A three-man filmmaking team has turned Niagara Falls into a movie set with big expectations. By Aaron Besecker
Ken Cosentino, James Ventry and Michael Shimmel make up an independent film production company known as Little Sicily Productions.
For a little more than a month, the Falls-area residents have been shooting with a cast and crew of more than 50 at a few locations around the city.
Their film, “Crimson: The Motion Picture,” will take place in a small, impoverished town and chronicles a comic book artist-turned-vigilante.
“He’s over the hill, and he kind of just gets pushed too far,” said Cosentino, 20, the film’s director, during a recent interview in a Pine Avenue coffee shop.
The film had been in preproduction for about 10 months, during which a number of tasks had been ongoing, including building five sets from scratch, auditioning and rehearsing actors, and choreographing fight scenes.
The movie’s main character is played by Michael Leszczynski of Amherst.
Shimmel, 26, came up with the idea for the story when he was working with Cosentino on a short film called “The Ghouls Next Door.”
“Originally, it was going to be a comedy,” Shimmel said, but he took Cosentino’s advice that it probably wouldn’t work in that style.
Shimmel, who works two jobs, including as a mall security guard, also has a small role in the film.
Ventry, 37, is the owner of Little Sicily Productions, which is based in the Niagara Arts and Cultural Center.
Ventry — who named Robert De- Niro as one of his favorite actors — is a professional boxer and former teacher. His role in the film also extends in front of the camera. He plays villain Tommy Emerson, a ruthless member of the Irish mafia.
Shooting has taken the filmmakers to a Lewiston pizzeria, as well as Greece, N. Y.,where Jason “J-Mac” McElwain — the teen with autism known for a barrage of three-pointers in the last four minutes of a high school game in 2006—shot a cameo.
“The scene prior to that is me getting into it with a judge, and I end up killing him, strangling him with a seat belt,” Ventry said. “So then we’re taking out the body, and Jason’s at a basketball court . . . and we go up to him and interact with him.”
Cosentino first got behind the camera at age 9, using a video camera his mother was ready to throw away.
“She was throwing it out, and I asked her if I could have it,” said Cosentino, who recently worked for three years doing air brush work in the Fashion Outlets of Niagara Falls.
“. . . She said, ‘I don’t know why you want it, it’s broken.’ ”
The video camera ended up working.
His work in front of and behind the camera evolved, Cosentino said, from “Jackass”- style stuff—akin to the Johnny Knoxville-led MTV stunt show and movies — to skits and, eventually, to storytelling.
Cosentino, who took film classes at Niagara County Community College and said he admires director Martin Scorsese, made “Break the Sky,” which played at a small Los Angeles film festival in 2008, he said.
Actors and actresses came from across the area, as well as Toronto and Rochester, to audition for roles in “Crimson.”
The filmmakers plan to wrap up shooting in December. They plan to submit the film to the Toronto International Film Festival, which is happening next September.
Also, they plan to submit it for the 2012 Sundance Film Festival.
If it were picked up at Sundance, there would be a local premiere in Western New York after that.
While their dream would be for the film to get picked up and shown in U. S. theaters, the filmmakers also hope “Crimson” gets picked up for DVD distribution, which would help them with their plans to make more films.
“Hopefully, it will open a lot of doors as well,” Ventry said.
The filmmakers are looking for investors—what Cosentino termed “the hardest part” of making a film — for their current project.
As part of trying to finance the film, Cosentino said he called all his friends and asked for even the smallest donation. That effort yielded about $5,000. He’s also put in $5,000 of his own money into the production.
The trio just came back from a meeting in New York City with potential investors but unanimously decided to turn down a deal for a variety of reasons.
Under the proposal, the Falls team would have had to scrap its crew and most of its actors.
“It basically wouldn’t have been us making it anymore,” Cosentino said. “It would have been an entirely new movie, and just one of those crappy Hollywood movies.”
Giving his take of that proposal, Ventry said, “More than anything, it was a loyalty thing, too.”
Cosentino can be contacted at 541-4050 or littlesicilyco@aol.com ; Ventry at 990-5504 or jamiev2121@yahoo.com .
The film’s Web site is www.crimsonmovie.com
