Independent Film
See Also: The Independent Filmmakers Coalition of Kansas City"
Independent Film Production in Kansas City got a boost in 1988 when a young director living in Kansas City began making feature films. Todd Sheets started his feature film career with Zombie Rampage filmed in and around the Kansas City area. The film, though very crude and raw received worldwide distribution, enabling Todd to open a full production company and begin making films for the then rising HVS home video market. Todd began working with David DeCoteau who at the time had a studio at Paramount Pictures and took interest in the raw talent he saw in the young film maker. This led to Todd's first actual hit film Zombie Bloodbath. That film was a huge worldwide success for the director, a film that he says he considers his first real feature. "Most directors hie their early work in a closet, I allowed mine to get worldwide distribution and spent the next 10 years regretting it. It took me years to break free from those early films, winning awards at film festivals and gaining critical praise." Todd Sheets has stated. "I wish I could just bury those." Three Zombie Bloodbath features were made, as well as many more, including Moonchild, Violent New Breed, The Shivers, Splaytter Theater, Fear of The Dark and Whispers In The Gloom. Todd still makes movies in and around Kansas City as well as in St Louis, MO and Los Angeles, CA. He has an incredibly popular radio show called Nightwatch that is syndicated worldwide on over 400 stations and he uses it as a platform to talk to many friends in the Film and TV industry. Todd is currently in production as of December 2012 on his 18th feature film, House of Forbidden Secrets, starring Lew Temple, Allan Kayser, George Hardy and Dyanne Thorne. Todd's website is www.zombiebloodbath.com.
Sue Vicory started the not for profit film production company Heartland Films, Inc. in 2003. She produced the documentary short "Homelessness and the Power of One" which premiered in 2005. Her current documentary entitled "Kansas City Jazz and Blues; Past, Present and Future" is due to open in April 2011 and has aired on KCPT and KTWU. Sue sits on the Board of Kansas City Women in Film and TV. "1898, The W. F. Norman story" was released in 2011. Sue has moved to Del Mar, California where she continues her independent filmmaking. Her next feature documentary is entitled "Rebranding Hollywood".
Read more about this topic: Film In Kansas City
Famous quotes containing the words independent and/or film:
“We are independent of the change we detect. The longer the lever, the less perceptible its motion. It is the slowest pulsation which is the most vital. The hero then will know how to wait, as well as to make haste. All good abides with him who waiteth wisely; we shall sooner overtake the dawn by remaining here than by hurrying over the hills of the west.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Television does not dominate or insist, as movies do. It is not sensational, but taken for granted. Insistence would destroy it, for its message is so dire that it relies on being the background drone that counters silence. For most of us, it is something turned on and off as we would the light. It is a service, not a luxury or a thing of choice.”
—David Thomson, U.S. film historian. America in the Dark: The Impact of Hollywood Films on American Culture, ch. 8, William Morrow (1977)