The Florida Times-Union

June 24, 2007

The force is with him

By KONRAD MARSHALL,
The Times-Union

A LONGISH TIME AGO, IN A PLACE NOT TOO FAR AWAY . . .

It is the year 1999. A new millennium looms. The Phantom Menace has disappointed nerds and delighted younglings throughout the republic, and high school senior Dwight Cenac II begins writing a film script in his spare time. He puts a pen to his own quadrant of the Star Wars universe, a galaxy replete with Jedis and wookies. But, beset on both sides by schoolwork and a social life, the adolescent son of Jacksonville abandons his half-finished script to pursue other adventures, making hyperdrive leaps from acting to Web design and back again.

Then last year, his interest awakened by an unknown force, the script comes to life once more, complete with young padawans, space pirates, a girl warrior with Aeon Flux-style awareness and an ending. But turning those old pages of dialogue into a full-scale film - The Renaissance Chronicles: Sandrima Rising - will prove to be his most difficult and expensive mission yet . . .

"My story? I have no story," said Cenac, standing on a film set in San Jose last week, watching a light saber fight. "I haven't done anything in my life, really. That's why I'm doing the gutsiest thing I can, throwing everything at something that has one shot."

ONE SHOT.

LIKE BULLSEYEING WOMP RATS IN A T-16 BACK HOME, CENAC HAS HIS TARGET.

Lucasfilm is pursuing TV series concepts based on the Star Wars franchise. The company has already produced an animated series and has run a fan film contest for several years that encourages obsessive-creatives such as Cenac to expand on the famous storyline.

Cenac's movie takes place 30 years after Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. The Empire has crumbled. A new Republic is in place. And two children, orphaned when their parents die in a transport crash, seek safe passage across the galaxy, beyond the reach of the galactic weapons development firm that hunts them. In the script, a roguish captain of a pirate ship agrees to take the young Jedis to Coruscant, but he doesn't realize what he signed up for.

Cenac knows what he signed up for. He once heard a director say that making movies is nothing but problems.

Cenac learned that lesson on Day 1, June 4, before filming had begun, when a security guard at Epping Forest Yacht Club briefly denied the cast and crew access to the grounds of the club. Since then, the project has suffered one delay after another, from the large (a leaking roof flooding the Orange Park warehouse studio) to the small (mystery stains appearing on a costume).

The biggest problem, though - and the most head-shakingly comical one - was the heat in the warehouse studio.

Somehow, the crew didn't figure on Florida's humidity creeping into the uncooled space. Air conditioners were bought, but they didn't do the job. A cooling system could be installed, but it would take months. So filming for every studio shot begins at night, when the temperature falls, operating on a loose 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. schedule.

"Show up tomorrow, and there'll be another problem to solve. It never ends," Cenac said, smiling. "I have had a curse in my life of never finishing anything I start, but with my parents backing this - investing in it, and me - I can't not finish. If I have to shoot it on my camera phone, I will finish this thing."

MOST MOVIE PROJECTS HAVE INVESTORS.

This one has Cenac's parents, Connie and Dwight, who might more accurately be called "sponsors." Connie and Dwight Cenac understand the game plan. Plan A is to make a movie that can be broken into two 45-minute episodes and present it to Lucasfilm with the hope the company will buy the rights or commission a full series.

Connie and Dwight Cenac's company, Welcome Homecare, makes roughly $10 million a year gross, but they pour much of the profit into the school they founded, Seacoast Christian Academy. Despite their business success - and in part because of it - financing a feature film was not an easy decision.

"It's a long way from a drop in the bucket," Connie Cenac said. "It's a huge leap of faith."

They encouraged their son to make Christian home videos. They know people in the distribution business and production.

"I questioned him on Star Wars," said Dwight Cenac Sr. "I would have voted for a movie that would be a guaranteed sale. But he chose the harder road, and I admire him for it."

In March 2008, when filming is complete, CGI has been added and the editing is done, the movie will have cost well over $150,000, an amount Cenac was originally going to gather by selling his house.

"We told him he was not going to sell his house," Connie Cenac said. "We just believe in him, and this is his dream, this is his career. . . . Of course we didn't expect the budget to go as high as it has gone, but the more we see, the more we see it was worth the investment."

Plan B is to take the movie to conventions and film festivals and release it over the Internet in the hope that fan buzz will help establish Cenac's Crown Productions as a quality production company. Michael "Dorkman" Scott, the director of photography for Sandrima Rising, left his job in data entry in Los Angeles to come to Florida for the shoot.

Scott, 24, a shortish guy with bushy sideburns, glasses and scruffy hair, found acclaim - at least among Star Wars geeks - with the viral success of his video RVD2, a seven-minute light saber fight between two regular guys. Released on YouTube three months ago, RVD2 has been viewed more than 1 million times, but Sandrima Rising is Scott's first shot at working on a full-length feature.

"Speaking honestly, I don't think it has a chance of being picked up by Lucasfilm, and that's not a reflection of the quality - it's just a very unlikely scenario," Scott said. "But I think it will serve as a very real demo for what we and the team can accomplish, and I think it will lead to a lot of work."

Others have found work from good fan productions, said Chris Albrecht, director of programming for Atom Films, which has run the premier Star Wars fan film competition for almost 10 years and presents a few dozen of the finalists to Lucasfilm.

"They all kind of think the same thing," he said. " 'This will get me noticed.' "

For Cenac, that's the first step in establishing his own empire.

"If we get the millions of viewers we expect, at least we've established ourselves as a production company," Cenac said. "And at the same time, it's our first project, and I love Star Wars, man."

konrad.marshall@jacksonville.com

(904) 359-4287

TIMELINE: A FEW HOURS ON THE SET OF 'SANDRIMA RISING'

It's Monday, June 11, and the sun is falling outside Crown Productions' warehouse studio in Orange Park.

Most of the cast and crew of Sandrima Rising arrived at 7 p.m. ready for a night of filming that will go through - as they peak and crash on Red Bull - to 5 a.m. The sky turns dark in the parking lot, the lights come on in the studio. The first scene is still hours away.

8:13: The scent of hot glue fills the air as the cockpit - made of foam and metal and rubber - gets tweaked. Dwight Cenac II, wearing cargo shorts and a button-down revealing a crest of chest hair, flashes a smile. "This is how movies are made."

8:16: Standing in the green room is Lawrence Collins, a prosecutor from Orlando who is playing the villain. Right now, however, he's playing Guitar Hero (Woman, by Wolfmother) and waiting for his scene.

8:19: Tony Armer, a producer and actor who runs the Sunscreen Film Festival in St. Petersburg, brings Cenac bad news about the Firehouse subs for dinner. "Some of the orders are wrong." Armer says. "Whaaat?" Cenac moans. "My turkey mysteriously became pastrami. It happens."

8:22: Armer wants to start filming by 9 p.m., but there's some last-minute set construction to be done. "Of course, the only time we have the actors ready in time, we run into set trouble," Armer says. "Low-budget filming at its best. Or worst, depending on your perspective."

8:53: Actors are dealing with makeup and hair. Set designers are dealing with a broken cockpit console. The lighting team is dealing with shadows. But they're all used to problems by now. This is supposed to be the seventh day of shooting. It is the fourth.

9:15: Collins clambers into the cockpit but the seat is so low he looks like an infant in a high chair. Nine people gather to solve the problem, raising him up on phone books and fruit crates. 9:31: Cenac, waiting, explains that waiting is part of the process.

9:45: Moe Suliman, another producer, storms into a hallway and bellows, "Five minutes!" But no one scurries into action. There are cigarettes to be smoked, and jokes to be told.

9:51: "Ready to do this?" Cenac asks the crew. "Al . . . most," Michael Scott, director of photography, replies. Cenac knows what this means. "OK, well I'm gonna grab a bag of chips then."

10:03: "Quiet on the set!" cries the sound guy. "Ready. Rolling sound," says Scott. "Rolling camera. Mark it. Ready. And. Action!" But a shadow of light is wrong and needs fixing.

10:15: The camera rolls, and Collins - more than three hours after arriving at the studio - can say his lines. "Harth. Switch to terrain profile," he utters. "Target propulsion. They'll try to run." "The magic of the movies," Armer says, sighing. "First shot at

10:15: That's the way it works sometimes I guess."

10:26: After seven takes (three wide, two close and two hand-held) the first scene of the night is done. Eleven words of monologue, after 206 minutes. "All right," says Cenac. "Next!"

This story can be found on Jacksonville.com at: http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/062407/lif_179420283.shtml.