Already a veteran of many projects at the age of 21, filmmaker Ken Cosentino discusses his latest film “Crimson,†the story of a comic book writer turned comic book character vigilante. The film is completed and is currently being entered into film festivals across the country. In an age where Hollywood is as plastic and fake as its celebrities, independent productions reign supreme in terms of realism and grit. With extensive choreographing and professional fighters starring in “Crimson,†it has all of that and a palpable plot too.
Review Fix: How has Crimson affected your personal life?
Ken Cosentino: It pretty much is my personal life [laughs]. It’s been two years since we started working on the movie and there’s not a single day that goes by that I’m not doing something that’s involved with it. Not only that, pretty much everyone I know and have grown up with, family, friends that I’m close to is in some way involved with the movie now.
Review Fix: Did you expect to pour your whole life into this piece and how will you go on with future projects after what you have learned?
Cosentino: I didn’t. I actually didn’t expect to pour so much into it, but Mike Shimmel, who wrote the original draft for the script, brought it to me and asked me to direct it, I had no idea how big it was going to be, I thought it was going to be something we could knock off in three months, you know get some distributing, get into some festivals and then just move on. But I didn’t know there was going to be like this cult kind of following to it and as for your second question I guess it was a huge stepping stone so from here on out I learned a lot, I learned a whole lot doing this movie at such a caliber, bigger than anything I thought and I’m just going to take that and apply it to future projects.
Review Fix: What does Crimson have that other superhero movies don’t?
Cosentino: It’s realistic, Crimson doesn’t have any superpowers really, he’s just a really determined guy, you can argue, he wakes up in the hospital and he has nerve damage so he can’t really feel pain, in most parts of his body, that’s kind of his superpower, but it is a plausible movie, like it’s not too out there, he’s not flying, he’s not shooting laser beams or anything like that, it’s within the realm of reality.
Review Fix: How do you feel about it now that it’s complete?
Cosentino: I’m pretty happy with it. We didn’t have a huge budget and we made it work as if we did so I think we did a really great job with it and I think all it’s going to take is for the right person to see it.
Review Fix: And how did you manage to convince such professionals that you have casted to work with you on this project?
Cosentino: They loved the script, before they even met me, or anybody else, before they even came to the auditions, they read through the parts, they loved the characters – the movie is made up of such great characters they were the kinds of characters that actors dream of playing, characters that kind of define them as actors.
Review Fix: How did being 21 affect the people you worked with and their attitudes towards you?
Cosentino: Well when I started I was actually 19 and I don’t think they knew that, I think they thought that I was mid 20’s, 25 or 26, and eventually everyone on the movie would find out and it just blew their minds because at that point they had already worked on the movie. I had to be one of the three or four youngest people, there was an actress that was younger than me, and then there was a kid actor and maybe one other person on crew, but there were over a hundred people on cast and crew and I was one of the youngest telling everybody what to do and it really didn’t affect anything at all because they just sort of expected that I knew what I was doing and listened to everything I had to say, they knew I had been doing it for a long time and if anything if helped us because they kept saying that I was 19 years old and able to do this then they wanted to work with me in the future.
Review Fix: Speaking of that, is there anybody you’re going to collaborate on anything in the near future with?
Cosentino: Yeah, absolutely, James Ventry who plays the gangster main villain Tommy Emerson is a close friend of mine, he owns the production company, we founded it just for the movie and he and I, on anything that I work on he’ll be there. Mike Shimmel, I’ll work with him in the future, the writer, and then uh, I became really close with Dale Rugg who plays Johnny Dragon in the movie, he’s a big biker guy, he’s a hell of an actor and really dedicated, he’s in the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises. So he’s one guy I’ll keep working with for sure.
Review Fix: What’s your favorite superhero movie, or movie along the same vein?
Cosentino: It’s a tough one, I don’t really think they do comic books justice, I think Spiderman did pretty good and so did X-Men, so those two, but my favorite comic book character is Ghost Rider and the Ghost Rider movie’s just terrible, just awful, so…
Review Fix: What was your dress code on and off the set?
Cosentino: Well we were pretty, pretty laid-back. We let everyone have fun, I feel that if we’re being too strict, then it’s not allowing the actors to really express themselves as they want, you know actors are artists that kind of thing, so on set, you show up, you dress comfortably you have your costume, your outfit with you and you keep it safe and make sure you don’t get any food or anything on it in between shots or anything like that, but it was a really laidback shoot, everyone wore whatever was comfortable for them other than the outfits.
Review Fix: What was the hardest scene to film and why?
Cosentino: The last about half hour of the movie is all action, it’s just this huge finale and there’s this 20 minute fight scene [laughs], that was definitely the hardest because we had to get 30 people together, 30 actors together, not counting crew members and there’s stunt choreography, we had A.J. Verel, he’s our stunt choreographer, he was in Unstoppable and Star Trek and he came on set, he did some acting, there were explosives on set, and just tons of mayhem going on and we had to shoot it all in one day because of the location. But it was definitely the hardest.
Review Fix: And what was your least favorite scene to film.
Cosentino: [laughs] That’s easy. There’s a scene that takes place in a dark alley and we had a guy come in from out of town, he took a while to get here and the guy had to travel so long, we had to set everything up, we shot it in this alley we had and for some reason the lighting, we just couldn’t get the lighting as bright as I wanted, even with our spotlights and everything and the wind picked up, which is a huge, huge pain in the ass, with our marks, and then it started raining, even though it was a nice day out and it was just a horrible experience.
Review Fix: Are you going to take a breath of free air when all is done with this movie, or are you just going to rush on through to the next project without a second thought?
Cosentino: No man, I want to go right on to the next one. Even though I’m working every day now, I feel like I haven’t been productive because I haven’t been on set and I haven’t been creating anything so I really, really want to get back into it. I want to go right on to the next one, I don’t care what it is.
Review Fix: Would you change anything if you had a bigger budget?
Cosentino: I would. I would’ve gotten, I had to shoot myself, we ended up letting go of our videographer, our cinematographer, and a couple of camera operators because we didn’t like their style in the beginning and I ended up having to shoot it myself. I’m not a professional cinematographer, I know how to use a camera, I know the rules, how it works, certain rules, the 180 rule, there’s balancing everything, I know the basics, but it was hard for me to direct and film and so I would’ve definitely would have hired a very professional cinematographer with a bigger budget and also I would’ve hired a better lighting and sound crew, even though we had good lighting, we had a shadowy feel, and the sound’s good but I just would’ve felt more comfortable having a professional team doing it.
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