By Ben Paynter 
02.25.08 | 6:00 PM
Richard Welnowski has a plan to revolutionize the independent film industry. He keeps it in the back of his 2003 Ford Expedition. Sick of seeing big budgets choke the creative freedom of young directors, Welnowski — the technical wiz behind the pioneering animation/live-action kids' TV series LazyTown — built his own half-million-dollar mobile studio, outfitting the 4x4's cargo bay with a DVS Clipster recorder, 24-inch monitor, and MacBook Pro with Final Cut. Hook all that to a DC-to-AC inverter sucking power from the engine, add a couple of Thomson Viper cameras (uncompressed digital HD footage), and you have a rolling postproduction facility that can capture and edit flawless time-stamped scenes as soon as the director yells "Cut!" No more waiting for dailies, no more expensive outsourcing. Welnowski can film for two days straight on a single tank of gas.
Based in Kansas City, Missouri, the cinematographer has already clocked more than 24,000 miles, shooting in Mississippi bogs for the National Geographic Channel's historical war series A Day Under Fire and chasing storms across the Midwest for Nail Biter, an upcoming $1.1 million thriller about tornadoes. "Directors come to me because they have a dream but they don't know how to shoot it," Welnowski says. And they want to save money. He charges an average of 10 percent of the total production cost (usually in the low six figures) — "catering money" to a big studio and cheap enough to make digital hi-def available to indie auteurs. "We have to make sure every minute has exceptional value," he says. The drive-in theater may be dead, but drive-by shooting may be the future of moviemaking.
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Monday, March 17, 2008
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