Recently I spoke with Kevin Anderton, Head of Midnight Chimes Productions, and his talented troupe of actors in advance of their End of the Summer Film Festival, sponsored by Imagine Magazine. The fest is the brainchild of Kevin Anderton to promote networking and visibility among the Boston Film and Video Industry and will showcase 10 Boston Filmmakers as well as a collection of Midnight Chimes shorts including Kevin's latest LATEX THE MOVIE, which was reviewed at a rough cut screening during his Midnight Shorts Collection DVD release party a few months ago. The festival is August 29th and starts at 5 pm at the beautiful Regent Theatre in Arlington, MA with a question and answer set by attending filmmakers and actors. Best of all - it's free to the public to attend.
Kevin is known and beloved by his acting troupe as enjoying a good off-color joke. He originally began his shorts collection as a way to show what he could do as a comedy writer, with aspirations of writing for the late night shows in NYC. In only a couple of years he has amassed a collection of over 20 shorts to his name and has set his sights on a feature comedy project AMERICAN FAMILY for 2005. Midnight Chimes Productions vision is committed to supporting Boston talent, be it actors, producers, or crew. Kevin's goal is to create a working self-supporting video/film industry in the area. Imagine Magazine supports this goal and has teamed up with Kevin for the August event to encourage film/TV people to attend.
Erika Hahn (Interviewer): Kevin, in terms of your festival, I see a sort of method to your madness in terms of building the Midnight Chimes family but I see you also want to build more of a sense of family and community within the Boston area.
Kevin Anderton, (Director): One of the ulterior motives for the festival is that what I'm basically saying to everyone is that 'you can do this. Organize something and people will come. So get off your ass and do it. Show people's work. Show the work that you made people get out of bed at 5am in the morning to drive three hours to make. Get up and show it, get organized because the only way that Boston film moves forward is if we move it forward. I want to make a feature but I'm not going to drag people to my feature. I'm going to bring them. These are all the people (the actors at the table) who are going to be in my feature and they have earned it through their talent and their dedication. That's what I'm looking for. If someone came to me tomorrow and said "here's $300K, you can pay people $500 a day to be in your feature, they said go out and cast it, these are the people I would hire because the other people that will come out for the pay wouldn't work for me when I had nothing. I really don't want any part of that. I want the people that made the sacrifices, were dedicated. That's what I want to do, that's what I envision, and I want to do it from Boston. That's what we are building. Plus we have fun. I can't imagine if we had money, extra PAs….
We have had friends and family at our last screening, so the goal is to push it and get other filmmakers to come and other people in the industry to come so we can get more work. And also to give a nice lurch forward for the Boston Film industry with some Boston films and to have a good time. It really, sometimes it seems like it really needs a shot in the arm. I think, ten works from other filmmakers and then ten or thirteen from us. Some of them are as short as a minute. The big thing will be the premiere of the finished version of LATEX, MASK OF THE NINJA, BIGO TV, and ONE WISH, which is George O'Connor's [Midnight Chimes Associate Producer] film that we helped him put together. And then we are going to release the newest version of the DVD as well, Version Two, which will have more stuff on it.
I asked the actors how some of them met Kevin and how they were able to create such a dedicated core group of actors.
Brian Quaint: The thing about Midnight Chimes is that Kevin is out there in front leading the film community in Boston. By being associated with Midnight Chimes, it helps to brand us. It goes both ways in that we are helping him and he is pulling us along.
Bernice Liuson Sim (actor): Exactly. You mentioned that we are all sort of devoted to Kevin but it's a two way street. Kevin is devoted to us. That's one great thing about working with Midnight Chimes is that there is a great deal of commitment. He is just one of the most organized filmmakers that I know and he does deliver. He believes in us and he will help propel us forward and he's someone who really understands the word 'collaborative'.
Mike Maxwell: He also always knows exactly what he wants.
Bernice Liuson Sim: And he's always cooking up new stuff. He has stuff going on all the time. I don't actually think he can take a break. (laughter)
Bernice Liuson Sim: He says that he is going to but he never actually does. He gets restless.
Hilary Barraford: Well he knows acting and he knows funny, which is critical. You need to know how to act but you have to know how to make it funny on screen.
Kevin Anderton: I also pick actors who know funny as well. These guys have a really dynamic sense of humor and that's important. There are lots of actors who come in and can't be funny. I can spot them the second they open their mouth. That's why when you get the ones that get that dynamic you hang onto them and write roles for them. You put them in stuff that they can excel in. Crazy stuff.
Louis Jacques, Jr. (actor): [The Festival is] going to be very lively. It take at least an hour to get everyone to sit down and stop talking, so on that aspect there will be people running around, networking. We will be not only networking, but also we haven't seen each other for so long because everyone is doing other things, it gives us a moment to say, "What are you doing?". We then get to the point where we are like, "Oh, we are here for a film festival. We get to see ourselves on screen." Things like that. It's going to be chaotic but not in a bad way.
Kevin's producers George O'Connor and Joseph Bouvier are just as enthusiastic about working with Kevin and putting on this festival to showcase local talent.
George O'Connor: In my working with Kevin, the three years, it was like "Help me out, and if things work out, I'll give you more to do" He's paid that off in spades. Absolutely true to his word, He never forgets. If your on the negative side…that's a problem. (laughing). If you are here, you are always appreciated, you are always thanked. Nothing goes under his radar, the smallest thing, he remembers that and he is always prepared to turn that around and give it back. On some of my stuff, he said, I'll come in and be a PA. This is a guy who has run 23 films who is willing to sit on a box and move catering for me, for what I have given him. Who the hell else is going to do that, to have absolutely no ego. "Here I'll hold the boom for you." He's a mountain above that. That's why you keep coming back. At the beginning of this, he wanted to build a family. He did that. He absolutely did that. And you know whatever you give Kevin he is willing to give it back. And that just feeds back on itself.
Contact Kevin Anderton for more information at midnight_shorts_collection@mindspring.com or on the web at www.midnightchimesprod.com