Shooting an independent film based one’s own life can be downright weird.
“This is my childhood home, so it’s basically watching my life,” Jennifer Foreman, a 2002 Auburn High School graduate said, one eye on the split-level home on Lea Hill where she’s shooting most of “An Appointment with Mr. Vield”. “It’s a little strange.”
In front of the lens Keri Barker, Foreman’s longtime friend and co-producer, prepares for a scene in which she plays a role modeled on Foreman.
“It’s fun for me,” said Barker, a 2001 Auburn graduate. “You really can’t ask for much more as an actor than to play a character based on someone you’ve known forever.”
Barker and Foreman always knew they would make films together. They met in high school, were active in drama club, and both attended Green River Community College.
After college, Barker moved to New York City, where she co-wrote an Off-Broadway film and pursued an acting and writing career
After six years she came back to Auburn, wher she reconnected with her friend.
And the two decided to make a movie.
“I told her that we’re good at this. We’ve always been good at this,” Barker said.
For a script, they turned to Foreman’s novel, an autobiographical tale, called, “An Appointment with Mr. Vield”.
“The movie is a coming-of-age story about a girl who has been affected by her mother’s methamphetamine use,” Foreman said. “She loses her baby brother to Child Protective Services, then her mother’s drug dealer comes back into the fold, and she decides she needs to take action to protect her family.
“It’s inspired largely by my own life,” she added. “I lost a baby brother and that inspired me to write the movie as a cathartic way to get through that. The film is just a larger way of showing how it affected me and how meth affects people.”
After adapting the novel into a screenplay, Barker and Foreman spent the month of September casting and making other plans.
“We went about it matter-of-factly, and said, ‘Let’s figure out how people make movies,’” Barker said.
They put out a casting call, posting notices on Craigslist and on the Theatre Puget Sound website.
The call paid off.
Simone Leorin, a veteran movie actor who has appeared in the TV series “Grimm”, was cast to play the villain, Jakob Vield.
“He reached out to us,” Barker said of Leorin. “He’s been excellent. He’s been very good.”
The movie also casts actors Geni Hawkins and Erik Siegling in primary roles.
For Barker and Foreman, the process of filming, which is about a third of the way done, has been a learning experience.
“We’re used to theater where you go and do the part from beginning to end,” Foreman said. “Here, we’ve done the ending shots and then turned around and did the beginning parts.”
The young filmmakers have been fortunate to find several people interested in making the project possible, including creative director Cody Lewis and director of photography Samuel Laseke.
“It’s interesting and fun to realize that the film community here is small,” Barker said. “But if you can get into it, they’re amazing.”
Barker and Foreman expect to wrap up filming soon and spend the summer editing.
“We hope to get it into either the Seattle International Film Festival, or Toronto (International Film Festival) or Tribeca,” Barker said. “Ideally, we have dreams of a theater release, or making it into Redbox or Netflix. We’ll take whatever we can get.”
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PHOTO BELOW: Jennifer Foreman, left, and Keri Barker are filming and co-producing the independent production, ‘An Appointment with Mr. Vield,’ in Auburn. SHAWN SKAGER, Auburn Reporter
