It takes two

By Eric Clark / CEDAR RAPIDS GAZETTE / April 12, 2006

In ‘‘The Chemistry of Dating,’’ a lonely college student named Ryan uses the scientific method to create an experiment to help him find female companionship.

Based on the films selected for this weekend’s Cedar Rapids Independent Film Festival, Ryan isn’t the only one who prefers a partnership. About a quarter of the 42 films in this year’s festival were created by filmmaking teams of two or more people.

In fact, five of the seven feature-length (60 minutes or longer) films in the festival were created by filmmaking teams, including Jenny Stolte and Matt Olson’s ‘‘The Chemistry of Dating’’ and Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ ‘‘The Bride Wore Blood: A Contemporary Western.’’

‘‘I’ve gone it alone before, and it’s a lot of work to do every single thing on your own,’’ says Stolte, 21, a Hiawatha resident attending Columbia College in Chicago. ‘‘Working with another person makes everything easier and more enjoyable.’’

While feature-length filmmaking partnerships are prevalent at this year’s festival, the event also features dozens of short films, which run the gamut from narrative to documentary to experimental.

The festival, now in its seventh year, was founded in 2001 to provide a venue for Iowa filmmakers to screen their work. For the last four years, the festival has taken place at Collins Road Theatres, where films are shown on three screens over the course of two days.

Eric Dean Freese, who handles marketing and media relations for the festival, says Cedar Rapids Independent Filmmakers, the group that organizes the event, received a record 112 submissions for this year’s festival. Films are required to have at least a minor connection to Iowa.

‘‘The film festival is very healthy,’’ says Freese, 36, who is senior art director at Marketing and Communications Strategies Inc. in Cedar Rapids. ‘‘We added about four or five staff members this year to make things go even more smoothly than in the past.’’

For the co-directors of ‘‘The Chemistry of Dating,’’ the festival has become a regular screening opportunity for their films. Stolte previously has had three films selected for the festival and Olson has had one.

‘‘Overall, I’m really impressed with the festival,’’ says Olson, 24, whose day job is creating corporate videos in Chicago. ‘‘They pay a lot of attention to detail, and I like how the judges give critiques at the end of the weekend.’’

Olson says ‘‘The Chemistry of Dating,’’ an 84-minute comedy, was inspired by, of all things, ‘‘Dracula’’ by Bram Stoker. After reading the novel, which is written in the epistolary form of letters, telegrams and diary entries, Olson wrote a short story about the college dating scene in a similar style.

Olson and Stolte had the short story turned into a script by a friend who incorporated the science-class theme into the screenplay.

They finished ‘‘The Chemistry of Dating’’ about a month ago after a year of work and they’re now shopping it to as many film festivals as possible.

‘‘We definitely would love it if something would come out of this film that would further our careers, but we really just did it for the experience of getting something like this under our belts,’’ Stolte says.

Catch ‘‘The Chemistry of Dating’’ at 8:36 p.m. Friday and 10:01 a.m. Saturday.

Two filmmakers who already have accumulated loads of accolades are Beck and Woods, co-directors of ‘‘The Bride Wore Blood.’’

The University of Iowa seniors, who both are longtime participants in the festival, in 2005 won mtvU's Best Film on Campus: Trailer Competition for one of their previous films, ‘‘University Heights.’’

For winning the competition, Beck and Woods were awarded a development deal with MTV Films.

While they waited for the details of the deal to be ironed out (they still are waiting), they spent nearly six months making ‘‘The Bride Wore Blood,’’ a 60-minute thriller that acts as an homage to the spaghetti Westerns of the ’60s.

In ‘‘The Bride Wore Blood,’’ a bounty hunter is hired to protect a bride-to-be. When the bride ends up dead, the bounty hunter embarks on a voyage to avenge her death, only to find that not everything is as it seems.

Woods, 22, says he and Beck came up with the idea for the movie after meeting with Scott Morschhauser of Bettendorf band The Metrolites, who wanted to score a movie for the filmmaking duo. Morschhauser delivered demos inspired by the work of Italian composer Ennio Morricone, and Beck and Woods formed ‘‘The Bride Wore Blood’’ around the music.

‘‘It was a really cool experience,’’ Woods says. ‘‘It was the first time we’ve had a composer come in and write music specifically for our movie.’’

Having been friends since sixth grade and working together since they started shooting movies with their action figures shortly thereafter, Beck, 22, says his partnership with Woods is built to last.

‘‘Our friendship has given us the opportunity to be open and honest with each other about our work,’’ Beck says. ‘‘We have similar interests in terms of movies and books and music, and together we have a singular vision.’’

‘‘The Bride Wore Blood’’ will be screened at 3:06 and 7:35 p.m. Saturday.