LITTLE ROCK — Spring is here, and with it comes a new crop of films from University of Central Arkansas at Conway filmmakers via the Digital Filmmaking Program.
Several promising trailers for new films have popped up online, including graduate student Sarah Jones’ John Wayne’s Bed, which has a trailer that’s even more intriguing than its title.
The trailer, which can be seen online at vimeo. com/38343019, teases some beautiful cinematography (by Lyle Arnett Jr.) and a nice musical score (courtesy of Collin Buchanan and Kerry Lovelace). It also provides a glimpse of what looks to be a fine lead performance by Alan Rackley.
Rackley plays Allen Schmidt, an outdoorsman with Lou Gehrig’s disease who defies his disability by participating in a hunting program for mobilityimpaired Arkansans. In the trailer we see a wheelchair rigged with a gun-mount in the bed of a truck as it drives past the camera. In the next shot we see Allen from the back sitting in a boat silently looking out on a calm lake. If the lake looks familiar it’s because it’s Lake Conway — the largest lake (6,700 acres) built by a state game and fish commission in the United States.
Allen’s wife (Angela Woods) comments that if they could get his wheelchair out in the woods, he’d be there every day. Allen’s friend Jim (Bob Boaz) is seen mounting a rifle rig on Allen’s chair and instructing him to blow into a straw to fire.
The most fascinating aspect of Jones’ thesis film is that it is inspired by a true story. Allen is based on Jones’ father’s best friend. On her blog that documents the film’s production — life24framespersecond. blogspot.com — she writes that she first brought up the premise to her family at dinner. She writes that she was unsure how they would take it but “the rest of the dinner consisted largely of stories about Allen. One of which was a particularly amusing one about duct taping a fishing pole to his arm. I listened intently, making mental notes of things to consider for my script.”
The f ilm was funded through an Indiegogo page that raised contributions from friends, families, peers and even strangers who believed enough in the project to send in $2,550 — $50 over the official goal.
The trailer foreshadows the film’s premiere at the graduate film thesis screening at 7:30 p.m. April 7 in the Reynolds Performance Hall at UCA. Two other films will screen alongside John Wayne’s Bed — Allison Hogue’s Still Life and Christy Ward’s Tree. Admission is free and open to the public.
The trailer for Trenton Mynatt’s Greed, another film from the UCA program, also debuted online recently. Greed is a period piece set in the late 1800s in the hills of the Ozarks.
The trailer — perhaps better described as a teaser — is only 70 seconds long with roughly 20 seconds reserved for title cards; however, we do get some footage of actors Jason Willey and Steve Helms and other cast members in costume.
The teaser doesn’t give too much of the film’s plot away but promises some True Grit style shootouts. A synopsis describes it as the story of “a wealthy man ... on the run for his life due to the untimely deaths of his brothers. He travels with a small posse through the hills of the Ozarks in hopes to reach his ... haven and escape the fate that descended on his brothers.”
You can view the trailer at vimeo.com/38411780.
Levi Agee is a programmer for the Little Rock Film Festival. E-mail him at:
levifilm@gmail.com
MovieStyle, Pages 37 on 03/23/2012