CineForge Co-op / Local Roots, Global Screens: Supporting the Growth of Cinema in Columbus

By Andy Carpenter

Watching movies on a streaming platform is a whole lot like having UberEats drop off a meal at your house. Both are convenient, with barely any effort involved at all. There isn’t much prep required, and not much to clean up after … and both tend to obscure all the arduous work the filmmaker who made your entertainment, or the farmer who cultivated your food, had to put in to bring that final product to your home.

I can barely manage much more than a few ferns or raspberry bushes in the yard, so running a farm is out of the question. Making movies is tough in its own right and requires a certain level of dedication and determination by a film-farmer, to even give an idea for a movie a chance at being shown to an audience. My friend Paul Rowe is the closest thing I know to a film farmer as talented as he is driven in his pursuit of making movies.

Paul is in the process of guiding his first feature film, “A Southern Horror,” through post-production, which is time consuming and soaks up money like the roots of a withered crop during a drought. Paul shot his film on regional locations such as Lake Oliver, Historic Westville, Flat Rock Park, downtown Columbus, and my house, over the summer of 2024.

Paul launched “Last Caress Productions,” and through self and crowdfunding, Paul assembled a team of four writers, regional actors, and crew, including Columbus’s own Trey Walker of Mud Films. If you want to know where film “comes from”, stick around Paul for a day, a week, a month. He’d be glad to have you along, as Paul is a filmmaker cultivator. For him, it’s not just what he gets out of making a film – it’s more about how others can participate in a meaningful way which both enhances their experience and leads them to take the initiative and develop their own projects.

For anyone interested in filmmaking, it can be both exhilarating, and conversely, about as fun as watching a row of squash grow. Eventually, the squash will make it into a plastic container on a grocery store shelf, then into your delivered meal. But like a crop, first the locations have to be selected, permits secured from the city, insurance paid for, locations rented and built out for sets. Actors and crew must be housed, and fed. Paul’s feature meant over fifty cast and crew members were paid to work, paid to act, paid to bring characters and stories to life.

Even though “A Southern Horror” has a way to go before its release on major streaming platforms, Paul has a second feature, “Southern Scares,” in development, in collaboration with Mud Films. A genre piece, horror mixed with sentimental losses, and harnessing the flavor of the 1990’s, when VCR tapes were the highest tech imaginable, “Southern Scares” holds promising sequel potential.

Thousands of people reached out to Paul, expressing support and interest. However, as most of us feel the pain of exponentially increasing food costs, such was the experience Paul found when trying to raise money for this film; prohibitively expensive, like waiting on your dinner, while all along fighting that gnawing dread of the impending bill. Over the course of the three films Paul was involved in, either writing, producing, or directing, he’s helped raise about forty thousand dollars in donations via crowdfunding platforms such as Seed & Spark Indiegogo and social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

Confident in his track record, and enthusiasm on social media for “Southern Scares,” including an overwhelming number of actor submissions for roles, Paul set the wheels in motion to fund and film the movie during late spring of this year. In early March he launched the fundraising campaign and got to work with local set designer Ginger Steele on sourcing the appropriate 90’s costumes and set pieces. He brought Michael Woodruff on as location manager to scout and secure locations, go-getter London Hedges as assistant director, Jenn Rowe as a producer, Trey Walker of Mud Films to run camera and Lee Garrett on sound, Bre Webber in charge of film makeup design, very talented local actors, and reached out to an actress with at least one-hundred films in her catalogue. Paul was ready to go.

Then, the tariffs, escalating costs on materials like paint and wood, and other price hikes hit harder and harder. Paul and his team had many discussions; times are tough for many, and kicking in money for a movie that won’t be seen by any audience for at least six months down the line doesn’t make as much sense as it did at the beginning of the year. So, at the last minute, Paul made the tough decision to halt production, even after a flurry of donations briefly renewed hope the project could continue.

Paul’s brand hinges on one thing, and that is his dedication to the people that back him. So, with apologies and empathy for his cast and crew, and an understanding for people that didn’t feel it was the right time to invest, the production was officially postponed. Unfortunately, “Southern Scares” might not make the slate this year as shared in the inaugural CineForge movie slate in the March edition of The Local.

But he will make it, with the community’s help assuredly, one way or another. Whether or not you ever help finance a movie with twenty bucks or twenty thousand, know that your contribution goes toward a lot of things you might not know about in the fascinating behind-the-scenes reality of filmmaking.

Columbus has a unique opportunity to be a bright spot on the map for filmmaking. Alongside Columbus State University’s “Georgia Film Academy,” CineForge, Strong Land Screenwriters, Rankin Screenwriters, among other screenwriting and filmmaking education groups, Columbus has plenty of opportunities to develop and support a strong base of talent. There are millions in tax incentives available to filmmakers with the guidance of the Columbus Film Office, as well as an untapped potential for dollars to flow into the community from outside production companies.

Filmmaking is an equalizer; any idea, any point of view, any vision, can be made into a film. A filmmaker can come from any background, and be as talented as the next. Film represents freedom of speech and the freedom to dream. It is in that spirit that supporting filmmaking not only benefits the filmmaker, the region, the vision, but it also benefits the supporter. So, let’s get rolling.

CineForge Co-Op is a collective of passionate filmmakers aimed at building and supporting the filmmaking industry in and around Columbus, Georgia.