026
who has been stricken with Lyme disease and the daughter who must take care of him, a story influenced by Emily’s own experiences. Filming took place in the mountains around Tryon, NC. For Chris and Emily, each project is not only an opportunity to become better filmmakers but also to fine-tune their abilities to promote their projects. “We are trying to connect with an audience to do the films that we want to do,” explains Chris. After the Get Better premier in Tryon, they took the film on a city by city tour across SC to screen it for audiences. It also screened at the Charleston International Film Festival and the Indie Grits Film Festival in Columbia. During this process, Chris and Emily found that audiences will pay to come out and see the film live, but didn’t want to pay to see their projects online. Both films are available, at no charge, online. “Our business model is not built on a lightning strike. We are trying to get really good at making movies and supporting our family,” Chris says with determination. Their family includes three children from Chris’s previous marriage—daughter Harriet (13), and sons Whitaker (15) and Gibson (16). A life as both filmmakers and parents fold onto one other day to day. “The kids understand that we work on weekends,” Emily says “but they also know that we can drop things in the middle of the week to go have fun as well.” Part of this effort is to involve the kids as much as possible which means inviting them to be part of the team. “We even involve them in monthly budget meetings,” Emily adds. A high enthusiasm for filmmaking has rubbed off on Chris’s son Whitaker who has begun making films of his own. It would be easy to take a pause and enjoy the success of their last film or take a step back to focus on family. But true to their words when they married, Chris and Emily are riding the momentum of Get Better into a new project. “Our goal was to collaborate with someone outside of our circle of friends,” Chris says. This person ended up being actress and author, Susan Isaacs (Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Angry Conversations with God), and the project is titled Sweet and Awful. A final script was completed in late May
Listening to their plans feels as though they are working at a manic pace. You can visualize Chris working furiously in his downstairs basement home office with Emily writing away in the room directly above him. But to see the pair together makes you feel they have total focus in their combined vision. “Emily and I like to work, to make things, to be with friends who make things. It’s not why we love each other but a large part of our relationship is creating things. If that wasn’t there though, we would still love each other,” Chris says. Emily cuts him off, “Finding the balance is really hard. It is re-negotiated
with each project but Chris and I have a healthy dose of self-doubt. If we didn’t have that we might be insufferable.” Chris and Emily don’t have flashing lights over their heads that blaze, Filmmaker. Watching them walk to the front of the theater to speak after a screening, you might think to yourself “Who are they?” But once you hear them speak about their process and their passion for what they do, the thoughts and new ideas, you will leave understanding that there is a uniqueness at work, an honest love for creating and doing it together. //WS
Photo by Jonathan Sharpe
structors in South Carolina’s Program of Alternative Certification for Educators. They met while attending PACE classes together and began dating. They found that they had many mutual interests. “We stunk at everything else,” Chris interjects, “so after four years we decided teaching wasn’t for us, but we were for each other.” They married in 2010, committing themselves to creating films, specifically narrative feature films, as their full time profession. “When you work in this area you have no idea how you got there,” Chris states, “the only thing that is rigid, is that we were not going to take a full time job.” Together they founded Paris MTN Scout, an independent production company with a focus on creating non-cynical films. The first effort was a short film entitled Good Life, a simple film focusing on a daughter’s love for her father, despite his misgivings. When posted online in December of 2010 Chris and Emily were surprised by the overwhelmingly positive responses. For their next project they turned their attention to a feature titled Taken In, a story inspired by Chris’s time working with children at a therapeutic boarding school. Although Taken In was more ambitious, the filmmakers followed a “handmade” approach to creating the film. This approach recalls similarities to Lars Von Triers Dogma film movement of the 1990s—use of available light and improvisation around a story outline. Production took place at the kitsch tourist attraction South of the Border, located on the SC and NC border along Interstate 95. Thematically, the project was an extension of Good Life, telling the story of a hurried father urgently trying to create a relationship with his daughter. It would be simple to dismiss Chris and Emily’s “handmade” approach as merely a another way of describing low budget, film-with-whatwe-got, filmmaking. But as you watch the soft focus, black and white tones, the extended takes that observe relationships being born between characters, you begin to understand there is a purpose. The films’ influences hint at Jim Jarmusch and Woody Allen. “A lot of people assume Chris got me into this. A lot of people forget that I’m there because I’m quiet and not a behind the camera person. He didn’t. I love creating and working through stories,” Emily states. Chris and Emily quickly got started on their next feature project, a film called Get Better. For their first two projects, the pair had been successful in raising funding through the crowd funding website Kickstarter. You pursue funding through Kickstarter by creating incremental funding levels and asking friends, family, and strangers to donate to your project. They turned again to Kickstarter to raise funding for Get Better and increased their ask to an ambitious $12,000. Their funding goal was surpassed after a highly creative and persistent video campaign. “We really make ourselves finish the film quickly and move on to the next thing,” Chris explains. “Our plan is a long term overnight success.” Get Better tells the story of a father