Brandon Van Vliet is a filmmaker who is not ready for Hollywood, and he sees that as a good thing.
Van Vliet established his own production company with a telling name, Restraining Hollywood, in 2005, and completed his first full-length feature this year.
The movie is a gritty crime drama called "Trust Me," put together with a shoestring budget - or maybe half a shoestring - of just $10,000, and Van Vliet said he had to "milk a lot of resources" to raise just that much money.
When you consider that the average Hollywood production costs $60 million, and that the average for "small," independent films is $10 million to $20 million, the nature of Van Vliet's challenge becomes apparent.
"We didn't pay any actors; a lot of other people did a lot of things for free," Van Vliet said. "This was a passion project all the way."
Van Vliet, a Nisswa native and 1996 graduate of Pequot Lakes High School, tapped into friends and volunteers for actors, almost none of whom had ever had a single scene of acting experience before - not even a high school play.
To make up for acting skill, Van Vliet said he wrote parts for his movie characters based on the personalities of his willing conscripts, hoping they would perform their roles more naturally.
The cast reads like a local phone book, with a lot of familiar names from Crosslake, Pequot Lakes, Nisswa and others from across the Brainerd lakes area. The cast roster is about 70 people in all. His wife, Jessica, served as executive producer of the film, and even played a small role.
The movie was filmed primarily on location in the Twin Cities, but also in a number of locations all around Minnesota. Unable to afford film, Van Vliet used Canon XL2 video, a format commonly used for reality TV shows. Editing was done on a Mac. The movie took two months to shoot, and eight months to edit after Van Vliet spent a month writing the script.
For inspiration, Van Vliet said he drew on personal experience - which included five years spent working as a DJ in a Minneapolis strip club - a good place to observe a lot of characters who might be involved in drugs, crime and other unsavory activity highlighted in Van Vliet's film.
"Trust Me" is Van Vliet's third film, although it's his first full-length feature. He markets his work - again on a thin shoestring - primarily on the Internet, by distributing Restraining Hollywood stickers and by using WOM - word-of-mouth networking.
Van Vliet said his films don't produce a lot of revenue as yet, but he manages to make a living by working on a lot of smaller projects, such as shooting and directing music videos for local bands, and any other video project he can get paid for.
Van Vliet feels that "Trust Me" is probably "not up to the level" of being submitted to a major independent film festival, such as the Sundance Film Festival held in Utah, but said he will continue to hone his craft.
"I'm most interested in making experimental films," he said. "I don't want to make genre movies, whether it be a crime or horror movie, or whatever. I'm working on like four scripts right now, which is always a challenge, so we'll see what we come up with for my next project."
"Trust Me" was screened at the Whitefish Lodge and Suites in Crosslake last Saturday night, Nov. 8, to an audience of about 75 people, most of whom seemed to be having a good time. The movie was premiered at Suburban World Theater in "Uptown" Minneapolis.
Van Vliet said feedback has been generally positive, although he knows he still has a lot to learn about making movies.
"I'm totally self-taught," he said. "I never went to film school. Fortunately, a lot of people that worked with me on this film had been to film school, or had some experience in the industry, and that has been like film school for me. I've learned so much from others in the course of working on this project."
Anyone interested in learning more about Van Vliet and his other projects can go to: www.restraininghollywood.com.
