‘Rebel Without a Crew’
NM filmmaker part of competition to make feature-length movie on $7,000
Alejandro Montoya Marín is about to hit another milestone in the coming weeks after years of hard work.
The New Mexico filmmaker is in Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest Conference and Festivals, which begins today and runs through Tuesday, March 13.
He is there for his role in the coming El Rey Network series “Rebel Without a Crew.” The series will air later this month on El Rey Network and Verizon’s go90 site.
The competition put five filmmakers together. Each had to create a featurelength film with a $7,000 budget.
Part of the production also meant that there is no crew, thus making each filmmaker responsible for all aspects of the film.
Montoya Marín spent 14 days of filming for his feature film and three days of preproduction.
His film “Monday” will screen on Monday, March 12, in the film festival portion.
The feature-length film is based on his short film, which follows Jim, who is about to experience the worst day of his life.
“I’m very proud of what we did,” he says. “It was pretty hard especially when you have $7,000. We could have gone guerrilla with the filming, but we had to keep everyone safe. We had a set medic, and anytime we did stunts, we had to get it approved. There’s a lot of stuff we couldn’t do. But we have two explosions, and that’s pretty cool.”
And there were plenty of challenges. “There was very little time to do storyboarding and shot lists,” he says. “A lot of it was being able to think on the spot. The other disadvantage was that I didn’t have a crew. I was lifting the equipment. It gets to you. And at 36, I was the oldest person in the series.”
Rodriguez wanted to do the series to mark the 25th anniversary of his film “El Mariachi.”
Rodriguez created the cult classic on a $7,000 budget.
Montoya Marín is grateful to have the opportunity to make New Mexico proud.
“I’m going to the entire festival to meet new connections in film,” he says. “I’m really hoping that something will come out of this opportunity. It’s always so difficult to make films because of the budgets. I’ll be going to as many events as I can.”
The filmmaker is also hoping to screen the feature-length film in Albuquerque soon.
“The film community in New Mexico continues to grow,” he says. “We’re making great pieces of art, and the community has been supportive of my work.”