How many independent filmmakers or indie film teams are there in Olympia? Video production has always been a tool with which I engage my true passion – storytelling. I’ve used other tools, mediums, and enjoyed them all. The camera is my favorite. Telling stories is the reason I picked it up, and it’s what I want to use it for. In a professional capacity, the stories being told are the passion of local businesses for the service they provide. Or the culminating of the love two people have for each other on their wedding day. The story of an elder recounting their life’s history, the lessons they’ve learned, and people met on their journey. These types of stories can be fun and engaging, but the true passion, the one that called me to pick up a camera decades ago, can only be fulfilled by the crafting of independent narrative filmmaking. With the goal of narrative filmmaking in mind, several cohorts and I created what amounted to a screenwriting club in spring of 2009. We called it Mutually Assured Productions. We met weekly, and wrote dozens of scripts, waiting for the right one that struck us enough that we’d like to make a movie out of it. After months of writing, we set a deadline; we had to pick a script to move in to production with by June. June came. We picked one, and we moved forward. After much planning and preparation, flirting with abandoning the whole project to budgetary concerns, we finally started shooting in September of 2009. Trying to coordinate the free time of a few dozen working people and come out with a working schedule to make a film can be a difficult task. By mid October 2009, we were done shooting. Post production began. In early February 2010 The Van Job was finished.
We rented out downtown Olympia’s historic Capitol Theater and premiered our short film to an amazingly supportive audience of 200+ (by our humble estimates). We brought dozens of copies on DVD, and sold them all in minutes before the show. We took a Q&A session afterward, and partied it up the rest of the day. Our whole team was riding a euphoric high of positivity. From inception to completion and premiere, we had created our own movie. People had come to see it in a real theater. What was next? We started writing again, eager to capture some of that fire in our bellies and make another one. Which we did, and then some. More on that later.

Here are some fun links about The Van Job -
An article about The Van Job from Olympia Power and Light
The Van Job on IMDB – The Internet Movie Database
An awesome review from a fellow Olympian – twoplayercoop.com
A poster for The Van Job -