Meter's Two Year Journey Ends...

In the winter of 2003, I began writing Meter from a conversation I had with a disgruntled gentleman at Sergeant Peppers in Hickory. Three years later at a chinese restaurant, I put the finishing touches on it and locked it down for shooting. Throughout those 3 years I had taken bits of conversations here and there I had with different people and incorporated it into Charles' or Randle's thoughts. As bad as it sounds I never really took Meter very seriously at first. I knew it was a twelve page script of nothing but dialogue and in the grand scheme of things just wouldn't be the sort of thing people would get into. I just decided to shoot it because I knew it would be cheap and it would allow me to an extent to shake the dust off and see if I had learned anything in the years of experience that had past. Everyday life and paying commercial jobs continued pushing back my "weekend project," I found myself worrying about making Meter a quality film as opposed to a straight to You Tube Video. My thoughts at first were just to con a couple of my friends with a bottle of liquor to go out in a parking lot somewhere and shoot it but the more time that went by trying to secure a schedule, the more I realized that if I was going to spend all this time on it, I might as well do it right.

SIX MONTHS LATER
...And six mediocre auditions later I was getting particular with who Charles needed to be. Then Freddy Robinson got me in touch with Mark Alton Rose. Mark came out to my house and blew me away with his audition and suddenly I was excited again to do the movie.





On the coldest night of the year, November 4th, Mark, Freddy, Phil, Mandi and I went downtown and shot the film from 6pm to 5:30am in its entirety. We had all sorts of issues from lights catching on fire to people walking right through the shot during a solid take, to the bass of the band playing at the Tap Room messing up all my audio to the cab owner indian giving us the cab halfway through the shoot. On my way home I was dead set I had just wasted everybody's time. But as post-production progressed, I found (along with Phils great lighting and Freddy and Mark's excellent performances,) my years of editing since Jobbers were all getting ready to pay off. After over 60 days of Post, (most of it on fixing the audio and removing the now infamous faint bass thump from the ambience,) Meter was done. Freddy, Mark, and I previewed it and when the credits ran I think for the first time we all realized that despite the $500 budget, problems with location, absence of direction from me due to lack of time and man power, we had made a very entertaining hard hitting film. I remember Mark turning around as the credits rolled with this look in his eyes as if to say, "Damn, we did that?"
The real feeling of accomplishment didn't come until a packed house at The CAST theatre hosted the premiere to a grand ovation even after being worried to have my own parents there in fear of the crowd, (due to the content,) running them out of town. Then from there, we were excepted into the first couple of film festivals we submitted to and suddenly this film was developing into a nice stepping stone for all involved. Mark has secured a part in a big film based solely off his performance in Meter. Freddy has used Meter as calling card to get his projects off the ground as well as Phil and I getting to make another film together only this time, Phil will be in front of the camera and will have money behind it. We were rejected as many times as we made it into film festivals and I still being broke couldn't afford mass submissions to every festival out there so Meter’s potential or failure didn’t reach full velocity as I had only submitted to nine festivals, (missing others by deadlines because I simply could not keep up with everything.) We were excepted into 5 so I'll take that as a semi-victory.





The review we received from a gentleman I still haven't talked to was probably better than anything else we could win. As Meter's aura fades and Jeopardy's begins I will always keep that year from production to last month dear in my heart. Those times justified why I do what I do and more importantly gave me voice to do it some more.

NOTE-This film contains extremely harsh language, controversial issues and very strong opinionated subject matter. These thoughts are not the filmmakers’ nor the actors’. This is simply a story about a guy who has let the harshness of life get the best of him.
THIS IS NOT A PROPAGANDA FILM!!!

Watch the Film in Streaming Web Video with crappy sound here.