What started as a high school film project over Christmas break for a couple of brothers from Lindsborg turned into a two-year quest to finish their short, action-thriller movie that won an award at a Kansas film festival.
Seth and Isaac Garretson wrote, filmed, edited and starred in The Pathfinders, a short film that won the Audience Choice Award last month at the Salt City Film Festival held in Hutchinson.
HCC’s Bobby Obermite, Isaac and Seth Garretson at Salt City Film Festival October 2024
The Garretson brothers had a chance to rub shoulders with filmmakers from around the country during the event’s inaugural offering held at the Fox Theatre in Hutchinson.
The Salt City Film Festival, headed up by Hutchinson Community College’s Media and Film Production department director Bobby Obermite, brought in a couple of film and TV stars to add their professional advice during the event. Alexandra Paul from Baywatch and Cynthia Geary from Northern Exposure shared stories from their vast variety of roles and experiences on and off the set.
Some of the cast and crew from The Pathfinders on stage at Salt City Film Festival
During the student film portion, Isaac and Seth fielded questions from the audience on some of the technical challenges of the project and the not-so-tech side of making a film with no financial backing.
“We didn’t have enough money to build a practical bomb prop for the movie so we used an oatmeal container covered in green construction paper,” Isaac said. Seth then used computer generated imagery to make the threat look real on screen.
In post production the project leaned heavily on Seth and his growing expertise in the digital arts to pull off over 160 visual effects shots in the show, like bullet impacts, an explosion and multiple computer screen readouts.
“My dad actually called the Lindsborg Police to let them know we were filming a scene at the local cemetery, just in case someone got nervous about the commotion and called them,” Seth said.
While Isaac is currently a student in the film program at Hutchinson Community College, both brothers worked at Fili Creative video production in Salina over the summer as interns, which has led to more paid projects for their growing company, Crossbow Productions. The Garretson brothers are currently in production on their next ambitious short film.
Isaac tells KSAL News, “When you’re making a film, you can only have two of three factors: cheap, good, and quick. We didn’t have a budget, but still wanted it to be a quality film, so we opted for cheap and good.”
He added, “The downside to that is that it took about 2 1/2 years to complete. It also means that you have to find a way to do almost everything yourself. It took some trial and error, but in the end we’re really proud of the finished product.”
