25 days ago
ROSEVILLE, CA - A duo of local filmmakers watched in exhausted relief as hundreds of people packed two Roseville theaters Sunday night for the premiere of their first movie, No Parking.
"I haven't slept in 36 hours," said a bleary-eyed Seth Shore, the film's screenwriter, talking about his final push to prepare the movie for screening. "I'm going to sleep through the movie," he joked. Shore and director Hector Marquez were clearly a bit loopy following an intense period of production. The Roseville natives wrote, filmed and edited the 108-minute feature in just six months. Finally, the time had come to debut No Parking. It is a deeply personal production for the filmmakers, who admittedly had little to no experience making movies before this effort. "The whole idea of the movie," said Marquez, "Is that whatever situation or circumstance you find yourself in, you don't have to stay there. You can move on, you have a choice." Or in other terms, you don't have to stay "parked" where you are in life. Shore pulled from personal experience while writing the screenplay. "Three years ago my mother passed away," he said. "It was a very life-changing experience for me and my family." His story is about two older men who have been friends since high school. One has recently lost his wife, the other has been through a divorce and separation from his kids. The two men are saved by each other, and a '73 Volkswagen that powers their 3,000 mile, soul-searching road trip. "It's about getting up and doing something new and exciting and taking a risk," said Shore. He learned plenty about risk during production. Much of the script was written after filming began. Some scenes were written the day they were shot, and money was always an issue. "No one in our crew was paid," said Marquez. "This was a very small budget, every single person volunteered." They traveled 3,200 miles between filming locations in California and Nevada using donated gas cards. They used four microphones and three cameras. When it came to video editing, they figured it out as they went. "This has been one huge learning curve," they said. But as the first show began, none of that mattered. Two theaters in Roseville had sold out, and 46 other theaters nationwide had made commitments to show the film. "We're pretty excited," said Marquez. "A little bit nervous, but it's a big event for us." All of the proceeds from ticket sales Sunday night went to the Susan G. Komen Foundation for Breast Cancer Research. To learn more about the movie, visit the official Web site here. by Will Frampton, wframpton@news10.net.
News10/KXTV
