Many films have been shot in Indiana over the past few years. But few of them have received national recognition and distribution. Zack Parker’s ‘Quench’ has bucked the trend and gotten both. The modern gothic tragedy won Parker the Best Director award at the New York International Independent Film Festival.

It takes a lot of effort for a film without any known actors to get noticed by distributors. Zack worked every lead tirelessly. Those months of thankless work paid off when last month the film was released through Vanguard Cinema, vanguardcinema.com. The DVD is now available through Hollywood Video, Movie Gallery, Family Video, and Hastings locations across the country, as well as Amazon.com, Netflix, Blockbuster.com, and basically everywhere online where DVDs are sold.

Zack is doing his share of work promoting the film locally. I caught up with him during a recent signing event at the Landmark Theaters Keystones Arts. The local premiere of the film had been at this location during the Indianapolis International Film Festival. He’s very pleased with the national exposure Vanguard is providing his film. It was a featured new release in this month’s Family Video flyer. There’s a full review scheduled for next month’s edition of Fangoria magazine. This is a little unusual since ‘Quench’ is not a horror flick. Parker’s last film ‘Inexchange’ was a horror film and he developed some good contacts at the magazine. ‘Quench’ delves into parts of the Goth sub-culture and blood cults. For many viewers this film might be a little disturbing and dark. Zack had one distibutor who has been known to promote horror films, tell him it was too dark for their label. In the true spirit of Indie films ‘Quench’ defies being defined by the traditional genres. The film was shot entirely in Parker’s hometown of Richmond Indiana. Richmond is not the industiral urban setting you would typically expect for a film based on the Goth crowd. But it works really well in the film. It’s one of the things that makes the film unique.

The Richmond Art Museum will be screening ‘Quench’  November 21st at 7:00 PM in Richmond Indiana.

You can find out more information on ‘Quench’ at www.alongthetracks.com

Photos by Lynn Budreau

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Posted by admin on November 9th, 2008 :: Filed under DVD Signings
Tags :: Chuck Budreau, Quench, Vanguard, Zack Parker

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Lin, The daughter of King Arthur is the principal character of Debra Kemp’s series “The House of Pendragon”. The first book “The Firebrand” was released in 2003. The second book, “The Recruit” was recently published and Debra is out promoting it’s release. She is currently working on the third book of the series.

As part of the promotion of the book series Debra commissioned Kate Chaplin to shoot an interview explaining the concept behind the series and introduce the author to the world .

We had the great pleasure of shooting at the home of Dr. Chris Jones. His personal library could be a blog post in itself. Filled with Movie props, Medieval weapons, Tiny rocket ships, shrunken heads… and a great selection of books too! It was the perfect backdrop for an author interview…and with the castle feel of the place King Arthur would have felt right at home.

Kate Chaplin pulled together a small but capable crew, for what turned out to be a very straight forward shoot. Kate directed and prompted Debra with questions. Tom Johnson acted as grip. Brian Pearce was running the camera. Stacey Mayo did Debra’s hair and makeup. And I (chuck budreau) captured the audio.

It was great to hear Debra’s story of how the Arthurian bug had taken a hold of her life and thoughts. She’s been in love with the classic tale since the first time she saw the film “Camelot”. Though she confesses that it is not her favorite rendition of the Arthurian Romances… that would be “Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail”.

She traced down every version of the stories going back to Sir Thomas Malory’s “Le Morte d’Arthur” from the 15th century. She decided to take a different approach, based on the view of a young princess raised as a slave.  She really has a passion for this story and enjoys sharing it with others. Her own story is also fascinating as she describes living in England  and how that brought the story to life.

The books are available through Telltalepress.com and Amazon.com

–chuck

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Posted by admin on November 2nd, 2008 :: Filed under Film Shoots
Tags :: Brian Pearce, Chuck Budreau, Debra Kemp, Firebrand, Kate Chaplin, King Arthur, Recruit, Stacey Mayo, Tom Johnson

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How did you spend your weekend?

I spent most of Saturday shooting commercial for an old friend of mine. Mark Racop makes the best replica’s of the 1960′s Batmobile you will ever likely see. It’s his day job. The original car was a modified 1955 Lincoln Futura concept car. The modifications were done by George Barris, the King of Custom Cars. Mark fell in love with the car when he first saw it… during the original run of the Batman TV series… he was three years old at the time, but he knew he wanted one of those cars.

I met Mark in high-school, we hung out and started making movies together.  One day we were looking at the wreckage of his mother’s 1974 Monte Carlo (really good story in itself), and he started drawing up plans to convert it into … a Bat Replica. That Monte was too badly twisted in the wreck… (yes I was driving)… so he found a 1975 Monte Carlo to work with instead. We started the long work of converting it in the spring of 1983. Both Mark and I met our wives while building that car. Chicks love the car.

Fast forward about 20 years… Mark is still in love with that car…(and his wife too). He goes to the trouble and expense to rework the Monte Carlo based car we built in the 80′s, with help from our friend Bill Mollencupp,

This really gets Mark thinking… He acquires a full scale mock-up of the original Lincoln Futura (proof you can buy anything on ebay). He repairs the body, pulls molds  and replicates all of the modifications George Barris did to the Futura to create the TV show Batmobile.  Mark and his partner Jeff Sandburg went into business creating these beautiful cars. FiberGlass Freaks is Located in Logansport Indiana.

Mark Racop is also the founder of MagicHouse Productions. A production company that has shot several feature films and helped produce many short

films, industrial videos and music videos. Having a commercial to shoot and already having a film crew on hand it seemed the natural thing to do. Mark drew up the shot list, we packed up the equipment, fired up the engines on two amazing cars, and headed for the highway… after calling the local law enforcement agencies to let them know what we were up to… they’ve gotten to know us pretty well. They used to call anytime something strange was happening in the area, just to make sure we were not shooting another film.

A few years ago a couple we knew lost their home when the state decided to build a bypass through it… (hitchhikers reference intentional)… So it seemed like

this stretch of highway owed us one.  The Hoosier Heartland Corridor goes from Logansport to Ft. Wayne. the part that we used, doesn’t get a lot of traffic… perfect for what we needed to do Saturday.

It’s not normal to have two of these cars completed at the same time. It literally just turned out that way. That’s when Mark decided it was time to shoot some footage.

Our camera opps  were Greg Fauvergue and Eric Ridge.

Eric has some of the coolest toys… and the best ones he built himself.  Case in point. His camera crane… it’s too cool to be called a jib. It extends about 25 feet into the air and the head is remote controlled.

It’s always a blast working with the MagicHouse crew. I’ve know all of these people for longer than most of us would like to admit. Doing what you love to do, with good friends can hardly be called work.

I spent most of the day as a traffic jam creator. I would drive a few tenths of a mile back from the cars and camera truck and hold back the other traffic.  I’m sure I was called some very unpleasant things by those other

drivers… It wouldn’t be the first time, I’m sure.

We started shooting at about 9:00am and didn’t wrap until about 5:00pm. Afterwards Mark treated the crew to Chinese at China Lane. yum!

At the end of the day the our ‘Stars’ had an opportunity to pose original Monte Carlo replica.

Photos by Chuck Budreau & Eric Ridge

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Posted by admin on October 6th, 2008 :: Filed under Film Shoots
Tags :: Batmobile, Eric Ridge, Fiberglass freaks, Greg Fauvergue, Mark Racop

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The 2008 Indy Awards were held Saturday September 27th, at the Laikin Auditorium-Jewish Community Center, Indianapolis In.

There were twelve films competing two $400 awards. All of the filmmakers did a great job. I really enjoyed catching up with the all of them and meeting some new faces.

Let me go on the record here. I had a horse in this race. I was one of the people that encouraged and helped Kate Chaplin bring “First They Came For…” to the screen. So being there when that ‘horse’ won it’s first race was a thrill! There were quite a few of the crew members in attendance.  A couple of them brought their own film to the festival. Tom Johnson and Nate Savadge entered their film “The Last Bottle”. The epic tale of two friends who turn against each other when they are down to their last beer. As has been said before, this film changed my life. It was great fun to watch! Kelly Lynch brought two of his films to the festival “On Common Ground” and “The Passenger”. Kelly’s eye for cinematography and camera movement is amazing. And since “The Passenger” took first place at the ‘Really Big Short Film Festival’ last spring. We were all nervous about going up against him again.

I am thrilled that Kate got the Audience Award. She’s worked very hard on her filmmaking skills and it’s great to see her get this recognition. The entire cast and crew put in some amazingly hard work to produce this film. The other thing that seemed appropoe was this film winning it’s first award at a screening in the Jewish Community Center. Considering the message of the film, I think the venue really drove it home.  The ideas of never forget and never again. I want to personally thank everyone in attendance that voted for the film.

The Jury Award was presented to “In Memoriam” a short film by Fort Wayne native Andrea Listenberger. Andrea is currently attending collage in New York state and could not make it to the festival. Her family was present and received the award for her. I hope to see more work from Andrea in the future. Her story telling skills are impressive and the preformances of the cast were riviting.

Congratulations to both Kate and Andrea… It was definitely ladies’ night at the Indy Awards!

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Posted by admin on September 28th, 2008 :: Filed under Film Festivals,Film Screenings
Tags :: Film Festivals, Indy Awards, Kate Chaplin

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A few weeks ago I spent the weekend helping out on a new music video for the country band “Shilo”.

We started Saturday morning in the small town of Topeka Indiana. Topeka is about 45 minutes northwest of Ft.Wayne, deep in the heart of Amish country. The location was the Topeka Pharmacy, which is pretty much a general store… doubling for a old style Five and Dime.

The main characters of the video where portrayed by
Alicia Hedlund, Travis Gow, and Chris Breidinger.

Alicia Hedlund

Travis Gow

Chris Breidinger

Which brings us to the title of the song…
“Dodg’n a Ford (in my Chevrolet)”
Here’s Travis’ Chevrolet…

and here’s the Ford he’s Dodg’n…(along with Nate Savidge catching some cool footage)

We had a blast shooting the chase footage. Stunt Supervisor Jim Dougherty organized the chase scene while Director Kate Chaplin oversaw the rest of the shoot.

Alicia, Kate and Jim

On Sunday we shot the band footage. These guys were great… they put up with all of the hurry-up and wait that comes with any shoot, without any complaints. As a film crew we’re used to this kind of thing taking way longer than anyone would ever guess. These guys were pros!

We were also joined by still photographer
Polina Osherov
. Who took some incredible shots of the band and crew. These are not her photos… but here’s a photo of her…which you won’t find in her shots!

Polina & Kate

It was a long hot weekend but lots of fun and hard work.
The video is now in the hands of the producers awaiting approval of the edit.
I’ll be sure to do an update when it’s available.

–chuck

Photos by Lynn Budreau

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Posted by admin on September 23rd, 2008 :: Filed under Film Shoots
Tags :: Film Shoots, Kate Chaplin, Music Video, Shilo

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Well… It’s been a year since I sat down and started designing a website for Indie Filmmakers in Indiana.

It has been a very rewarding task. I have met some really great people and made some good friends. My goal from the outset was to create a community gathering place. A place where Filmmakers, Actors, and those interested in our projects could share ideas, experiences, and our work with each other.

I owe a great deal of thanks to everyone in this community who have put aside their personal differences to make this site positive. I want to thank everyone who has helped to spread the word and make IndyFilmNews.com “the site” to promote your films and meet other filmmakers. I could start a list of names, but that would take way too much space… and I’m not organized enough to ensure that I would include everyone. But if you’re reading this… I’m thanking you.

IndyFilmNews.com has been growing in both visitors and content. I wanted to include as much useful information as possible.

The latest features…include this Blog, where I will ramble on about what ever has happened that I think is worthy of me rambling on about.
I have also started using a content management engine. Basically this will allow you to submit articles under several Topic headings. I will then be able to review them and with a simple click post them to the site. This should make the site more interactive.
It will also allow you to post comments on the articles you find on IndyFilmNews.com.

I will also be doing some interviews with local filmmakers and industry supporters.
If you would like to be added to the list of interviewees, please shoot me an email
chuck@indyfilmnews.com

There will be more new features and content as we move into the second year. I am always looking for suggestions. I want you to consider this site “your site”. If you find it lacking something please let me know.

In the past year I have seen several projects who have benefited greatly from networking that started on IndyFilmNews.com. These filmmakers have worked together and raised the production value of their films… that’s what this is all about.

Thanks everyone,

–chuck budreau
IndyFilmNews.com

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Posted by admin on September 13th, 2008 :: Filed under IndyFilmNews Site Related
Tags :: indyfilmnews.com

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