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.
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