5 Questions with Ross Kolton
1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?
I have been obsessed with movies for as long as I can remember. I made my first short when I was 17 and haven't stopped since. I spent a year at the University of AZ then dropped out and went through a technical film program at Scottsdale Community College where they put a 16mm camera in your hands and just had you shoot films. In my late 20s, I was laid off from my job, which led to me to make my first feature, Aldo, which premiered here on NoBudge in 2014. Over the last several years I have been self-employed as an editor working on videos for various brands and companies, most recently remixing movie clips as supercuts for IMDb.
2) What was the initial idea for this project and how did it evolve from there?
The show I was working for got cancelled and I got laid off (apparently whenever I get laid off, I make a new film) so I came up with this idea that it would be funny if someone was applying for work and ended up getting hired to commit crimes. I was inspired by films like ‘In the Soup’, ‘Bottle Rocket’, and early Coen Bros films. I mentioned the idea to my actor/filmmaker friend Bill Tangradi, who owned and ran an AirBnB in Joshua Tree and we came up with the robbery/insurance plot. He had interacted with a lot of upcycler/junk picker types which served as inspiration for his character. Ultimately, we both just really liked the idea of making a movie about two idiots.
3) What was the biggest challenge in making this film? And the easiest part?
Due to the low budget and the fact that most of the cast/crew were volunteers, the biggest challenge was scheduling conflicts which made it take longer to film all of the scenes in the script. Because of all the scheduling conflicts, I had to reshape the story with what I was able to capture on camera. It took a long time to rethink it, shoot extra bits, etc and to be honest there were many times where I just gave up on it and tried to move on to something else, but I couldn’t let it go. Luckily I had support in Nikki, my wife/producer collaborator, fellow filmmakers, and friends who had seen some scenes and encouraged me to finish it. Four years passed between the time the first scene was shot, until I finally got around to finishing it.
The easiest part was, Bill, co-writer/co-director, had recently renovated his Joshua Tree house which he rented as an Airbnb. It was designed and decorated by someone who worked as a set production designer so we had this amazing set for no cost to the production. The extensive amount of pre-production, planning, and rehearsing that we did helped make the actual shooting days go really smoothly as well.
4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?
On a serious note, “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” by Charlie Kaufman. I loved it because I kept thinking about it for several days after seeing it and there hasn’t been a movie that’s gotten in my head like that in a while.
On a less serious note, I recently watched the horror film, “Sisters” by Brian De Palma. It’s one of his early films and perhaps one of the only times I’ve seen a murder victim get shoved into a couch. Margot Kidder puts on this wild accent that sounds maybe Russian or just from some made up country, apparently it’s supposed to be French Canadian. De Palma creates some awesome moments experimenting with the split screen effect that he mastered later on in Carrie.
5) What’s next for you?
I wrote a feature comedy/horror/satire script that I’m currently working on getting financed. I am developing a docuseries, and I am shooting a short film in the next month or so that will serve as the first episode of a digital series.
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rosskolton.com | IG: @rk-pictures