Citizen Screen: Shooting Hard News
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Cast and crew of Glampire. Photo by Keith Hitchcock [/caption]
Citizen Screen is a monthly column dedicated to film and film-related topics, sourced and curated by Port Townsend Film Festival.
This month’s column is by Keith Hitchcock.
Keith lives in Port Townsend and works as Marketing & Development Director for the Port Townsend Film Festival. His past experience includes directing, acting, and teaching in the theatre; digital media production; and content marketing.
I look up to examine the blue walls and arched windows of the 1890-built building. When I think about the historic structures that animate downtown Port Townsend, this is the first building I think about. Despite the leading role the Hastings Building plays in this town, its upper floors have been lifeless for years. Today is different. Today is the day that the winners of the Port Townsend Film Festival’s 2024 Short Screenplay contest get to watch their film shot.
A young man in a lawn chair holds a walkie-talkie to his ear and receives an “all clear” message. He opens the chainlink fence to usher me and two reporters toward the building. I push the weathered wooden door open to reveal what looks like two stories worth of dusty wooden steps leading to the second floor.
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Mount Baker Block Building as seen from Hastings Building. Photo by Elizabeth Becker [/caption]
At the top of the stairs, we weave our way through a swarm of film production worker bees. One group huddles in focused conversation. Someone adjusts the angle on what looks like a mini-spotlight. Someone else taps buttons on a big high-tech camera. An actor checks her hair on her phone’s camera. More than twenty people prepare to shoot the next scene of this short film. Someone yells, “Quiet on the set!”
This production team couldn’t have recreated a better set for this horror-comedy film. High plaster walls and ceilings are cracked, discolored, and crumbling. Light streams in through a skylight thirty feet up. Dark brown wood is throughout, in wainscoting, ornate railing, doors, framing, and elsewhere. Debris, decay, and ancient artifacts round out the decor. The building interior itself is a character in this story, cast as an antique backdrop, dripping with history.
Standing here watching the tight precision of a professional film crew, I’m already excited to watch the final product. Glampire will see its debut in the Local Shorts program at the 2024 Port Townsend Film Festival in September. But zooming out, I think about the bigger story. Films have been shot in this area before. People always reference An Officer and a Gentleman, which is a definite feather in this region’s cap. Even in the decades that followed that movie, film production has never really gotten into the muscle memory of this place. Watching this film shoot at this moment feels like the beginning of a new era of filmmaking in Jefferson County and the Olympic Peninsula.
There’s reason to believe this could be the start of a new era; just two years ago Washington State passed legislation (HB 1914) that incentivizes shooting films in rural counties. Jefferson County (and other counties on the Peninsula) qualifies for the Production Incentive Program, which offers funding assistance for qualified in-state motion picture expenditures of up to forty percent. This is a huge incentive for any production company looking to maximize their budget. Film crews that would otherwise be shooting in Los Angeles or British Columbia, might now give Jefferson County a strong look.
A new era of filmmaking requires trained and organized filmmakers, and regional institutions will be filling the need. Among them: Peninsula College offers Film and Digital Media programs; Olympic College offers a robust Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Filmmaking; Port Townsend High School has a Media Lab, sparking young digital media inspiration; and the Jefferson County Filmmaker Collective brings together adult filmmakers, both new and established, to support each other in film productions large and small.
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Special effects artist Steve Johnson, and actor Tony Doupe. Photo by Elizabeth Becker [/caption]
Jefferson County also has another thing going for it, which you might already know: people love coming here. This means that film professionals love coming here. Glampire attracted an award-winning special effects artist to this production in the Hastings Building, and I’m sure the charm, quirkiness, and Northwest beauty found here will continue luring talent like this.
“Quiet on the set” I hear again. “Action!” I sit still and listen to the actor delivering lines in the room next door. I flashback to my conversation with Nhatt Nichols, Editor of the Beacon. She’s sitting on a small couch in my office. We discuss the possibility of a new film column for the Beacon. When she says “What the Beacon publishes about arts and culture is limited because it’s not hard news” she makes me want to understand exactly what’s considered hard news. “Would a story about a professional film production shooting in one of the iconic historical buildings in Jefferson County?” I ask. Nhatt pauses for a moment and smiles: “yes.”
Epilogue: this column won’t always be hard news. We look forward to exploring a variety of film and film-related topics in the months to come. Want to propose a topic? Send your thoughts to: info@ptfilm.org.
