Naturalfilms Film Blog

 UW students star as directors in film fest

The Daily Cardinal 
April 3, 2008 - by Kerry Jessup
(Reprinted with permission)

The Daily Cardinal interviews three student directors from this year’s festival to find out what it took to get their names on the big screen this weekend

A distinct feature of the Wisconsin Film Festival is its attention to up-and-coming student filmmakers. Three UW-Madison students whose films were accepted into the festival shared their experiences with making their films, entering the festival and their reactions to the festival itself.

As a Ph.D. student working toward a degree in the History of Science, Amyrs Williams is not your typical filmmaker. Last semester, Williams took a documentary production class, her first experience with filmmaking. She created “Have a Sister” as her final project for the class and was encouraged by her instructor to enter it in the Wisconsin Film Festival.

“I’m totally new to this,” Williams said, “I just filled out the application and sent it in and was really thrilled when I found out I was accepted.” Williams described the film as a 13-minute documentary about her sister, who experienced an adverse reaction to the DPT vaccine as an infant, suffered severe brain damage as a result and died at age 16. The film juxtaposes medical facts with photographs and memories of her family’s emotional experience.

Andrew Napier, on the other hand, is a freshman majoring in communication arts with an extensive background in film. He has been involved with film production since he was 9 years old, and through Napier Films LLC - a business he established in 2003 - Napier offers a wide range of services to clients, including DVD encoding and authoring, digital video compositing, and web design. However, Napier said his primary passions are still writing and directing.

Last year, Napier’s documentary “Keeping the Spirit” was accepted to the Wisconsin Film Festival. He returns this year with “Spin Cycle,” a short film he wrote and co-directed with UW senior Michael Anderson. “It’s a short, quirky vignette,” Napier said. The main character in the film, Poor Sap, is preparing for a date and winds up battling a femme fatale for the Laundromat’s last available washing machine. Napier said he had a great experience at the festival last year and is “extremely excited to go back this year.”

Another aspiring director is Justin Daering, a senior who will graduate from UW-Madison this spring with a degree in com arts: radio, television and film. Like Williams, this is Daering’s first time participating in the festival. His entry, “The Shadow of the Night,” is an eight-minute, silent, black-and-white vampire film. It is based on a series of images he did for a still photography class. The film was shot last summer in Madison and includes beautiful time-lapse shots of the city’s skyline and a scene in the Crave Lounge Bar.

All three students acknowledged the only way to get their work noticed and accepted in festivals is through a lot of hard work. “The best thing you can do in general,” Daering said, “is just keep working. If you want to write, write. If you want to direct, direct, but just keep working.”

Their films are part of the Student Short Films, which will be shown Saturday, April 5th at 2:00 p.m. at the Monona Terrace Convention Center.

Great news for Naturalfilms as we got our first film into a festival! “The Shadow of the Night” our latest complete production, was featured in the Wisconsin Film Festival! The film was shown to a sold-out crowd as a part of “Wisconsin’s Own” student short film showing along with 10 other finalists at the Monona Terrace in Madison.

Described as, “[s]hot in glorious black and white, a modern tribute to the timeless vampire flick. The film is heavily Madison-based, and Daering is a senior in the UW-Madison Comm Arts department.”

Special thanks to producer Nick Langholff, assistant director Robert Saba, composer Corey Wallace, and cast Randy Wayne, Sammy, Darren Burrows, and Marie Holzman.

Unfortunatly the film is not currently available for viewing in the Films section because it is on the festival circuit, but stills from the film are available.

Click here to see the film in our Films section

Look for more film by Naturalfilms in future festivals!

VAHS grad gets a taste of the film industry

The Verona Press - Page 1
Thursday, April 3, 2008 - by Seth Jovag
(Reprinted with permission)

Justin Daering recently spent a day at Johnny Depp’s side.

No, he wasn’t trading lines with the famous actor, who’s had Wisconsin in a tizzy since landing here in mid-March for production in Columbus of the new Michael Mann flick, “Public Enemies.”

Instead, Daering, an aspiring filmmaker from Verona, was fending off autograph-seekers between scenes.

“It was my job to say, ‘OK, thank you, you got your autograph, could you please move on,’” said Daering, a 2003 graduate of Verona Area High School. “Otherwise they won’t leave.”

Glamorous work? Maybe not. But Daering, who graduates this spring with a degree in film production from UW-Madison, knows it’s par for the course as he tries to elbow his way into “the industry.”

And besides, the job gave him a front-row seat as cameras trained on Depp’s John Dillinger character, who in one scene robbed a bank and fled in a hail of bullets.

“It was a great experience to see that level of filmmaking,” Daering said. “Hopefully, that’s the kind of filmmaking I’ll be doing someday.”

Daering has long been a cinemaphile, either as a kid re-creating favorite movie scenes with friends or later making spoofs of “Ghostbusters” and “Indiana Jones” in high school.

At the UW, he’s taken more serious stabs at directing, and one of those efforts will air this weekend at the Wisconsin Film Festival.

“The Shadow of the Night,” an 8-minute short film shot last summer in Madison, will air at 2 p.m. Saturday at the Monona Terrace Convention Center as part of a two-hour run of student-made films.

“Shadow” is a “modern tribute to the timeless vampire flick,” according to the film fest’s Web site. It’s also a silent film backed by an original score composed by a fellow UW student and performed by a full orchestra of Daering’s UW peers.

And while it might not star Depp, “Shadow” does have some name actors - a rarity for a student film.

The four-member cast includes Darren Burrows, known as Ed Chigliak on the 1990s CBS show, “Northern Exposure,” and Randy Wayne, who played Luke Duke on the “The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning.”

Daering landed both actors through a connection with Nick Langholff, a Madison-based writer and producer who has worked in film for more than a decade.

The movie was shot in Madison in three days last summer at three locations - the Crave Lounge, at Daering’s former apartment on West Dayton Street and in a fire-damaged rental management building, Daering said.

This will be Daering’s first screening at the film fest, but not his first entry. Last year’s “Madison Nocturne,” a “poetic documentary about Madison at night,” didn’t make the cut, though Daering said it’s his favorite of his films.

“That was a heartbreaker,” he said.

But Daering picked himself up and tried a new project last spring - a heavy film about a racially mixed teenager who’s found guilty for a crime he didn’t commit. That project fell through in June when two actors backed out, and that’s when Daering decided to expand an earlier project into “Shadow.”

After graduation this spring, Daering plans to stick around until production of “Public Enemies” wraps up in mid-June. As an “additional production assistant,” he’s only called on when the regular staff is overwhelmed, he said. That led to two days of work on March 17-18, when film crews were in Columbus, and it could mean a few more valuable “soak-it-all-in” days on the set this spring.

After that, he’ll either make another film this summer in Madison or head straight to Los Angeles. Either way, he wants to end up in L.A. eventually.

There, he expects he’ll “be someone’s assistant for a long time” as he strives to make a name in filmmaking. And then he hopes to be working with the likes of Depp as a professional in his own right.

“If all goes well, I anticipate I’ll be working with actors like that in 15 to 20 years,” he said.

Related Links:

Wisconsin Film Festival

If you go:

What: “The Shadow of the Night,” by VAHS grad Justin Daering, will air at this weekend’s Wisconsin Film Festival as part of a two-hour show of UW film students’ work.
When: 2 p.m. Saturday, April 5
Where: Monona Terrace Convention Center
How much: $7 at the door
More info: www.wifilmfest.org

Conklin: Producer shows Hollywood types some local sights

The Wisconsin State Journal - Page Two - A2
Thursday, August 16, 2007 - Melanie Conklin
(Reprinted with permission)

Madison-based movie producer Nick Langholff helped make a dream come true for UW-Madison senior Justin Daering this week.

Daering, a Verona native, had saved some money and was trying to make a film, but things weren ‘t working out. So Langholff stepped in to help.

“We met at my office above Mickey’s Tavern and I told him that I get to spend whatever amount he has, however I can. I ‘ll hire everybody,” Langholff says. “And I guaranteed him, It will feel like you ‘re spending three to four times the amount.’”

It so happened Langholff is writing a movie script with Darren Burrows (Ed Chigliak of “Northern Exposure “), so he coordinated a visit this week from Burrows and another actor he ’s worked with, Randy Wayne (Luke Duke from the “The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning”).

Langholff put these Hollywood friends and his high-caliber crew under Daering ’s direction, filming a short film noir called “Shadow of the Night ” at Crave and at a house on West Dayton Street.

“Four days later (Daering’s) still numb,” says Langholff, who spent five years as the house manager at American Players Theatre.

Langholff took Burrows and Wayne to APT for opening night of “The Night of the Iguana” last weekend and says, “They came prepared with a lot of questions about the theater and how it could survive — and by the time they walked up the hill, they were already saying it was one of their most beautiful evenings of the summer. They both thought the quality of acting here was so outstanding.”

“Madison” nears completion

The trailer for Langholff ’s upcoming movie “Madison, ” filmed here in January, is posted on YouTube.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=l9YmGunGKXY

It includes intense scenes with APT actors Brian Mani and Jim DeVita, who plays a war correspondent returning from Iraq tormented by the demons of his experiences in a war zone.

Langholff says the movie is in “the final days ” of post-production as he and director Brent Notbohm work against the clock to finish in time for the Sept. 7 deadline for submitting it to the Sundance Film Festival.

L.A. Actors Make A Scene In Madison

The Capital Times - METRO - C1
Wednesday, August 15, 2007 - Doug Moe
(Reprinted with permission)

DARREN BURROWS , the actor who starred in the highly rated CBS series “Northern Exposure” in the 1990s, spent the last several days in Madison hanging out in the Willy Street neighborhood, sleeping above Mickey’s Tavern, breakfasting at Monty’s Blue Plate and generally falling in love with the isthmus and the lakes.

“He’s about ready to buy a house,” Burrows’ buddy and colleague, Madison writer-producer Nick Langholff , was saying Tuesday.

Mickey’s patrons were giving Burrows “where do I know you from” looks (he played Ed Chigliak on “Exposure”), and Randy Wayne , a young actor who recently starred as Luke Duke in “The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning,” was getting his share of glances, too.

Like Burrows, Wayne was in Madison owing to his friendship with Langholff, a Fort Atkinson native and American Players Theatre alumnus who has spent a decade working on film crews most recently as assistant director on movie sets around the world. Langholff’s film world contact list is long, and he’s the kind of guy who stays in touch. He met Burrows on “Forty Shades of Blue,” a film that won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. Currently, Langholff who has an office above Mickey’s is collaborating on a screenplay with Burrows, and it was the script that brought the actor to Madison this week.

Saturday, Burrows and Wayne flew into Madison from Los Angeles, and Langholff drove them out to American Players for the opening of “Night of the Iguana.” Once they got beyond the remoteness of the locale, the actors were highly impressed with the production. Langholff also convinced his friends to act for a couple of nights in a short movie that was shot in Madison this week by a film school student acquaintance of Langholff’s. You might have seen them Monday night filming at Crave. The first-time director, Justin Daering , could hardly believe his good fortune. Name actors in a student short film? Langholff, happy to help, now has another name in his BlackBerry.

This is an exciting and nervous time for the producer. Last January, Langholff and an old American Players Theatre colleague, Spring Green native Brent Notbohn , brought a cast and crew of 45 to Madison and spent two weeks shooting an independent feature film, for which they hold high hopes. Notbohn wrote and directed and Langholff produced. The film, titled “Madison,” stars the esteemed American Players actor Jim DeVita as a celebrated but disillusioned war correspondent who returns to the college town where he was once young and idealistic.

Notbohn, who wrote and directed the movie and who teaches media studies at UW-Superior, has been working long days and nights to finish post-production on the film. Madison musician Doug Brown has just completed the music score, and Jack LeTourneau at E Labs here is mixing the post-production sound. It’s all being done against a Sept. 1 deadline to get the finished film entered into the Sundance Film Festival.

Langholff saw a first cut of the film last spring, right before leaving for Sudan to shoot a documentary film. Notbohn had sent it from Superior. Langholff remembers watching it at 2 a.m., and being so blown away by the performances that he sent 4 a.m. e-mails to DeVita and another lead, Brian Mani , expressing heartfelt thanks and congratulations.

Of course, the odds against acceptance at Sundance are long, and the filmmakers, while hopeful, are plotting backup strategies. Langholff, naturally, has contacts among distributors. One way or another, the film will be shown.

When it is, Madison-area viewers of “Madison,” the movie, will see a scene shot at the venerable Plaza Bar downtown. It’s the first place the disillusioned war correspondent goes when he gets back to Madison. Last Saturday, the Plaza was also the first place Langholff took his L.A. actor friends, Burrows and Wayne, when they got in town.

Coincidence, or karma? It might just be that even Hollywood types know it’s hard to beat a Plazaburger.

Welcome to the official weblog for Naturalfilms! This is a place where we will be posting news about us, casting calls, what’s happening in the film world, and of course random stream-of-conciousness type stuff.  We hope you enjoy!