February 12, 2012

Chris Eska's August Evening: The Little Indie That Could

by Kyle Rupprecht | Published September 5, 2008

(Page 2)

MM: What are some of the roadblocks you encountered on the way to August Evening‘s theatrical release?

CE: We were lucky and had no real roadblocks. But it was painful to decide where to premiere the film, which is crucial to finding distribution. We chose the Los Angeles Film Festival, which was definitely the right decision. Not only did we win their $50,000 Target Filmmaker Award (more than the budget of the film), but we also signed a distribution deal with Maya Entertainment at the after party on the premiere night.
   
MM: What would you consider the best aspects of shooting such a low-budget film? How does it allow you to be more creative? What are the negative aspects of it?

CE: I have so many friends with horror stories about having to compromise either at the production stage or later during post and sales because they don’t own the film. When your budget is as tiny as ours, you can self-finance it, which gives you complete creative control. Another great aspect is that our crew was completely comprised of people who actually wanted to be there, not just people showing up for a paycheck. Working with enthusiastic creative friends is a million times better than being surrounded by bored “professionals.”

We wrote a film that could be made for little money, so I didn’t compromise very much on locations/props/actors. The only downside of the low budget was the lack of time, which means being miserable from lack of sleep and watching my producers slowly lose brain cells.

MM: What moviemakers inspire you most? How so?

CE: Terrence Malick, because he maintains independence while using studio budgets to express his personal vision. I also admire the Dardenne brothers because they are able to continually garner acclaim and make a decent living by sticking with their low budgets, trademark style and the same cast and crew.

MM: What advice can you give to aspiring moviemakers who are creatively driven but lack the necessary funds to get their dreams off the ground?

CE: Just make your film for whatever funds you have because if you wait around for huge outside financing it will kill your dream. And don’t worry about being slick, because the slickest filmmaking around is TV commercials. Even $200 million studio films can’t compete with TV commercials in terms of dollars spent per second. But you can beat them all by actually having emotional substance in your film.

MM: What’s up next for you?

CE: I’m spending most of my time traveling and working on the theatrical release, but in my spare time I’m working on scripts about cave diving, the Mexican Mafia and life in rural India. Hopefully they’ll all turn out different from what anyone would expect.

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Comment by Dusty Clark on 10/24/08 at 1:21 pm: I like the article it motivates me but everytime I stop watching DVDs I realize” oh yeah you need money to make films.” Dang it. My short films take half a year to get off the ground I can not imagine a feature.