Two short films to receive $45,000 this year to make their movies in state
By Skylar Laird
SCDailyGazette.com
CHARLESTON — When Joshua Parks was a child, he was always drawn to his family’s history.
That was how he came to learn the family legend about his grand uncle, who disappeared at sea one day on a flat, wooden bateau boat he and his father made. Parks’ uncle remained missing until another relative had a dream pinpointing his exact location near James Island.
“This story was just kind of burning in me,” said Parks, who lives in Charleston.
So, he and his partner wrote the short film “Bateau,” which Parks will receive a $45,000 state grant to produce this coming year.
The grant, administered by the state Film Commission, is a joint effort to promote indie filmmakers from South Carolina and offer on-the-job training for Trident Technical College students, said Brad Jayne, who helps run the program.
“Bateau,” which follows a boy’s spiritual transformation as he searches for his missing grandfather, was one of two films to win the Indie Grant award this year. The other film, “Sapling,” is about a single mom who discovers unsettling family lore while grieving her own mother’s death, according to the program’s website.
The writers, directors and producers who wrote the two films are all either from South Carolina or live in the state.
That’s a prerequisite for the award, which has been offered for over a decade and is meant to recognize stories with a Palmetto State connection, made by people with history here. The goal is for each to be about 10 minutes long, which is typically the length film festivals look for when selecting entries, Jayne said.
Part of the requirement for receiving the grant is that each film must employ a certain number of students from Trident Technical College’s film production major, which the college touts as the only program of its kind in the state.
Between six and 10 of the school’s 100 or so film production majors get spots doing whatever works they’re best suited for, Seale said.
Many students work as grips, meaning they help set up camera equipment and lighting for each shot, though they have also worked in departments such as costumes and props, Seale said.
Whatever the work, students get to make connections with professionals and have a completed film on their resume, giving them a leg up when trying to break into a notoriously tight-knit industry, he said.
“Our students get an opportunity to work with professionals and prove their work ethic and their attitude, and then they’re able to move into entry level positions in the film industry,” said Glenn Seale, dean of the technical college’s film, media and visual arts department.
The grant is also one way of encouraging people to film projects in South Carolina.
The Film Commission, a division of the state Department of Parks Recreation and Tourism, also incentivizes TV shows and movies to set up shop in the Palmetto State with rebates on supplies and wages, as well as the option for productions to pay no sales tax. This year, state legislators set aside $10 million in the state budget for the incentives.
Some short films made using the grant have debuted at major film festivals and been featured on major streaming platforms. “Talk Black,” a 2020 grant winner, is available on HBO’s Max app after being part of the network’s showcase during the 2022 American Black Film Festival.
Although writer and director Destiny Macon was planning to make the film with or without the funding, the support from Indie Grants propelled the project to new heights, she said. The 32-year-old was able to work with professional-quality cameras, and she met her director of photography through connections she made as part of the grant.
Because the production was qualified under the Screen Actors Guild, she could hire more experienced union actors, she said.
Since then, Macon has worked as an actors’ assistant on two movies, Hallmark’s “Girlfriendship” and “Summer Camp,” starring Diane Keaton. Macon is working on turning “Talk Black” into a full-length feature film, which she hopes to get made using the connections she has made on those sets.
“It’s a good bridge from no-budget indie filmmaking to introducing you to the world of professional filmmaking,” Macon said.
The amount of experience each team has varies. Some come in after having worked on other professional productions, while others have primarily made home movies with their friends, Jayne said.
Neither Parks nor Macon studied filmmaking.
Macon is an engineer who pursued filmmaking as a hobby before the grant, and Parks got a degree in political science and history before eventually making video content for the International African American Museum in Charleston.
The application process is relatively intensive to make sure that the winners, regardless of what they’ve done before, can actually pull off the project they want to make. Along with a completed script, the application requires a thoughtful production plan, including budget, schedule and other technical considerations, Jayne said.
An anonymous, independent panel of people who have worked in the film industry review the applications. This year, “Bateau” and “Sapling” beat out about 70 other projects for the funding, Jayne said.
“The bottom line is (the judges) just found them to be very compelling stories — stories that were structured and sort of planned out in a way that was very doable,” Jayne said.
For the filmmakers, the money can mean the difference between making a film with no budget and having a full production team, with the advice of seasoned professionals, Jayne said.
Like Macon, Parks and his production team were going to make the short film regardless of whether they won the award, he said. But with it, “you don’t have to worry,” he said.
“You don’t have to struggle through it the way we would have struggled through it if we didn’t have a budget, or if we had a very, very small budget,” Parks said.
Skylar Laird covers the South Carolina Legislature and criminal justice issues. Originally from Missouri, she previously worked for The Post and Courier’s Columbia bureau. S.C. Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
