Now, more than 10 years later, Brandon looks back on that time remembering that these extra credit projects he did with writer and director Paul Gonzales set the stage for his career choice.
“Basically when Paul needed to pass a class we did a special project,” Brandon said. “That is when we discovered that Paul liked to be behind the camera and I liked to be in front.”
So what kind of films did they make back then?
“Somehow we made a zombie movie that involved math problems,” Brandon said admitting he could no longer remember the plot of that film. “Everything was just building up to ‘Scum.’”
Paul said that picking Brandon to play the part of Charles Sharpe was a natural choice.
“He was a friend I made movies with since I could hold a video camera,” Paul said. “I figured if I was going to make a movie, I was going to shoot it with one of my friends.”
Filming of “Scum” concluded a couple of weeks ago.
The Plot
The title of the movie has its origins in the plot.
Charles Sharpe had left Beeville sometime ago and when he returns he discovers that something is horribly wrong.
There is a shampoo bottling plant in the city and when soap scum mixes with the shampoo and the product is used on the heads of the people of Beeville, they become zombies and commence to run amok.
Shooting the movie
It has been two years since shooting began on the movie and lead characters Brandon and Keleigh Kremers, both Bee County natives, have gotten their first real glimpses of the final product.
Keleigh, having seen the latest trailer a few days ago, said, “I think they did an awesome job of making it look scary. I thought it would be like ‘Blair Witch Project.’”
It wasn’t, she said thankfully.
Brandon, who knows how much work is still left before the movie is finished, said, “It is hard to tell until it all comes together.”
The movie is nearly complete, Brandon said, but the accompanying musical score hasn’t been added and a few scenes could use some more editing.
Paul, whose full-time job is as a graphics artist at Beeville Publishing Company, said he hopes to have everything wrapped up by late October.
It’s taking longer than expected, he said, because editing is a one-man operation done in his spare time.
Wrapping it up
Keleigh, like the rest of the cast, is eager to see the final production.
For her, getting the role of the lead woman in the movie was a bit of a surprise.
She had tried out for the movie on a whim.
Admittedly, she was used to being in front of a camera. She was the anchor for the Video Squad, a news broadcast at A.C. Jones High School.
“I decided what the heck,” she said. “It was something I had never done.”
Not being a thespian, she wasn’t trained to act, but that didn’t stop her.
“I figured I could be an extra,” she said modestly.
So when Paul called her name as the lead woman in the play, she was understandably surprised.
“It was completely unexpected,” she said.
It was Keleigh’s enthusiasm that factored largely in his decision to choose her for the part of Jill Carr.
An outsider on the set
When the filming started, Keleigh said she felt like an outsider on the set.
“Everybody there was already friends,” she said. “I was kind of the only outsider. We all became friends really fast though.”
What amazed her most was the amount of time it would take to shoot 30 seconds worth of footage.
“I really had no idea how much work went into it,” she said. “It was complete repetition of everything.”
One scene, she said, could be shot half a dozen times from as many angles.
“If you put your hand on your hips one way, you had to make sure and do it that same way each time,” she said.
Unlike higher budget films, Paul only had only one camera, which is what required the multiple shootings of the same scene.
Brandon was used to the tedious, monotonous work involved in shooting a movie, having done it for years with Paul while they lived in San Antonio about five years ago.
So for Brandon, the hardest part of filming... is the filming.
“When you imagine something in your head and when you go out there to film, it doesn’t always come out the way you want,” he said. “The hardest part of us filming – it was relying on other people. It was easier back then when we were the only ones who participated in it.”
A cast of volunteers
Since everyone involved with “Scum” was a volunteer, filming had to be done around work and school schedules.
That meant a lot of shooting last year as Keleigh was getting ready to go to college in Oregon.
“I let him know when I was leaving for school and I think we shot every single night,” she said.
Unlike Brandon, Keleigh isn’t holding out for that big break into the movie business.
“That would be my dream,” said Keleigh, a college student. “Unfortunately I live in Oregon and they don’t make too many movies up here.”
Brandon, on the other hand, wants nothing else but to act or produce.
“I refuse to get a career and give up on certain dreams,” said Brandon, who works at Bill Miller’s Barbecue in San Antonio. “Hopefully it does well enough that we can do something else – not necessarily ‘Scum 2’ but something.
“I would do anything to do a film. I would play small roles forever.
“When you are a kid you play around pretending you are someone else. I have just not grown up yet.”
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