The Story
A documentary movie.
A narrative piece.
A true story.
A man who is an ordinary father wanting to leave an extraordinary legacy. As he sets out to revisit his father's past he hopes to help his son face the future. Set in Eastern Kansas, it's a story of regret, of reconciliation and of hope, exploring the complex relationship between a father and son. Combining panoramic cinematography with a picture-in-picture visual composition, it blends documentary and narrative techniques to present a cinematic personal essay.
Details
Everything in this 10 minute movie is true. It uses the real subjects (Rick and Micah Cree), actual locations (Paola, KS and vicinity), and Rick's own 8mm home movie footage. The film took 2 1/2 years to make, partly due to the fact that it was created backwards. Meaning, we shot first and wrote (and re-wrote and re-wrote) the script later. I was limited to the footage we collected on that half day of shooting (with a crew of 2 - we started in the morning on a Saturday in March of 06 and had until Rick and Micah needed to catch their flight back to LA that afternoon), plus a couple days of me driving around capturing some distinctive Kansas imagery (you have to look, but it is there). The lack of footage made for some tight boundaries in the writing and editing realms. On top of that, a lot of our time on the day was spent creating the panoramic effect that I had been interested in exploring.
Tidbit: After an earlier, shorter version (a sort of work-in-progress under a different title) screened at the Kansas City Jubilee festival, I realized that the film needed an introduction to explain who the subjects were right from the get go. I tried to do this with a simple line change ("His roots are in the wheat fields of Eastern Kansas, nearly a hundred years ago" changed to "...a long way from Southern California where I've raised my son"). But it wasn't enough. I needed something visual but had no footage that would work. I called up Rick to tell him I was coming to SoCal to get a shot of he and Micah driving along the coast (to show they were beginning a trip to Kansas). Problem was, Rick had a gotee for a play he was in, and Micah had short hair. After 3 months, the little beard was gone, Micah's hair had grown back, and we shot the introduction 2 years after we shot the footage in Kansas. And yes, I was a bit concerned about Micah going from 14 to 16 years old, but I think it works.