Talking pictures

By David Burke / QUAD-CITY TIMES / April 8, 2007

It’s a small but devoted group — those who make films in the Quad-Cities.

But they will be celebrated April 21 at the first “entrepreneur’s film festival,” called “Film Fest Quad-Cities,” at the Capitol Theatre in Davenport, sponsored by the Iowa Small Business Development Center, or SBDC.

The SBDC helped gather the filmmakers recently for a roundtable discussion on what it means to make movies in the Quad-Cities and what the future holds for their art.

Participating were:

- Max Allan Collins, a Muscatine, Iowa, filmmaker whose work — “Mommy,” “Mommy’s Day,” “Real Time: Siege at Lucas Street Market” and “Shades of Noir” — has been compiled into “The Black Box,” a three-DVD set.

- Phil Dingeldein, whose Rock Island-based dphilms production company has grown to do national projects, including segments of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and “Dr. Phil,” as well as the upcoming shoot of a concert by country singer Kenny Chesney for a DVD.

- Ed Isenberg, graphic designer and computer animation artist for Avolux Media, a Moline video production and graphic design studio.

- Greg Marten, director of the video department, and Denise Hollmer, videographer and editor for Silver Oaks Communications, a Moline company that is adding mainstream work to the corporate communications it has done for more than 20 years.

- Doug Miller, a longtime entrepreneur who recently has worked as production manager for Italian brothers Pupi and Antonio Avati on their movie “The Hideout,” which was filmed in the Quad-City region last summer.

- Scott Morschhauser, a longtime Quad-City area musician — first with The Kabalas, then The Metrolites — who is branching out into soundtrack and musical score work for area films.

- Bryan Woods and Scott Beck, the Bettendorf filmmakers whose company, Bluebox Limited, has produced 18 movies. The University of Iowa seniors won the “Best Film on Campus” award from MTVU, a college division of the MTV cable channel, and a contract for a major motion picture.

Here are excerpts of the sometimes-lively conversation about filmmaking in this area:

What does it mean to be a filmmaker in the Quad-Cities in 2007?

Beck: Bryan and I grew up in this age of digital media emerging, and the last 10 years have been a time of incredible resources, of new things happening in the film industry. One of the great things is that you no longer have to be in Hollywood or New York to make films happen. Everybody here is able to make these films out of the Quad-Cities. The talent is here, the resources are here. In the Quad-Cities, we can combine these and make our own film industry. It’s not Hollywood, but it’s something different. We’re able to reach people nationwide, worldwide, with our material.

Collins: Phil ... and I started in 1994, when we met and worked on “Mommy,” the first feature to be done in Iowa for a long, long time. ... We were at the beginning of this digital era, one of Sony’s first digital cameras. ... I remember sitting around with Doug and talking about “Can we shoot movies here?” The technology was starting to get friendlier and Hollywood wasn’t holding all the keys to the kingdom. ...

What we discovered is how people in the Midwest are excited about helping you. They’re not jaded. The idea of a movie being made is not something that happens every day, so you can get a level of support that you couldn’t get in Hollywood. If you tried to shoot in a neighborhood in Hollywood, everyone would be out with their hands and billfolds open and you were supposed to fill both. ... It’s friendly and supportive. ... Virtually every project since, we’ve had the same level of support and cooperation. ... I believe the Quad-Cities as an area is poised to be a little Hollywood. You have a very good tax incentives program in Illinois, one of what could be the premier tax incentive programs in Iowa, and on the river you can play Chinese restaurant and have two from Column A and two from Column B and have a very attractive place for us as indigenous filmmakers and others coming in. I’m more interested in us doing it.

Miller: When the Avatis first came here, they were amazed at how people received them. In Italy, they were used to people shooting (movies), looking in front of the lens. Here, they politely say, “Can we watch for a while?” Not get in the way, very polite. The support people are very excited.

Collins: And it pumps a lot of money into the community. While we may make the films here, we’re going to be bringing a certain amount of people in. I’m a big believer in “crewing up,” as they say, bringing in as few people as possible. But they do come in, staying in motels, eating in restaurants, living here and spending money. It’s good for the community in that sense, too.

Beck: We haven’t spent more than $600 on any of our films, and that’s just a testament to the area about how resourceful it is, and how many people are willing to help make these productions. We’re able to find talent here who are willing to work for free. You can’t go out to Los Angeles and make these kinds of films for this kind of money.

Dingeldein: We could be in Chicago, we could be in New York, we could be in L.A. We chose to do our work here because it’s a much better place to live. But every day, we say, “Yes, we’re in Rock Island, we’re 2 1/2 hours away from Chicago, but we still do the same kind of stuff they do in Chicago.” ... Every day, we hear, “How can you be any good if you’re in Rock Island?” I tell them we just got plumbing last week and it is amazing. ... We constantly fight that little thing on a daily basis.

How can you overcome that reputation, that stereotype?

Dingeldein: Once you get your foot in the door somewhere, it just keeps going out. If I told half the people what I do half the time, they go, “Really?” Constantly, we do stuff that puts us on another level, but we come back home to Rock Island.

Collins: Here’s an irony: Musco Lighting, which is used by nearly every Hollywood production — the “Mus” in Musco is Muscatine. When we did shoot “Mommy” in Muscatine, one of the scenes was in a junkyard literally in Musco’s backyard. ... When we can get to the position where we’re looking beyond making one picture, where we can say to them, “We’re finished with this picture and have another one due next year and there more in the pipeline,” they can look at us as content providers — little studios. It will be to their benefit to treat us better, to encourage us, because we’re not just some guys who went on to make one movie.

Hollmer: Here we are in Moline, Ill., and we have a lot of talent in our company — but no one gets to see what we do because we do stuff for a very limited audience. That’s why we decided to use that talent toward making more movies and stuff everyone can see. ... We have the skills and we have the people to do it, so why not do it ourselves?

There’s a lot of talk about the future. What do you see for this area in five or 10 years?

Dingeldein: We are really in the works on building a production center, a film production center — business, operations, everything. We want to make a movie a year, a substantial movie a year. We can base it out of here, live here, work here and make it happen.

Miller: The incentive legislation will not only help those folks shooting around here, but the efficiency of shooting. With both of those elements being helped and incentivized, you’ll see a cross-pollination of the two. ... We want to retain young people, we want to have more young people coming here. Nothing excites young people like the movies. Nothing.

Isenberg: Speed is going to change everything. Bandwidth is going to be higher, computers are going to be faster. You’ll have PCs that can address more than 3GB of RAM in the future. We have an employee who moved to Arizona because she wanted to be close to her parents. We’re still working with her, we’re just using an FTP site.

Nelsen: I don’t see us getting away from our core service to the corporate client. I do see us getting into more short films. We all agree it’d be great fun to have an opportunity to do a feature. Maybe more short films. With technology changing so fast, we may take what we do now and completely change it in five years.

Collins: What I’d like to see is steady production, so we don’t have to start over each time. That’s the backbreaker. You do one and you’ve got to start over. I envy what the Bluebox guys do because they’ve kept moving forward. They’re like sharks — they don’t sleep. I’d like to make films at the $1 million level. Can we do it? I think we can.

Morschhauser: My goal is just to keep working with everybody here and get better and better at writing that music that ties in with what you’re seeing, that ties in with that emotion, whatever it is.

Beck: We want to be working on a larger scale. With Bryan and me, our productions cost $600 and we don’t want to be that way forever. We want to get to the next level ... where we have several million dollars to be making a movie with.

Woods: We would be so happy if we could just keep making movies and keep working in Iowa. For us, there’s no better place to make a movie. The state is so beautiful, and you can tell stories there. We think Iowa stories should be told, too.