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Entertainment
CULTURE CLASH
Lights, camera, action in Beavercreek
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By Ron Rollins,
Staff Writer
5:39 PM Friday, July 31, 2009
For a few days last week, the normally tidy basement of Dave and Theresa Gasper’s Beavercreek home was a temporary blizzard of activity and debris: binders, tape rolls, drop cloths, coffee cups, snack trays, tripods, light stands. Thick black cables snaked across the carpet. A heavy, four-wheeled camera dolly sat waiting, as did T-shirted young men and women in headsets.
In a back bedroom, two young girls wore the blank looks of seasoned actors as they, too, awaited an instruction, one that came accompanied by the sharp clack of the slate and assistant director Dave Temmesfeld’s bark: “Rolling!”
Yes, they were making a movie in Beavercreek.
It’s a small film that will run about 12 minutes and is headed, its makers hope, for attention and awards on the festival circuit that is the primary venue for independent movies these days. And for its writer, director and most ardent fan, Nichol Simmons, the film was also a sort of homecoming.
Simmons, 39, is a graduate of Wright State University’s film school, a nationally known program whose graduates usually move to L.A. to make careers. That’s where Simmons went, after earning her degree in 1999, and after her first film, a dryly funny sex satire called “Dry Mount,” took an honorable mention in short subjects at Sundance in 1996.
She’s worked on crews for feature films and TV shows since — and decided that to make her own next film — “Sunday Spin,” a coming-of-age story with a twist — she wanted to come back to do it in Dayton.
“There was no question in my mind about doing it in Dayton,” she said. “It’s soooo much easier here. The level of talent we’ve seen has been amazing; there’s no reason at all to go anywhere else.”
“It’s great that she brought it here,” said Mike King, her director of photography, who lives and works here.
A community like Dayton isn’t jaded about film-making, and tends to welcome a project. Most of the 20-odd crew were Wright State students willing to volunteer for the experience. The Gaspers heard about Simmons’ project and volunteered their home. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Oakwood and WSU provided free locations, too.
Wright State loaned two cameras, and a Cincinnati film-gear company gave a friend’s rate for other equipment. Simmons’ mom Sandi provided the food, local film producer Beth Duke opened her Dayton home to provide lodging for a couple of the young actors from Cincinnati, and the Pizza Factory donated needed supplies.
Simmons was blown away by the support, but not surprised.
“Everybody was committed 100 percent to getting the work done, and helping me,” she said. “Everybody’s so united in the goal.”
It was coincidental, but noteworthy, that she started shooting within the same week that the state of Ohio, at long last, started its new tax-incentive program to lure filmmaking business — an economic development program meant to make us competitive with other states like North Carolina, New Mexico, Louisiana and Michigan that have already established themselves as good, busy movie locations.
With the state tax incentive in place, Simmons thinks Ohio can regain the film momentum it had back in the 1990s, before tax credits in other states left Ohio in the lurch after such high-profile successes as “Rain Man,” “Traffic” and “The Shawshank Redemption.”
“We’ve got great talent and plenty of people who can crew — we have that advantage over Michigan, that you can come here and hit the ground running. And Dayton can be anything — a small town, a city. We’ve got a river. Other than ocean or desert, you’ve everything you need right here.”
“Sunday Spin” ended up serving as a bit of a dry run for people like Duke, the Gaspers, King and others to figure out how the community might respond to create the sort of open-arms atmosphere that could make this place attractive to future projects. Simmons’ budget was small — less than $10,000 — but next time? Who knows?
Besides, she knows people, and they know people. Word might get back to L.A. about how much fun she had this week in Dayton.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2165 or rrollins@Dayton DailyNews.com.
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