A full featured Iowa based indie film company.
Kevin J Railsback (left) Ron W. Miller (right) Visiting my best friend and his family in Oregon In May of 2000 I decided to hang up my trusty Nikon F5 and start shooting digital video. An award winning internationally published nature and wildlife photographer, I knew it would be a long and difficult journey. It was a journey I have never regretted taking.
It didn't take long to hit my first bump in the road. What do I call my production company? Angi, my wife and I would toss names back and forth but nothing really seemed right. Even though I had stopped taking still photographs the years of one on one with Nature and her creatures still ran strong through my veins. While looking at a cast of a grizzly bear pawprint in my office one day I thought what a lasting impression it was. On May 17 2000, Pawprint Productions was born.
I was fortunate to work for a company that was open to setting up an in house training and information department. With no real idea of what we were doing two co-workers and myself started making training videos.
For two years we honed our filmmaking skills as the company allowed us to purchase more gear as our films gained popularity.
Although grateful for the experience it ultimately wasn't what I wanted to do long term.
Not long after that I met a group of filmmakers from Eastern Iowa and we started having weekly lunches to discuss our goals that we wanted to accomplish as filmmakers.
I had found a group of filmmakers in LA called Group 101 who had found a way to force themselves to create films no matter what the obstacles. They picked a topic and gave themselves thirty days to write, shoot and edit a film based on the topic.
We decided to try this approach on a three month trial basis. Our first film would be a filmmakers choice but it had to be written filmed and edited in thirty days. Surprisingly in thirty days I had a short film in the can called "Bad Luck."
Since I was the only one of the group to actually turn in a finished film in the allotted thirty days. It was decided to shorten the requirements to turning in a script or outline based on a theme within the thirty day deadline.
The question was then how do we pick a theme? Since we met at a Chinese buffet every Tuesday, it was decided to pick out monthly theme based on one of the fortunes from our fortune cookies. After each fortune was read we'd then vote on them and pick the theme for that month.
That is how my project "The Perfect Date" came to be. Based on the theme of "Perfection."
Other themes were "A Single Word" and "Wish." They are currently in development as well.
Kevin & Forrest Gump in San Francisco
