Producing a movie is a long and expensive process. Finding success as a director can take years.
Hillsdale students Shaun Lichti and Joshua Hamilton recognize they are in for the long haul.
Lichti, a senior studying marketing management, began his first serious directing and producing experience in 2009 as a sophomore in high school.
Lichti was looking for something to do as a summer project so he got some friends together to make a movie. After getting a good screenwriter on board to help draft and edit the script, Lichti and his friends showed the script to others.
People liked the script so much Lichti was able to raise more than $15,000 for the film’s production, allowing them to shoot on the first prototype model of a 4K resolution camera.
Lichti brought up eight tons of equipment from Los Angeles to Fresno, California where they filmed for 11 days with a cast and crew of about 150 professionals and many more volunteers.
“That was definitely a unique way to get catapulted into the film industry,” Lichti said. “I’m obviously incredibly grateful.”
The non-profit film, titled “In the Words of my Father,” speaks out about the power of emotional and verbal abuse and how it affects lives. It is still in post-production, but Lichti plans to release a teaser for the film in the next couple of weeks and finish the film within the next six months.
The movie was originally intended to be 25 to 30 minutes long but Lichti thinks it will end up a little shorter. It is intended as a festival-length short film.
“It’s not a YouTube clip but it’s not a feature film,” Lichti said.
Lichti, in looking back at his first major film shot over five years ago, sees how far his style has come.
“I’ve hit that crisis as an artist where I’m wondering, wow, is this still representative of my work? No; but does it deserve to be finished? Yes,” Lichti said. “All those people put effort in and it’s a story that needs to be told even if it’s not how I’d do it now.”
Lichti’s experience has given him the ability to work for commercial clients. Last summer, he helped shoot a brand launch film for a new apparel company called World Class Warrior. The apparel is designed for law enforcement, military and professional fighters. The film will be released in February.
“It was a fantastic rounding out of some of my areas that I hadn’t gotten into in film before,” Lichti said. “Action sequences, getting to work with active military, law enforcement, live range exercises, combat filmmaking, a lot of that stuff was something I hadn’t really gotten to do before and was a lot of fun to shoot.”
At Hillsdale, Lichti has been hired by sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma twice as an independent contractor to help shoot their recruitment videos. The most recent video, titled “Perfect Day,” was recently released. The first video gained so much popularity on social media that it was picked up by Kappa Kappa Gamma’s fraternity headquarters.
“Shaun just seems to know exactly what he wants in film,” said junior Sydney Delp, a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma who worked with Lichti in the production of the recruitment videos. “He has great vision and knows the technical and directional ways to implement his vision.”
While the first recruitment video was shot for about five hours over just one afternoon, “Perfect Day” was shot over the course of an entire week at seven different locations.
While Lichti has already spent several years working at his craft, Hamilton is just getting started.
“When you want to get into the film industry it’s all about building a reel,” said Hamilton, a sophomore studying political economy.
Hamilton came to Hillsdale planning to study politics. But as his first year progressed, he realized that working on Capitol Hill is not the most effective way to reform America.
“One of the things I always keep in my mind is a quote from Chuck Colson, that ‘Politics is downstream of culture,’” Hamilton said. “So I realized that whenever I’m sitting and pointing a finger at Capitol Hill and getting frustrated about where America is politically, culturally that’s really just an indictment on myself and it’s an indictment on everyone.”
Hamilton wants to use film to help improve culture, but he does not want his films to preach.
“If people can just watch my films, if they can just think about them, it’s not a big thing and it’s not going to change them over night but that’s the first step to sort of transforming American culture and hopefully steering us back,” Hamilton said.
Hamilton has been working on a documentary about Simpson Dormitory.
The documentary, titled “Dorm Dogs,” may last anywhere from 15 minutes to 50 minutes in length according to Hamilton.
“You can never predict what’s going to happen in a documentary,” Hamilton said. “I do know the content I get will be good because I know Simpson and I know those guys and there’s a lot of amazing personal interaction and story that happens.”
In addition to “Dorm Dogs,” Hamilton also plans on shooting a shorter narrative film.
Hillsdale does not offer a film program, but both Lichti and Hamilton agree that Hillsdale’s education is valuable for a filmmaker.
“[Hillsdale] makes a huge difference,” Hamilton said. “A lot of people in the creative industries, a lot of filmmakers, are hindered by the fact that they don’t have a great understanding of the way the world works.”
Both Hamilton and Lichti would love to work as a major director in Hollywood one day. They admit it will take a lot of work.
“That’s something you work towards,” Lichti said. “There are a lot of different paths that can get you into the industry.”
Lichti’s path has taken him into the commercial world.
Hamilton hopes his independent film projects will help him make a name for himself in the filmmaking community.
Perhaps their paths will intersect again in Hollywood.
