Part of the mission of the Rex Theatre is to reach out to area youth and get them involved in worthwhile artistic endeavors. Ron Hines of LTD and Bill McGinnis of the Rex Theatre worked together to make the premiere happen at the theatre of the town that the LTD kids were from. The kids really enjoyed the fact that their movie was actually being played at their own home town theatre where they had grown up watching films. This is what took place:

(The following article appeared in the Community section of the Glenwood Opinion-Tribune on April 13, 2005.)

LTD film to premiere in Glenwood Friday

By Joel Stevens, Assistant Editor

A feature film written, produced and directed by three Mills County teenagers, is making its world premiere in Glenwood.

Matthew Umphreys and Mason Cambridge, both 14, and Jackie Chavez, 18, developed their script last March as a Leadership Through Drama (LTD) project in digital film-making under the guidance of instructor Ron Hines.

The trio began shooting in September and wrapped principal photography on “Bradley’s Summer” in February. The plot revolves around Bradley (Miller Cambridge) who goes to stay with his aunt, a member of the U.S. Congress, for the summer, joins a detective club and stumbles onto a sinister terrorist plot.

The world premier, complete with red carpet and limousines, will be Friday evening at the Rex Theater in Glenwood. The first two shows on Friday and Saturday are already sold out. The film will show for a week at the theater. Proceeds from Monday’s showing will benefit the Emily Fajardo Family.

Before the production ever began, Hines admired his students’ ambitions but warned them this process would not be easy. Following the completion of the film, Hines hasn’t changed his tune.

“It was every bit as hard as I thought it would be,” Hines said. “I was the one who had to keep them on track and kind of drive them. But there was a point a few weeks into filming where they really started to take control. In about October, they really started taking charge and they came up with some wonderful, creative stuff.”

Umphreys agrees the yearlong process was difficult; he’s just not sure if that means it was harder or easier than he anticipated.

“It wasn’t really harder or easier than I thought it would be,” Umphreys said. “The hardest part was getting the plans set and then everything changing from what you had in mind. It was different than I thought it would be.”

Cambridge feels the work was well worth the reward: a film of their own.

“It’s kind of frustrating to shoot all that and you can only use so much,” said Cambridge from Hines’ home as he and Umphreys were putting the final touches on the film’s score. “It would take us a day sometimes just to shoot a few minutes in the movie. It took so long sometimes to get so little. But I think we got the best stuff in there.”

The editing process of whittling over seven hours of footage down to their 76 minute running time was hard for the filmmakers. One sequence was especially difficult for Umphreys.

“It was a fight sequence,” Umphreys said. “We shot over an hour of tape. There was so much going on in one room with 10 people and they all had to hit their marks. It took five hours to edit it down.”

The fight sequence takes up just over a minute of screen time in the finished film.

“It’s such a complex film,” Hines said of the production process that required the students to not only write, cast, shoot and edit the film themselves but also juggle several technical effects and a cast of nearly 30.

Hines said Umphreys, Cambridge and Chavez have striven to make the process as much of a “Hollywood production,” as they could, right down to the professional score and a theme song composed by Denver-based country singer Danny Sauer.

Sauer, a relative of Hines, volunteered to write and perform the song free of charge for the film after reading the script. Sauer’s song “We Got a Plan Stan,” which Hines says is more rock than country, blew the young filmmakers away.

“They couldn’t believe how good it was and it was free,” Hines said.

Unlike most “Hollywood productions,” this film, shot almost entirely in and around Glenwood, came in under budget and ahead of schedule.

While Hines is one of the few who has seen the entire rough cut of the film - Umphreys, Cambridge and Chavez have been so busy in post-production they haven’t even had a chance to watch the complete film - a trailer DVD has been making the rounds. And from what Mason’s mother, Susan Cambridge has seen, she approves.

“They’ll only let me see a teaser and it looks fabulous,” said Susan.

The trio hope to show the trailer before the film’s premiere.

“I’m definitely excited for the premier,” Umphreys said. “To see all of our hard work and all the pieces put together on the big screen will be nice.”

Hines isn’t waiting for the premiere. He’s already excited about the finished product.

“I’m so impressed with what they’ve done,” Hines said, “I’ve seen a rough cut and there’s real character development and some great acting by these kids in there. I know all of them and I watch them and I forget who they are.”