The new, new wave: UWM Production Club takes a shot at cinematic greatness
If they were born 50 years earlier, the members of the UWM Production Club would have been guerilla filmmakers in turtlenecks and berets, wreaking havoc on cinematic conventions with 8mm cameras in one hand and cigarettes in the other. They do have the cigarettes, but instead of a beat-up 8mm, they have a $25,000 Red One. Instead of laughing at property license laws, they’re writing grants and securing insurance.
The club members were born in the late ’80s and early ’90s, and learned Final Cut Pro in middle school. Their rebellion is not to defy cinema by terrorizing its form, but by exceeding it. The medium has gone through a classic period, a postmodern period, a post-postmodern period, and countless forms of experimentation. So, what’s left?
“There are people wondering if cinema is timeless,” says Production Club president Jessica Farrell. “Our generation has a lot to change about cinema, not just the technology.” Having grown up with access to thousands of films and video equipment from childhood, she says her generation has “a different way to use these tools.”
After years of cutting its teeth with exercises and work on other peoples’ productions, the club is currently preparing for its first short film. Gears is a sci-fi mystery written by accomplished Milwaukee scribe Ryan Plato and set to begin shooting at the end of the month. Production Club officer Travis Thorpe says the club members chose Gears from dozens of scripts when they asked themselves, “What would be good for the club?”
They knew the script would be a challenge, both dramatically and technically. The film involves “a couple of car crashes” and a child actress—big hurdles for the group—while dramatically concentrating on a relationship between two characters. “It’s a bigger, deeper story between a father and daughter than I’ve seen,” says Farrell. “I think this film [will let us] pass all the clichés and focus on another way to build suspense.”
Making a high-caliber short became possible last spring when the Production Club was awarded a state-funded grant of $8,000. The grant allowed the club to rent the Red One, an extremely high-resolution digital camera used in dozens of big productions, including District 9 and David Fincher’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.
The Red One puts the movie within reach for the Production Club, but it doesn’t make the movie. “A lot has to go into that frame to get to your audience and make them a part of the film,” says Farrell. Another grant of $7,000 was secured for additional equipment. Neither of these grants, however, puts discretionary money in the hands of the club; they essentially make the state a partner. The grants don’t cover the props and wardrobe needed to make the film, and provisions of the grants outright forbid the funding to be used for essential costs like food and gasoline.
That’s why the group has turned to Kickstarter for an additional $7,000. Kickstarter is another facet of cinema’s new generation. Farrell pointed out that at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, 14 films were funded in part by Kickstarter campaigns. It’s a real and practical alternative to funding movies with large investors.
The campaign has until the stroke of midnight on Jan. 28 to meet its goal. If raised, the money will give the club the resources to match its ambition and skill, and unleash a hungry, young generation of Milwaukee filmmakers on its first battle against the cinematic elements.
