SEAHAWKS | Five takeaways from this week’s game and more in our special monthly section. [10]
.com
REPORTER NEWSLINE: 425.255.3484
FOUNDED 1995
RENTON
Backpacks | Every week, volunteers prepare 245 backpacks with food and supplies for students to take home over the weekend. [3]
FRIDAY, OCT. 10, 2014
Mayor’s $486 million budget includes B&O tax, nine jobs BY BRIAN BECKLEY bbeckley@rentonreporter.com
Brad Singley (left to right) Steven Heller, Sam Weigelt and Nathan Jones scrambled to get their hospital scene shot in the 50-hour film making competition, Renton FilmFrenzy, last weekend. TRACEY COMPTON, Renton Reporter
50 hours to make a movie? No problem tcompton@rentonreporter.com
T
hirteen teams scouted locations and set up their shots all over Renton this past weekend to take part in the seventh annual Renton FilmFrenzy. For the 50-hour film competition, teams were sent their CurveBalls - or items they must include in their film - at 5 p.m. on Friday and off they went to create their plots. Last year’s winner, Brad Singley, said he and his crew were up until 2 a.m. crafting their storyline. It has to do with a man who keeps thinking people are waving at him, but really it’s the person behind him. That’s all Singley would share with the Renton Reporter. “Everybody’s had that experience where you think someone’s waving at you and you go to wave back and they’re waving at the person behind you,” said Singley. “Our character has, um… maybe I’ll leave it at that.” Singley’s crew had planned to shoot at nine locations on Saturday for their short film. It was their fifth time entering the FilmFrenzy and they moved through their scenes like old pros.
Your Residential Specialists
“Our strategy is keeping a tight schedule, so when we get confident we’re doing well with our schedule, you start taking longer each take,” he said. “And then it’s 5 o’clock and we still have to edit and do a lot of the work in post.” Singley planned to used between eight and 10 friends from work, neighbors, church members and people from around the community. “It’s just an expensive hobby that we’ve spent way to much on,” said Steven Heller, star of the film. They’ve all known each other one to five years and seemed very comfortable taking direction from each other. It all starts with them making cardboard cutouts and then figuring out how to do stuff on the fly, said Heller. One of their first shots of the day was the Renton High School nurse’s office. They needed a hospital-type scene and “scored” when they got permission to use that location. “There’s a lot of things like this that have fallen into place,” said Heller. The crew was finished with the nurse’s office and on to their [ more FRENZY page 14 ]
[ more BUDGET page 8 ]
Annual Harvest Festival set for Saturday BY TRACEY COMPTON tcompton@rentonreporter.com
The 13th annual Fall Harvest Festival is Saturday, with 200 pumpkins, more than 50 booths, encompassing 35 craft vendors, five food vendors, retail, nonprofits and services. The event is from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Piazza, South Third and Burnett Streets. “It’s pretty eclectic, (there’s) something [ more HARVEST page 8 ]
206-949-1696 info@MarcieMaxwell.com www.MarcieMaxwell.com
1143967
BY TRACEY COMPTON
A new business and operations tax is the biggest new addition in Mayor Denis Law’s proposed 2015-2016 biennial budget, announced Monday during the City Council’s Committee of the Whole meeting. The new tax is designed to help the city meet an expected gap between expenditures and revenues that officials said would, if not addressed, affect the service levels provided by the city government. But aside from the new tax and the addition of a handful of new positions at City Hall, the next biennial budget is being characterized as primarily a status quo budget. The proposed city budget for the next two years totals about $486 million, with $230 million going to the general fund, which provides most of the city services, including police and fire.