“The Game Camera” is a new Kansas-made film directed by Emily Railsback and written by Rolf Potts and Kristen Bush.
It also stars Bush as well as Bree Elrod and Carson Elrod.
There will be a sneak peak of the film on Saturday, Nov. 9, at the Salina Art Center Cinema beginning at 6 p.m. There will be three screenings of the 20-minute picture with a question and answer reception to follow at the Salina Art Center gallery.
The discussion will be moderated by Kansas Poet Laureate Traci Brimhall. Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter Nicolle Galyon will perform as well.
The film’s logline is: “When a grieving woman installs a night vision camera in her mini horse’s corral, the specter of a human intruder on her rural Kansas ranch makes her reconsider her husband’s death.”
Bush has appeared in a variety of films, including “American Parent” and “Liberal Arts,” and worked extensively both on the stage and in television. Railsback’s credits include films such as “Our Blood Is Wine” and “Fear Not.” She also founded Rural Women Films, which “aims to promote current and future projects, and to support/champion the work of other rural women filmmakers.”
Saturday’s screening event is invitation-only, although interested parties may contact the Salina Art Center for last-minute ticket availability.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and length. You can hear the full interview with Railsback and Bush below.
Courtesy photo
What was the genesis of the film?
Kristen Bush: We live outside of Salina, and they’ve got one of the only three independent movie theaters in all of Kansas and the westernmost one. We’re devotees of it and we were there seeing the Oscar shorts. I also can’t remember if it was a week or two before, but we saw Kevin Willmott’s “The 24th” as well. He’s another [hallowed] Kansas filmmaker. We went home and [said], “OK, we could probably write a short film. I’m an actor, you’re a writer, let’s do something.”
So, we looked at our assets. We live on 30 acres of land and thought that we could film it here. I think it was around that time that Rolf said, “Have I ever told you the story about when I moved here, to this property? I got a game camera because I wanted to see what was out here.” Kansas, middle of nowhere country. Sure enough, he put it up — this was before I lived with him, mind you — and there were coyotes, there were deer, there were feral cats, there was even once a bobcat, there were raccoons, there were all of the normal cast of characters that you would suspect.
But then one morning, he checked the memory card and saw that the night before there was all that but there were also a man’s legs. Walking at 12 midnight out on this property in the middle of nowhere. He was so kind of nonchalant about it, but he thought, “Oh well,” and continued to live here without locking his doors at night. [Laughs.] He told me that story and we promptly started locking our doors.
So. that was the genesis of things, that was the conflict. Who was this guy? Rolf never found out but in our film we do. We set that guy as one of the main pivotal characters and who he is, his identity is revealed to the main character in the end. So that was the genesis. We wanted to showcase the absolute beauty of our property in Kansas and tell the story of a woman living very closely connected to the land and have a bit of mystery in there too.
You have the idea, you have the script, you have the property. Where do you go from there?
KB: That’s when Emily comes into the picture. First, when an actor marries a writer, you have to put them to work, the writer. We came home from watching the Oscar shorts [being] high on this feeling of, “We could do that!” I know for a fact another friend of mine did [that] as well. She [said], “I went home and wrote a short film!” We came home and wrote the breakdown in one evening. That basically outlines the structure of the film.
We got that done; it didn’t take too long to write a script. Then we thought, “We need to get this in front of Emily’s eyes.” [She’s] my friend and director, just someone who loves Kansas as well, as much as I do, and [who] has a visual eye that Rolf and I won’t have even if we trained for the rest of our lives. We put it to her and that was the next step.
Courtesy photo
Emily, do you want to tell me about your coming into the project?
Emily Railsback: Gosh, it’s all so blurry because we’ve also shot another film since this. I think Kristen and I are always so hungry to make things. The process for film is so long, it’s not like you can just sit down and write something and then you send something to a publisher and then they publish it. It’s based on so many people and such a collaboration.
I feel that Kristen and I have this sense about us … that it’s, like, “You wanna do this?” “Yeah, let’s do it!” “Awesome!” Let’s dive in together because we love collaborating together. I think the first step was that we talked about who should produce it. Because we wanted to have higher ambitions with this one.
The first project we made together was a short film that was funded by a grant. That was very beautiful. Then I had this crazy idea during COVID of, “We have to make a movie. Let’s use my baby, and let’s do it in my apartment. We’ll make a feature for no money at all.” We had just done that and then we both felt [like], “Let’s bump this up a notch and do something with higher production value to try to reach an audience that the micro short indie feature isn’t going to reach.” Corners have to be cut when you have no money.
I think his is very much [Kristen and Rolf’s] story because they’re the writers. I don’t feel any sort of authorship of the story. It was more like, “How can I tell this visually and showcase the place?” That’s how I looked at the direction of it. But it was more like, “Who do we want to bring on as producer?” I had worked with Carolina Posse, and we decided to bring her on as well as some awesome actors that could also help elevate this project, so Bree Elrod from “Red Rocket” has some lovely accolades and is also a Kansan like us. It’s great to have her collaborate on this and then Kristen also reached out to Nicolle Galyon.
KB: She’s an award-winning singer from my hometown of Sterling and has chosen, because she loves Kansas so much, to move back to it. It’s really a Kansas-based project, I think.
ER: [We thought], “How can we celebrate the things we love?” Which is Kansas, rural life, and also put some awesome women together to do something cool. It was a different style than what we had done, and we [said], “Let’s just go for it!”
This post was originally published on here
