Teen Film Ventures Down 'Cuba Road' Article by Michelle Minkoff July 15, 2004 pioneerlocal.com Perhaps you've heard the stories about Cuba Road, which runs through Barrington and other northwest suburbs. "I heard my parents talking about it," said Harper College student Michael Noens. "I thought, 'This would be a really cool movie!'" While many people simply dream of making a movie, Noens and members of the company he co-founded, CNGM Productions, have done it again with "The Legend of Cuba Road," a new movie made for the local community. The suspenseful thriller tells the story of a group of teenagers who go out on Cuba Road and later find that something seems to haunt their lives and minds. When bizarre events begin to take place, they try to discover the reason behind them. Noens co-directed the film with Jeff Negus of Inverness, now a student at Northern Illinois University. Noens has taken part in both short and feature-length films and this is his 14th movie, as well as the third one he has directed. Steve Coulter and Noens, both of Palatine, started making short films in fourth grade with dollhouse and Playmobile characters and called their company Hurricane Entertainment. Joining with two other Palatine residents, Derek Greene and Nick Mikula, in 1999, they changed the name to CNGM Productions -- the letters standing for the last names of the company's founders. In Noens' sophomore year, the group began to gear the characters and situations toward a teenage audience. Noens wrote the first draft of the "Cuba Road" manuscript with a friend, Marc Muszynsky. Negus, who had never worked on a feature-length film before, was asked to rewrite the script, but ended up starting from scratch. Noens liked the new script better, so it went into production. "Being a co-director came along with writing. I found I had ideas to contribute, little things that I noticed," Negus said. Negus also enjoyed working with the special effects, especially building the set for the final scene. It was built in a community theater building and Negus said, "It felt like a real set." To film, CNGM used a Canon digital camcorder and then edited with Final Cut Pro on an iMac. The sound and video was recorded separately to produce a sharper sound. The cast members chosen were people that Noens knew in high school from Fremd's theater department. They are 2004 Fremd graduates Angela Wascher, Nick Harden and Karl Pichotta, plus Fremd juniors Charlie Franklin and Lisa Ridarelli, and former Fremd High School teacher and mentor, J. Spencer Greene. Others contributed by obtaining props and purchasing equipment. Production assistants were used on set for the first time at CNGM to help with lighting and sound. Noens' least favorite part of making the movie was the one time that everything that could have gone wrong seemed to do exactly that. "The camera ran out of battery power and we forgot the extension cable," he explained. His favorite part was shooting something that "came out exactly the way I envisioned it, or when I found myself saying 'That's perfect.'" "The Legend of Cuba Road" premieres at Cutting Hall, 150 E. Wood St., Palatine at 8 p.m. next Thursday (July 22). For more information, log onto www.cngmpictures.com. << Go Back to Press