Film duo builds local production business

By John Heiderscheit / QUAD-CITY TIMES / July 24, 2006

“The Bride Wore Blood.” That, for sure, is the first time I’ve started this column with those four words.

Today it seems appropriate, though, because I am profiling Bluebox Limited, a fledgling Quad-City movie production business with big time potential. “The Bride Wore Blood” is the title of the latest Bluebox feature.

Quad-Cities, meet Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, 2003 graduates of Bettendorf High School. And, yes, also prize-winning film makers. Bluebox Limited is an independent filmmaking company operated by Beck and Woods. The company is based out of Iowa. Beck and Woods will be seniors majoring in communications at the University of Iowa in Iowa City come this autumn. Bluebox has produced 13 shorts and four feature films to date. “The Bride Wore Blood” will be the fifth feature.

There are lots of filmmakers in Iowa — many you’ve never heard of. So why profile these guys? Answer: because you will be hearing of them again. In December 2005, Beck & Woods won a development deal with MTV Films.

We sat down recently for lunch to discuss their company, their plans to do business in Iowa, and movies.

Both are articulate, polite and earnest. Neither Scott nor Bryan seemed to have the slightest interest in courting controversy. No shocking hairdos. No body piercings. No profanity. Instead, they show a deep and abiding interest in their work together, which actually began in the sixth grade and continued through their days as high school students. In their junior year they wrote, produced and directed a film on drunk driving that later became part of the Students Against Drunk Driving curriculum.

The duo’s careers gathered momentum when one of their films made Project Greenlight’s top 50, out of about 1,700 submissions from leading artists from all over the United States.

As Beck says, the strong showing at Project Greenlight “helped build a buzz” around the company. (The Project Greenlight winner takes home a film production deal to the tune of $1 million.) For the uninitiated, “buzz” in Hollywood is a good thing.

Encouraged by their strong showing at Project Greenlight, Beck and Woods entered their film “Shades” in the MTV Productions 2004 “Best Film on Campus” competition.

“Shades” fell just short, finishing in the top three. They hit the jackpot with the next MTV contest. Contestants were asked to submit a two-minute trailer for a movie they would like to make. (One of the contest judges was John Singleton, of “Boyz n the Hood” fame.) The grand prize: a development deal with MTV.

As a measure of how earnest these guys are, they sold one of their prizes — a giant screen TV — to help fund more movie production. Now that’s serious. The pair currently is finalizing its production deal with MTV and expects to be doing bigger budget movies soon.

Bryan is optimistic that they will be able to continue to produce their movies in and around the Quad-Cities as the budgets keep getting bigger.

For one thing, he says, production costs less here. “Production is just too expensive in Hollywood right now. One hour of location time there can cost more than our entire film budget.”

It’s clear that these guys have a strong attachment to the Quad-Cities and our (hopefully) budding film industry with, for example, the Avati brothers of Italy shooting a feature here later in the summer.

One thing our policymakers could do to help out in Iowa — enact some tax credits for investments in independent film.

Their long-term plans are to build a production company that will allow them to be artists — but artists who sell. Of course, combining art and riches is the goal of many aspiring producers. “We want the dream,” says Bryan.

About “The Bride Wore Blood:” It will run roughly an hour long and spin the tale of a bounty hunter hired to protect a bride-to-be. But it turns out that nothing is as it seems. Very different from these two rising filmmakers, where what you see is very much what you get.

John Heiderscheit, Bettendorf, a former Wall Street finance lawyer, is president and CEO of Midwest Construction Services, a multi-state business services company. He can be contacted at asl@netexpress.net.