ORIGINALLY WRITTEN DON RATZLAFF
Jordan Krause hasn’t reached the pinnacle of success as a filmmaker just yet, but the Marion County native took a step in that direction within the past month.
His 60-minute film, “Presence,” was selected as a finalist for the grand prize of $25,000 at the American Artist Film Festival in Kansas City.
Although he didn’t take home the big check, which was awarded this past weekend, having his film selected as a finalist is a coup in itself, according to the fledgling, 24-year-old filmmaker.
“Considering we were competing against full-length features that were shot on film versus video, and had an actual budget, this is pretty good,” the 2001 Centre High School graduate said with a chuckle.
Indeed, Krause’s film, which he wrote and directed, may have been the lowest of the “low-budget” projects to be accepted. He completed it for about $1,500.
“The bulk of that we had to use to secure locations,” he said. “The only location that charged us a lot was a church we shot at. The bars and the hospitals didn’t charge us anything, but the church did.”
“Presence” chronicles four years in the life of a young up-and-coming singer/songwriter from Kansas, focusing on the relationships that come and then crumble as he follows his path to musical success.
“Basically, his focus is on his career, so he dumps one girls, hooks up with another girl and basically destroys their relationship,” Krause said. “He’s a selfish bastard. He tries to get her back and she shoots him down.”
The lead actors in the film, all from Kansas, were recruited through Krause’s connections in Lawrence, where he’s been living the past two years.
The music used in the film-including a couple of concert scenes-was written and performed by acquaintances.
“We used some music from a friend of mine in Chicago who has an album coming out in the spring-Michael McDermott,” Krause said.
“He performed all four songs, and wrote three of them. The other one was written by a friend of mine named Joe Lazar, who owns a bar in Chicago. He also played on the soundtrack.”
Being an independent filmmaker requires…flexibility.
“We actually debuted the film without a finished sound mix, which makes the fact that we were nominated for the grand prize pretty amazing,” he said.
Not only was the budget tight, but so was the production process. Krause said filming began in March, but most of the shooting was done in June and July.
“We got accepted (for the festival) at the end of August, and did some reshoots about two weeks ago prior to the festival,” he added with a laugh.
The American Artist Film Festival is an international event open to almost any independent filmmaker who wants to enter a project-and includes almost any genre, Krause said.
Rather than compete in defined categories, as is usually the case, all the films at this festival are lumped together and compete for a single prize.
“They said they were judging the storyline, cinematography, sound-just the basic building blocks,” Krause said.
“Since we didn’t have the basic sound mix (done), I’m going to guess we more than made up for the sound deficiencies pretty much everywhere else-in story-telling and performance and things like that.
“I talked to some of the judges after the fact, but they couldn’t really divulge anything,” he said. “The reaction was uniformly positive, though.”
Krause said “Presence” represents something of a “comeback” in his young career.
“The last couple of years I haven’t been really entering festivals,” he said. “I’ve been shooting concerts, events, commercials and things like that. Sort of stepping back from the narrative aspect of things.”
Had he won the $25,000 grand prize, Krause said he would have used the money to make a feature-length version of “Presence” or create other short projects. Even without it, he said being nominated has energized him for the future.
“We’re probably going to do a couple more shorts,” Krause said when asked about his future. “Then, next year, we’re going to focus on finding investors and developing a feature.
“If I can do (‘Presence’) with $1,500, you give me a budget to make things look pretty and I’ll do something really good.”
