Area filmmaker debuts short film shot in Schenectady and Albany counties
Receiving a film script from your father as a birthday present might not be the most conventional gift, but that’s exactly how one Albany filmmaker started his recent short film.
Jon Cring, director of Know Candy, has actually had his father, Jonathan Cring, an accomplished writer, pen all of his movie scripts.
The film is premiering at the Duanesburg Area Community Center, in Delanson, on Saturday, April 23, at 3 p.m., and later that day at The Great Room Theater, in Gansevoort, at 7 p.m. It was shot on location throughout the Capital District, and Jon Cring said wanted to bring the film to hometowns of the 50 extras who appear in it.
`This is a chance for a whole bunch of local folks to get to see what they were a part of,` said Cring. `I had sort of always been in the arts working with my family in music and theater. I met my wife, and she had film equipment from winning a film festival at 18 years old.`
Cring directed `Know Candy,` but his wife was the one behind the camera filming it all. Cring has made 13 feature-length films, 15 short films and two television series. `Know Candy` was filmed in three days and was completed in March. An Ohio native, Cring lived in Tennessee for a long time before moving to Albany, which he said was a great idea.
`I had been in the South and made quite a few films there and this was an area of the country I had never explored, so we moved up here, and really it has been the smartest thing we have ever done,` said Cring. `As opposed to almost anywhere else I have been in the country, there are associations and people that want to support the independent filmmakers, and it makes things a lot easier.`
A classic film noir approach was taken for `Know Candy,` which starts off with the main character Mitchell Conyers, a lawyer, receiving a text message from an unknown number. The messages are cryptic at first, but Conyers gets drawn in as the texts get personal and the story revolves around Candy Marshal.
Shooting the film ironically started to become a jinx, just like the story it was capturing.
`This film is about bad luck and a jinx, and we had that in spades during the production of this film, but we persevered to be able to have a finished film,` said Cring.
Two days before shooting was scheduled to begin, Cring said, the lead actress had to drop out due to a back injury. Then he found a new actress, Sarah Ansley, but she had been in the country for only three weeks and her English was a little rough. Cring rescheduled the shoot to begin a week and a half later. Once shooting began, there will were more problems, with a car breaking down during the middle of the set and people getting sick.
`It was a crazy shoot, but it turned out really, really fun,` said Cring. `If you care about what you are going to do, it is not going to be easy, but there is going to be a payoff in the end.`
Some of the featured locations in the film are the Chuck Wagon Diner in Duanesburg, CM Fox Real Estate in Guilderland and The Appel Inn in Altamont; some scenes were also shot in Schenectady, Princetown and Delanson.
`I was looking for locations that had the quality of looking like they could be anytime,` said Cring. `You find a couple of locations and they speak to you and sort of form everything to create a look around it that is pretty much how it happened.`
To purchase tickets in advance go to www.extraordinaryfilmproject.com or call 615-715-1578. Admission is $3 per person and tickets can be purchased online for either show in advance with the option to also buy a DVD and ticket combo for $10. The `director’s cut,` 32-minute full version, will be shown at both screenings, but the DVD includes two shorter versions of the film at 18 and 22 minutes. The shorter versions were made for film festival entry requirements.
“
