Arts & Entertainment

Young Filmmakers Aim for Festival Breakthroughs

Hillsborough's Bryan Schultz and Jeff Perez are putting the final touches on their feature film debut.

Take a little Martin Scorcese, add a touch of Quentin Tarantino, and you might get something close to "The Pine Overcoat," a film project by the Hillsborough team of Bryan Schultz and Geoff Perez.

Schultz and Perez are in the post-production stage of readying their film, a quartet of stories that are linked by a common theme: death.

"It sounds a lot more grim than it is," Perez, who lives on Oxford Place, points out.

Schultz said the four segments weren't initially conceived as parts of a whole, but as filming progressed, the directing duo realized the connections. "They can all stand alone," he said.

Which could prove beneficial: the most difficult challenge for new filmmakers is to get attention, and Perez and Schultz plan to show their film at next season's film festivals, including film festivals in Brooklyn, Hampton, Montclair, the Garden State Film Festival and the New York International Film Festival.

"We can show individual segments or the whole film, it works either way," Schultz, a resident of Beachwood Circle, said.

To produce the film, they used Kickstarter to raise $3,000 for camera and sound equipment to give the movie a more polished look and sound. They had about two weeks for filming—"Which we learned is not nearly enough," Schultz said—and used friends with acting experience as well as a few professional actors.

"It was very cool to be able to work with some of these professional actors," Perez said.

The two best friends since the eighth grade have some experience making films, at least shorter ones. Both took Hillsborough High School's Advanced Video and Film class, taught by James Arndt, in addition to their own outside projects.

"We wanted to do a YouTube Channel," Perez said, explaining the "30 or 40" short comedy films they made under the name of "Team Silly Hat Robot Arms."

But "The Pine Overcoat" is essentially an attempt at serious filmmaking, though one segment takes a comedic look at an accidental murder.  

Both are headed to Montclair State University in September, where they'll continue their educations in film studies, but come the spring, when the festivals begin, they may be headed for a graduate course in movie making, especially the networking part.

"One of the things about festivals is meeting other filmmakers," Schultz said.  

With their experience, enthusiasm and a project "in the can," they're sure to make an impression.


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