Ah, “low budget”—the most bogus term in filmmaking! A phrase used as justification for a poor movie and as an obstacle overcome by a great film, one that runs the gamut from Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs and Kevin Smith’s Clerks to the bumbling 5-year-old that backs into his parents’ camcorder and hits that little red circle marked “Record.” A handicap and an accolade—it all depends.
“Even $5-6 million is considered low budget!” exclaims Kevin Bender, a fourth-year religious studies major at UVA, with a grin, arms of his black corduroy coat flapping slightly.
 High def? Most def! Sarah Elizabeth Edwards and Matthew Marcus give crystal clear performances in Kevin Bender’s The Receipt. |
Curtain Calls is talking with Bender, whose full-length feature film, The Receipt, recently screened to an audience of 200 or so people at the Newcomb Hall Theater. The film was billed in a 50-second online trailer as “The biggest student film event in University of Virginia history,” and the tag might not be far off. The Receipt is, by many conservative estimates, low budget. However, with a price tag of $8,900, it may also be the most expensive low budget film ever made by a UVA student.
Bender began making films in the fall of 2003. A quick survey of his website (dubbed “RiverBend Films") yields almost two dozen short films that range from the little-to-no-budget (Checkmate stars Bender’s younger brother in a chess match against Kermit the Frog) to some of Bender’s commercial work (see Heavenly Body System, produced by Bender for a Christian fitness instructor). A lover of equipment, you can trace Bender’s development as an artist through A Day in the Life of a Cat, a documentary trilogy made over four years that follows his cats, “Tommie” and “Maggie,” that culminates in a third installation—shot in 1080 High Definition digital video, scored to Five for Fighting’s “Superman” (which is sort of the modern soundtrack equivalent of Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill”).
Bender spent $4,000 on his 1080 High Def camera, and an additional $1,000 on Vienna Symphonic Library, an expense that he split with members of his sound department. The Vienna program was used to record the 59 minutes of original music that fills out the 80-minute film; The Receipt is the first film made by a UVA student to include an original score (penned by UVA student Kyle Ringgenberg).
The Receipt was shot entirely on location in Charlottesville; the cast includes students from the Department of Drama, from recent Curt acquaintance Jason Kobielus (currently onstage at Culbreth Theatre for The Voysey Inheritance; go here for a review) to Matthew Marcus, a UVA Drama standout that sorta resembles Andy Garcia. It’s an unabashed romantic comedy, stuffed to the brim with cozy orchestral flourishes that sound too rich to be digital and outdoor shots too bright to be funded by a student’s budget (though it is; for an outdoor scene shot on the Downtown Mall, Bender bought five work lights from Lowe’s at a price of $100 each). It’s creative low-budget that crosses a surprisingly wide gap to claim high quality.
And it also bears the signature of a confident filmmaker. Bender talks a bit with Curt about influences such as Spielberg and Peter Jackson, and tells Curt to watch the film for his “signature shot,” a tracking shot of feet. When Curt calls the length of The Receipt “ambitious” for a student film, Bender quietly responds, “I am that ambitious.”
“If you want to tell a conventional story, it’s hard to do a short,” he says. “But in 60 to 90 minutes, you can tell a simple story in an effective way and do it right.”
A week after the premiere, Bender and his crew are still working on the film’s sound editing (“It’s as high quality as we can get it without a soundstage,” he tells Curt). However, Bender promises to start shipping online orders for The Receipt by May 1.
Book brackets
Ah, the annual Gordon Avenue Library Book Sale! For those of you not in the know, Curt recommends checking out the Friends of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library website for details on reading groups and smaller book events, not to mention prepping yourself for next year’s elbow-throwing, shelf-toppling text scramble, where hearts are broken over hardbacks.
O.K., so CC gets a bit hyperbolic when it comes to discounted books, but his haul was a good’n—some Cormac McCarthy, a short story collection by local author and UVA professor Christopher Tilghman, and a copy of the fairly recent novel, An Arsonists’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England. Curt went exploring for details on Arsonist’s Guide on the Inter-thing and came up with the results from creative online journal The Morning News and its annual Tournament of Books. And a familiar name.
Seems The Morning News drafted Virginia Quarterly Review editor Ted Genoways to its judges panel for this year’s competition. What’s more, Genoways had the foresight to pass along the eventual tournament champ, Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, in the second round of the tourney. When Genoways reappears alongside the other judges in the final round, he casts his vote for Díaz’s novel once more, saying, “I certainly didn’t read every book of 2007—but I haven’t read one better.”
For those of you who missed it last week, C-VILLE’s tireless literary lynchpin, copy editor Doug Nordfors, took on the mammoth task of reviewing the latest VQR. Check out his review here.
All the young ’tudes
True to his word, Curt followed up with Second Street Gallery at their first Young Collectors gathering last Wednesday, April 16. He arrived at 5:30pm sharp, but things didn’t get underway until shortly after 6pm, with gallery director Leah Stoddard running the crowd through procedures for the gallery’s New Art benefit auction, held last Saturday, and encouraging the group to ask questions. While the Young Collectors gathering got first glimpse at the full spread of works up for grabs, as well as the price list for the silent auction (works from $40-1,000), the half-hour lag between 5:30pm and 6pm made it difficult to get a sense of order from the event. Still, Second Street knows their stuff, and Curt remains optimistic they’ll amass a nice collection of collectors.
While we’re talking art, Curt’s protegé—Sara Yenke, C-VILLE’s talent-drenched arts intern—has a show opening at Rawstuff this week. Age is not a factor here, folks—go show some love.
Have a question for Sara “The Intern” Yenke? How about Curt? E-mail curtain@c-ville.com.
