A film production crew from New York City will be bringing business into Wyoming this year, specifically to Fremont County and surrounding areas, as they film a sci-fi western. Writer/director Jesse Judy says the influx of dollars will be minimal at first as they bring a small crew of six or seven people in this summer then will double when they come back in the fall. But the hope, he says, is that their filming in Wyoming will create jobs for locals and establish a film community that will make filming easier for other crews to follow.
The connection to Wyoming comes through his leading lady, Oakley Boycott of Lander, who he’s known for about 10 years, the two having met as students at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York City. After working together there, he said, the two “bounced around the country,” she touring with various shows and he working as technical support on films. It was while living and working in Atlanta that he first came up with the idea for his own film, through a dream, he said, which “was more like a nightmare,” but did inspire a plot for a scene.
“I wrote this part for a woman and a man sitting in a little tavern that was sort of like in the Wild West. So, it had this element of a western but also of a film noir.”
It’s that scene that he developed into his feature film called, “The Rider.”
“So the film is a time-travel western,” he explained, “about a man that has to ride through time to discover who he is and reclaim his past but what he discovers is a past that he doesn’t remember living. So then through that he’s thrust into a war to stop time itself from being erased.”
From the beginning, he said, it was Boycott who was on his mind when he crafted his leading lady character.
“Oakley came into the auditions to read for the part and her part actually never really changed much from that short film,” he said. “It was still that same scene we used for the audition and she came in and she sat down and she literally read the part exactly how I envisioned writing it back in 2012.”
The decision to film the movie in Wyoming came after Boycott was cast, he said, when he and his business partner Brandon Martin realized through her urging that filming a western in Wyoming made more financial sense then filming in New York City.
“She kind of has this head on her shoulders where she comes at things with a very creative mindset but at the same time a very strong business mindset, too, and to be able to marry both of those qualities, that’s the trait of a good producer,” Judy said. “We saw that and said, ‘You need to produce this with us, this is awesome.’ So we hired her on as a producer.”
Her addition to the team, then, inspired the three to think of their film project in a broader sense, of being a catalyst to starting a film community in Wyoming.
“That (plan) centered around the idea of building a community around arts and entertainment in Wyoming via New York City,” he explained. “So being able to have this kind of transcontinental relationship between the communities we’ve built here in New York and the community we hope to build in Wyoming. We think bringing in a smaller team at first to get the lay of the land and start the production process will also give us the opportunity to cultivate that community on an intimate level.”
However, he said, even the first phase of filming in Wyoming presents a challenge because they need local actors to play extra characters in the film and technical support crews from the local area.
“As far as we know, there isn’t a big film community in Wyoming, yet, and one of the big things we’re navigating is not only how to create those tech support teams but give people the tools there to be able to do that,” he said. “In New York, the way we would go about that is very simple. We’d put out an online listing on one of the various casting or crew job support websites. In Wyoming, as far as we’ve researched so far, Wyoming doesn’t really have anything like that for the area. So a lot of it right now is word of mouth and relationship building.”
The plan, he said, is to shoot 15 different short films that could be released individually as a series or altogether as a film, with 80- to 90-percent of the project being filmed in Wyoming.
SIDEBAR:
Quick Stats: Movie Title: "The Rider"
Jesse Judy - writer/director/producer and male lead "Rider"
Oakley Boycott - leading lady/producer, "Nancy"
Shooting begins in Fremont County: first week in July
Other shooting location (if permits come through) also include: old prison in Rawlins.
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