Past Filmmakers

Josh Mahan
Bus Stop

1. How did you come up with the idea for the film?
The film is basically my worries about growing old and never achieving what I want in life.  The outside forces in the character's life that keep him in his routine are very much based on my first two years out of high school before I decided to go to college, and the fact that I've worked at the same retail store for over five years now.

2. How long did the production process take?
Production was stretched out over half a semester at school.  The actual shooting was only a long weekend but postproduction, took over a month.  We also had to shoot the entire film twice due to camera complications that made the original footage unusable.  I also completely reworked the original soundtrack later, which took about another month itself.

3. What challenges did you experience in the creation of the film?
As I said above, the camera had a light leak that ruined all of our footage on the first shoot.  Then the actor we had, A.J. Schraeder, did not have time to reshoot because he was taking 27 credit hours that semester and had an art show the same week.  Luckily another friend, John Iclef, was available.  I think he did a great job.  A lot of the stress and problems we had the first time through were ironed out the second time around so it went a lot smoother.  Overall I think the problems we had only made it a better film.

4. What is your favorite memory from creating the film?
During the shots inside the store we were shooting after closing so I had to turn the lights on by overriding the control panel.  The thing about that was that the control panel was at the top of a ladder in the offices and the lights would shut off again about every five minutes.  I spent a good deal of time running back and forth hoping they would stay on long enough to get the next shot.

Also, you would not believe how many people, including the bus driver, thought it would be fun to wave directly at the camera when we were shooting at the bus stop.

5. When someone has finished watching your film, what do you hope they take away from the experience?
Well, I hope they understand what we were trying to say, and then take the initiative to make sure they don't end up doing something they will regret later in life.

6. What type of reaction has your film received from viewers?
Good ones.  Of course, the only people who have seen it have been faculty and students in the Film and Broadcasting Department at UNC-Greensboro and some family and friends.  But, we had a lot of positive feedback from faculty members encouraging us to submit the film to festivals.

7. What advice would you give to aspiring young filmmakers?
Well, since I would consider myself in that category I can't really offer much advice.  But, it really isn't that hard to do this if you want to—as long as you can deal with patronizing comments from people who think you're just playing around.

8. Please tell us about the next film you plan to work on.
Right now we are actually in pre-production on another animated short film.  We have already entered a contest to get a $1000 budget for the film but we won't know if we were chosen for a few more days.  Hopefully the film will be done by the end of August, but right now we're still building the set and puppets.  It will be a bit more serious than Dirty Dishes, and also have a more stylized feel.

9. What are your thoughts on the film industry in NC?
I haven't had much chance to become very involved in it, but it looks like things have been picking up recently, a couple of fairly large budget films have been, or are being shot, in the area and hopefully it will only keep getting better.