Pittsburgh film a study in craft and inspiration
Rita Gregory sat straight-backed and very still as the stylist ran a flat iron through the ends of her dark brown hair. Makeup artist Quay Styles put a touch more powder here and there as Ms. Gregory said, softly to herself, “I’ve been in my home for about a week, and I still haven’t spoken a word to you.”
Ms. Gregory would repeat that scripted line, or one similar to it, many times over the next few hours. On the other side of the room, which featured a spectacular view of the Allegheny River far below, a half-dozen people picked at snacks on the craft services table or attended to the preparation of a scene about to be shot in an upstairs bedroom.
This wasn’t a Hollywood movie set. But thanks to a collaboration through Steeltown Entertainment Project and the University of Pittsburgh, it was a smaller, fairly close approximation.
Almost everyone involved, with the exception of the lead actors and production execs, is a newbie to show biz. The aim of the nonunion project, “The Rehabilitation of the Hill,” is to open up opportunities for novices to break into the film industry by giving them valuable practical experience. In Pittsburgh, there’s been a noted lack of diversity among both the acting pool and skilled trades. The project, say its founders, might move the needle a bit.
The micro-budget film will cost less than $100,000, supported by its sponsors and a handful of grants. Steeltown raised almost $15,000 through a crowdfunding effort. There are possible Screen Actors Guild salary benefits, too, incentives for featuring a mostly African-American cast as well as women in the lead roles.
The script was written by Demetrius Wren, a Los Angeles-based writer and director. He is an engaging man, married to one of the film’s producers and actors, Christina Wren, who happens to be from
Pittsburgh.
Mr. Wren has been teaching a filmmaking class to 22 students and a handful of auditors at the University of Pittsburgh since January. Paring his lectures to an hour, he’s also conducted skilled trade workshops open to all at Hill House in the Hill District. Friday wrapped an 18-day shoot spread over multiple weekends, with many involved having been participants of either classes or the workshops.
Steeltown Entertainment co-founder and CEO Carl Kurlander met Mr. Wren when the latter was working on videos for season one of “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood” a few years back in Pittsburgh.
“I pitched him this idea,” Mr. Wren recalled. “I said [training] ‘folks trying to get that first credit, that first experience on a production set for a feature film — you make short films and that’s great for a couple of days. But a whole [feature] film?’
“The whole purpose of this feature is, everyone we are hiring is new. You will have that under your belt, so with more films coming to town you can say, ‘I’ve been an AC [assistant camera] on a movie.’ ”
“Not many people in the Hill have movie experience, and that’s the idea here, to provide opportunities for novices, middle level and high level talent to work together,” said Mr. Kurlander, an executive producer on the film.
Late on a recent Thursday afternoon, there was a highenergy vibe in the air. The scene was shot in the master bedroom of a furnished condominium in the Hill District, where most of the locations are set.
Mr. Wren described the film’s plot in a nutshell: “When the Livingston Group decides that their next development/gentrification project will be Pittsburgh’s Hill District, the daughter, Gwen, begins to rethink her family’s plan after meeting Kelly, a local Hill activist who introduces her to another side of the Hill that Gwen never knew.”
Lights! Camera ...
At least eight of the crew were crowded into the large bedroom, which was decorated in the style of early teenage girl. A quilt covered the bed, a small pile of colorful stuffed animals balanced at the foot of it, with a string of lights over the headboard and posters on the wall.
The two closets across from the bed were flung wide open to accommodate sound and camera operators trying to back as far out of frame as possible. In the darkened attached bathroom, Mr. Wren and about four others huddled around a set of monitors.
“A project like this really means getting the opportunity of a lifetime, to get your feet up and accepted into the industry,” said Haji Muya, the first camera assistant. “I think that’s everyone’s dream.”
Mr. Muya, 25, spent the first 13 years of his life in a Kenyan refugee camp after his family fled Somalia in 1991. They eventually immigrated to Pittsburgh, and he grew up in Lawrenceville. In high school, he was introduced to filmmaking through the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild.
Having worked around cameras and drones (“I have one of my own”), Mr. Muya earned experience working for WPXI and WPGH Fox 53 and now teaches at Steeltown. This is his first big feature film assignment.
Greenfield’s Reese Dee, 30, is taking film classes through the Community College of Allegheny County, South Campus. She learned of the Steeltown project through the Hill House workshops and signed on as sound assistant.
“I’m still learning,” she said, adding that production sound mixer Ricardo Robinson was particularly patient: “There is some space for me to figure things out along the way and ask questions.”
Ms. Dee sat in a corner of the condo bedroom, wearing large earphones and checking the data readout from an instrument balancing on her lap. Not 8 feet away, Ms. Gregory, an elegant woman wearing black slacks and a long gray woolen vest, continued to run lines.
For the next hour or so, actress Kelsey Packwood would repeatedly enter the bedroom, only to encounter the quiet wrath of Ms. Gregory, who was playing her grandmother. Ms. Packwood, sporting long microbraids tinged with fuscia, graduated from Point Park University in 2015.
She moved to Los Angeles looking for work and in the process found herself back in Pittsburgh.
On another day of shooting, Victor Gariseb, 19, said he was a movie buff who wanted to be an actor all his life. When “Fences” shot in the Hill last year, he said he was walking by the set one day, but was “afraid to talk to” director and star Denzel Washington.
“I was star-struck just meeting Christina [Wren]” on the current production, he added.
On another day, a black-tie party in a Shadyside mansion featured some of Pittsburgh’s better-known names in urban development. Among the “guests” in the scene were activist and former politician Sala Udin, Marimba Milliones, president of the Hill Community Development Corp.; Bill Generett, president of Innovation 21; University of Pittsburgh senior vice Chancellor Kathy Humphrey; and professor Waverly Duck, cochair of the university’s “Year of Diversity.”
Also on hand was one of the lead actors, Harry Lennix (NBC’s “The Blacklist,” “Man of Steel”), whom Mr. Kurlander said helped inspire Mr. Wren after the two discussed the importance of depicting a different part of the African-American experience than usually found at the movies.
Other set locations included the Elsie H. Hillman Auditorium at Hill House’s Kaufmann Center, the Energy Innovation Center and Freedom Corner, as well as a restaurant in Shadyside. Shooting on the weekends helped, Mr. Wren said because they were able to use many locations for free, or reduced prices during odd hours.
Mr. Wren said he hopes the takeaway from all this is inspiration for those who signed on; they are witnessing greater diversity in directing, producing, writing, acting. And watching someone like Ava DuVernay (director of 2014’s acclaimed “Selma” and director/producer of the 2017 Oscar-nominated documentary “13th”) at work helps them realize “I can do that.”
“And that’s really cool.”