trust a lot of the local crew here,“ Lucas said. “They don’t think that they have enough credits, because Philadelphia and our market is pretty good when it comes to promotional work, but when it comes to television and film there’s not a ton of people that have done a lot here. Most of that’s in New York or L.A.or in Atlanta, and that seems to be where we’re losing a lot of the bigger jobs.”
Looking to break that cycle of inexperience, Lucas said he started ICS as a locally-focused learning program for anyone interested in film.
“Our initiative was to get some local Paulsboro residents involved,” he said. “It’s basically a free program, which is crazy, like, we should probably get our heads examined.
“Every six months, we’ll bring in 20 new members, and then our current members move into an alumni status, and they will be able to network together, work on projects together, and hopefully pick each other to do things as they grow through the business as well.”
Lucas said participants in the program have run the gamut of everyone from college students seeking their first experience in production work to older people who were already in the industry looking to brush up on their skills.
He said they train people looking to learn about everything from acting to writing and directing, to technical skills like camera and audio work and special effects.
Lucas said the only requirement is that participants put in the necessary time and work to stay in the program.
“If you put the effort in, you’re accepted,” Lucas said. “If you’re not putting effort in, that’s a problem, because then you’re wasting everybody’s time.”
The ICS program is now into its second year and Lucas said they’ve already been able to work on a number of great projects.
A new class will be starting in June, Lucas said, and the current group has been working on a short film they’ll enter in the Salem County Film Festival this month.
“I’m pretty excited for them,” Lucas said. “It’s a really good festival script. I’ve seen similar films do really well. I’m definitely impressed with the way that they approach things. They’re hitting their stride right now.”
Lucas said part of the overall motivation behind the ICS program is to promote South Jersey as a viable option as a film location.
South Jersey, he said, already faces an uphill battle when competing with locations further north in the state, due simply to their proximity to New York City and the existing film industry infrastructure there.
But Lucas said productions with smaller budgets in particular would do well to check out South Jersey due to the lower cost of operating here.
“We always say to people, you can take a million dollars and make it look like you spent five million here,” he said. “Parking alone will cost you $1,000 a day in New York City, where here, we can put that into your project.”
That’s what he’s trying to accomplish with ICS – train film professionals here to be ready for when those productions do come to town.
For Charlesworth, the program has been a perfect fit, and one she’s grown along with.
In her day job, she works as a career counselor at Rowan College of South Jersey, but her dream is to advance her own career in the film industry.
Charlesworth, who is now the group’s head writer and an associate producer, said she’s been with ICS since the beginning when their first group started about a year-and-a-half ago and has now stayed on in a mentor role for the newer members.
“When I completed the year, I was just a writer and the production coordinator at the time, and now I’m also producing as well,” Charlesworth said.
Along with the short for the Salem Film Festival, Charlesworth said her group is currently working on a Jersey Devil-themed “play as you watch” interactive feature among other projects.
She said that just in her short time with ICS she’s already seen more and more productions coming to the area, and with less competition here, she’s excited to see opportunities coming to South Jersey for people new to the industry.
“It’s great that we can do this kind of stuff here in Jersey and not have to go all the way out to California,” she said. “For people starting out, this is the perfect place.”
Leave a Reply