Creative Spotlight - Local moviemaker strikes terror Doug Messel
One of the most interesting things about living in Evansville is being surrounded by all sorts
of creative people and not even knowing it. From artists to musicians to
writers, Evansville
seems to have it all. News 4U likes
to pay attention to these people. This month we talked to Lewis Cheney,
director of the locally-shot film VictimEYES,
which premiered recently at the HendersonFineArtsCenter.
N4U: Tell me a little bit about
VictimEYES.
Lewis
Cheney: It's a lovely, touching saga of a serial killer. It's a feature length
suspense/thriller about a serial killer who gets caught as he is
about to kill his thirteenth victim. He tries to kill her in haste and
succeeds only in blinding her. He goes to jail for 13 months, and she's been in
her own self-imposed prison afraid to leave her house because, as she puts
it “the world is not like I left it.” He's about to be transported
to prison and has a plan to finish what he started.
How long were you
shooting?
This has
been a long project. It was shot between August and October 2005, with an
intended date of release being 2006. In May of 2006, I lost my
mentor and good friend, former News25 Chief Photographer Leonard Judd. He had
been such an inspiration to me for this project. He was there through almost
the entire shooting schedule and took the behind the scenes photos. Once
each week, we would have lunch together for him to catch up on how things were
going in the editing process. Losing him just simply took my heart out of
the project. It was hard to continue it without him over my shoulder. In fact,
he died while on vacation and had the only copy of the trailer I had at the
time with him. He had been showing it to his family. He was so proud to be a
part of this and so proud of us, of me, and his approval meant the world
to me.
So I put
the project away for the better part of a year and a half; I finally got back
into it towards the end of 2008. To simply cut the shots together is one thing,
but to color correct each and every shot to make it look the best it can, that
takes time: lots of time. Then there’s tweaking audio, adding sound effects,
special effects and music. Trying to do that while having a life outside the
project, plus a wife, two kids, a full time job and other hobbies, made it take
a long time to finish. The result is great though and well worth the effort.
What was the film’s
budget?
By the
time all is said and done, I will have $1500 dollars into this movie. Bear in
mind, no one was paid who worked on it. There are contracts in place so that if
this movie makes money, we all make money. That money may not buy us more
than a Happy Meal, but money isn’t what drove us to make it, as you will see
later. Was it budgeted? No, not really. It's a nickel and dime you sort of
prospect. You start off going "Hey, I think I will make a movie."
How long have you been making
movies?
I have
been making movies for over 20 years, but this is my first feature length
one. I have done some other short films that got aired across the state of Kentucky in the Kentucky
Educational Television film and video festival and that was cool. When I
got into the TV biz 24 years ago, I expressed an interest in doing these
sorts of things and Leonard was very encouraging and a foundation of
knowledge
Who are your major influences as a
filmmaker?
First is
the big one, Steven Spielberg, but maybe not why you think. Jaws terrified me as a child. My legs
were asleep at the end of that movie, sitting in a theater in 1975 at the age
of 12, because I just hadn't moved. I was incredibly engrossed in it.
And it made me want to know how they were made. You might say—and it's a
horrible pun, but those who know me, know I would say it—I was
bitten by the movies at a young age.
And to
me you can't think independent and scary movie without the name John Carpenter
coming to mind. Halloween was a low budget movie that became a legend
and put Carpenter on the map. But go back and look at the original Assault on Precinct 13 and see his
roots.
What’s next? Any other projects
you’re working on?
Next for
me is working with yet another co-worker and filmmaker, named Marx
Pyle, who is producing and directing a short film he wrote, called Silence
of the Belle. It will be shot locally and will be a cool grouping with
Neil Kellen shooting it, me lighting it and Marx directing. Marx went to
film school and once again, I expect to be on something else where I
can learn, so it will be fun.
If you had to drop money on one item
as a beginning filmmaker, what would you invest it in?
A good “prosumer”
camera. You need the latitude afforded to you to be able to have manual focus
and manual aperature control. It's like a painter, you can buy a cheap brush,
but it won't look as good. And as I close my movie, I will close this interview
with a quote from Leonard Judd that he said over and over again to many of us
he trained. "The camera is your paintbrush and the world is your canvas."
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