Making Films in Savannah

Savannah is unique in that it's a very old city that has a lot of fresh voices. Our city's beauty and character attract creative people. The voice of Savannah filmmakers is often more innocent than what comes out of the major movie capitols and is more willing to find new ways of making films. There's more room to make a film here as it is not as saturated as LA or NY with people trying to make films. Savannah is full of unique stories... it is like we walk through a movie set every day.

The success of THE STREET CLEANER has opened many doors for us, creating connections in the film industry that we didn't have before. People keep approaching us to ask if they can work with us on our next project. This in turn increases confidence in our own abilities. Next in line, Perpombellar Productions is producing the feature-length film, TRUMPET MY RETURN. Short Synopsis: Newlyweds, Travis and Molly, who work at a residential school for troubled teenage girls, find their love put to the test when they learn that Travis' ex-flame has been abducted halfway around the world. Through their separate struggles, all, including the teens at the school, come to realize that there's no such thing as a casual relationship.

One of the major challenges is that since we are not LA or NY or even Atlanta, it takes more time to find quality actors and crew locally. But this is tempered by the fact that their eagerness to be part of a film project more than makes up for the extra effort it took to find them. People working in film here are doing so because they love the process, and that enthusiasm is invaluable. An additional challenge is a locating available equipment, which is sometimes scarce, though resources are now better than ever. But to find equipment like large jibs or to simulate rain over a city block, one needs to bring such tools in from elsewhere. Though local filmmakers can be inventive. For example, when we at Perpombellar Productions were planning pyrotechnics on a short film shoot last fall, we were having difficulty finding someone with the proper equipment and skills in-town. Bringing someone in was becoming prohibitively expensive. We compromised, scaling back our pyrotechnics to simple fireworks that we were able to rig ourselves. Also, in THE STREET CLEANER, we built our own jib at the fraction of the cost of purchasing one.

The Savannah Film Office has been quite helpful to us in all our productions. They are responsive when we have questions about locations, crew, or logistics, and their new website for Finding Crew and Services (www.savannahfilm.org/directory) is becoming quite useful as local people add their information to the database. The Film Office gets criticism because there haven't been lots big Hollywood films made here recently, but they go out of their way to assist smaller production companies like ours.

I think the biggest way the city can help is by continuing to nurture its local film production base, and by clearly communicating with that base when outside ventures come in that would like to rely on local talent. 

One of the must useful things to come about from the past couple of years of working in film here has been making connections with other local filmmakers, such as West 41st Productions, with whom we trade out crew, talent, and equipment. The indie filmmakers in Savannah are all about helping each other out in any way they can. In our opinion, the local indie film scene is in the middle stages of forming, with more venues to show independent film appearing, more talented people living here, lots of people acquiring cameras and equipment, and everyone working hard to network to make films. Local Internet forums, like www.cinesavannah.net (an idea brought to fruition by locals Tim Gill and Eric Darling) or the actor/crew resource www.BuzzStage.com, provide an ideal way for the local film production industry to communicate. This continued strengthening of the local network of production people is what will allow more and more movies to made here by local filmmakers. Once one of these indie production companies gets a hit like JUNO, there'll be a wave of Hollywood productions coming into town trying to capture the uniqueness that we locals haven't forgotten. That wave will carry Savannah into its movie future, with more work for all of us, more tourists coming to see where the movies are made, and more news about Savannah in the national entertainment media... we hope.

With THE STREET CLEANER winning film festival awards and enthusiastically being received by audiences, it is becoming easier to locate funding sources, though we are still in that process and learning as we go. Entrepreneurs who are interested in supporting the art of filmmaking in Savannah will find TRUMPET MY RETURN (www.trumpetmyreturn.com) a perfect opportunity to support a feature-length film being made in Savannah. It's an exciting time to make films here.