By:Jacky Gerzema
Move over Steven Spielberg and Paul Thomas Anderson. Two aspiring film makers from Baldwin recently had short films in the Long Island International Film Expo held July 13-20 at Cinema 4 in Malverne.
Bob Grando's film "After Thoughts" and Nick Waythaler's "Badhead" and "Braking Device" were featured in the short film section of the festival.
Waythaler said that he and other film makers get an application and send in their film for members of the festival to review. After reviewing the film and application, they choose whether or not to show each applicant's film in the expo.
A lifelong Baldwin resident, 22-year-old Waythaler recently graduated from NYU with a bachelor of fine arts in film. He said he made his two featured films in his junior year of college and in March of this year.
"I like to tell stories," Waythaler said. "I ran around with a video camera growing up and I made countless videos with my friends.
In "Badhead" Waythaler said he used lighting but made it look like natural light and shot a lot of the film at night to compliment the dark theme of the film's story.
Waythaler said he made a movie about converted Indian Jews in Mexico that may be shown on Cinemax movie channel in the future.
He is currently writing a screenplay and getting funding for a movie that he wants to start shooting sometime in near future.
Waythaler said he would like to make his passion his career and wants to live in New York City and concentrate on making independent films.
Twenty-five-year Baldwin resident Bob Grando pays the bills as a medical physicist involved in radiation at Northport Hospital and has a degree in physics.
He is the president of Long Island Moviemakers, an amateur group of filmmakers across Long Island. He's been with the group for the past 18 years and is in his fifth year as president.
His eight-minute short film "After Thoughts" centers around a young girl in her twenties who has conversations with her grandfather. Grando said the actress is nice to her grandfather but at the end the audience realizes he is dead and that her conversations with him are in her imagination. The imagination scenes signify what she wishes her relationship with him could have been.
Grando said he used music to set the tone only in reality scenes. He used exterior available light and lit interior light. This is the first time he used professional actors in his film. Previously he used amateurs. He also had separate editors and other people working on the film for the first time with "After Thoughts." Grando said he had done everything in the past.
"I'm writing a screenplay right now, but everyone writes screenplays," Grando said.
He added that he has received no financial rewards from his films but hopes to someday work professionally in the film industry, whether it be making films or writing screenplays.
This is the first time Grando and Waythaler's films have been shown at a film expo.
