BEHIND THE CINEMATIC SERIES
BY:
BENJAMIN W. NEIDENTHAL
PHOTOS:
DAN MITCHELL & BEN NEIDENTHAL
THINKING
BIG
COVID-19 IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS WHOLE THING.
I used to tell people as a sales pitch “by the year 2020, 80% of all web traffic is predicted to be video-related!”. When 2020 came, and COVID hit, that number skyrocketed far higher than 80%, and it seemed like the entire world had time to sit down and focus on the stuff that they LIKED to do, not just the stuff they did to keep the lights on. I was no different, sitting at an empty video studio trying to figure out something to keep my brain occupied while the world had a collective time-out.
I am a graduate of CCAD, and a student of film, animation, storytelling, and writing. I have been most of my life, it’s how I met my wife actually. We both attended the same college in the same program, and I was working on a student film, an Animation which required some assistance posing and placing background characters. She volunteered, and I man-splained how it all works to her (she is a more competent visual artist than I am) and she did it. Then we didn’t talk for like 2 years, until I was ready for another animated film project. I reached out to see if she would be interested in helping, she was, and somewhere in the middle of it all, we fell in love and got married.
The trouble with animated films is that they take so long to produce, particularly at an independent scale. The film we started was called “A Sphere in Boxland” and was premiered at our wedding in 2011, and went on to win a handful of festivals, and accolades. But it took so long, I kind of swore off animation for a while, and dove into professional work. For me, professional work resulted in almost a decade of creative stagnation, something I wasn’t really aware was building up. I had enough going on professionally, making tv commercials, corporate animated explainer videos, and other creatively dry things that I didn’t realize how much of a release would be required.
So when the world shut down, and my creative brain did not, I turned to D&D. I had been running a D&D game for the last several years, and really enjoyed the freedom of the storytelling it provided me as a Dungeon Master. I went from one weekly game, to five weekly games in less than a month, and quickly began to drive myself a little crazy keeping track of five completely separate universes for the players to inhabit. So I put them all together as one single universe, but one that explored other universes. The Reliquery was born.
From there, my mind quickly did the thing it always does when I dive into a new thing, and turned it into a piece of visual storytelling… a screenplay. The screenplay was originally going to be semi-animated with stop-motion elements and D&D Minifigures representing the main cast. But I could not get it to look anything other than absolutely horrible. I now know that is because of the scale, because I switched to a human-sized cast, instead.
DEAD-ICATION
YOU’LL GET IT IN A SECOND, AND IT’S GOING TO MAKE YOU SAD…
In another moment of life altering magic, my then-girlfriend-now-wife and I decided that it was time to adopt a cat. So we went to Cat Welfare here in Central Ohio, to find a friend, a SINGULAR friend. Then these two kittens came running up to me. The worker told me they were brothers, originally named “Dark Star” and “Little Twin” (I mean, what the ACTUAL F*CK) they became the last roommates I would ever have before I started a family.
DOOM (pictured left) and DANGER (pictured right) were never going to be Dark Star and Little Twin… They almost became Nipple and Steve, but that’s another story. They were our kids before we had kids, we made capes for them, they had their own styles of everything…
DANGER passed away unexpectedly in 2016, and DOOM a few years later. I was there for DOOM when he died, but DANGER was all alone at the vet at night when he died. And the thought of him alone and scared still brings me to tears. I promised DOOM I would be there for him in his final moments, and I was, which was a different kind of awful. But, I promised them both that I would make them a part of The Reliquery universe, so that they would live on forever. And that’s precisely what I did.
That’s why the film bears this dedication.
I’VE ALWAYS TOLD MY CLIENTS TO “THINK BIG”.
NOW IT WAS MY TURN.
If you want to make an impact in the modern media landscape, you cut no corners, call in your chips, make the big asks, and swing for the fences. Because there are plenty of examples of projects that started off as small by modern standards that became cultural zeitgeists. I have a tendency to create the big epic blockbusters in my head. The kind of stuff Marvel does… but I cannot shoot such a film… only Marvel can do that. But I still like special effects, weird characters, huge dialogue, cataclysmic stakes, and absurd situations… so how do I put that all in the film, without accidentally writing a $300 Million movie?
I love D&D, I dedicated the film to D&D because it saved my life. I mean that sincerely, too. I was one of these high-minded nationalistic assholes for most of my life, until I was given the opportunity to step into another characters skin, and experience a life that I did not have. The character was Woosah Pico-Zanbar, and his character is in the film. The exercise of creating a person from nothing, giving them agency, and and a horribly dark history, then living him as he plays out his story genuinely changed my world-view. When my first child was born, I created another person from nothing… and I realized that within him is a universe of his own, full of thoughts and daydreams and wonder. And we all have that inside of us, and that is a humbling and empowering thing to realize. I am an entire universe, so are you. So is everyone you see. What if you could go to other people’s daydreams and creative universes and explore them? You could go anywhere, do anything. I wanted to reach people with the film, but then give them a game to play in the same universe so they can have the same kind of silly adventures as the film. I wanted to invite the blank slate, and break the fourth wall, allow the audience to do the same. I wanted to create a thing that pre-existed in every other created universe, no matter how big or small. Maybe it has no impact, maybe it has a huge impact. So, the idea for The Reliquery was to be more than just a single stand-alone film, but the start of a whole sandbox.
It started with a script that leaves as much to the imagination as possible, and a hell of a good cast…
TEAMBUILDING.
RALPH SCOTT
AS FRANKLIN NORMAN WHITEMAN
Ralph Scott was my second casting. Ralph is an accomplished star of stage and screen, and has a background in Improv Comedy, trained at Second City in Chicago. Ralph is often times one of the funniest people in the room, and he knows it. I knew for his character, I needed to provide a framework for him to explore, and make discoveries, but still maintain a really polarizing character as well. You hate him and love him. I gave Ralph a long lead, and had to pull him back once or twice, but he knew the character instantly. I absolutely adore his Frank.
VICTOR DANDRIDGE JR.
ANDREW HUNT-JENKINS
I had Andrew originally written as an Asian-American guy, and was pretty set on that idea until I had my pal Victor Dandrige come in and read the script. Originally he was offering opinion and insight into the story, but after he read it he looked at me and said “Ben I think Andrew should be Black, and here’s why… He is a writer, and an independent artist… that’s me. I get that character, and this script would be so much fun to shoot.” So, that’s what we did. Vic the real deal too, he is an independent comic book creator, he has a line of books for kids to help them get into reading and writing their own comic books, and he goes to conventions and hosts panels with actual superhero actors.
KRISTA LIVELY-STAUFFER
AS KAREN GRACE ROOSEVELT
My first (and really only choice, ever) for the role of Karen, was Krista. Krista and I have been known each other since second grade, and friends since high-school. She has collaborated with me on too many projects to count, and I consider her one of my best friends. She is also, an accomplished star of stage and screen, finding her home on stage at a young age, and eventually into the local theatre community in Central Ohio, before ending up in multiple films and commercial video work. She is an incomparable talent, riding the line of comedy and silliness, with beauty and grace. She brings all of it to this film too, the radiant performer she is. Also, I do owe her an apology for completely ruining the ability to wear that blue dress ever again without it being Karen’s costume. I also owe her a debt of gratitude for supporting this project.
JASEN PLETS
MURRAY BRANNIGAN
Jasen Plets is the only one I can imagine playing Murray. Jasen is one of my two Dungeon Daddies (my first Dungeon Master). He is a D&D encyclopedia and aside from helping me create lore and mechanics for The Reliquery, he had a strong hand in the story, and his character is basically Jasen without boundaries or shame. Jasen is also an Improv Genius, and one of the funniest humans I’ve ever known. He is a beautiful man and I adore him.
A FILM IS MADE 3 TIMES
FIRST: WHEN IT’S WRITTEN...
A lot of times, it’s easy to write a lot of dialogue that spins in circles and accomplishes nothing. Plus at the budget that I was shooting with, which was considerably low, we couldn’t afford big set-pieces, or stunts, or anything. So it’s a talking picture. So what happens when you take four hilarious human beings and put them around a table for hours at a time, you get really funny stuff. The first crack at this was a table read we did on January 24th, 2022. The read allowed me the opportunity to build an animatic for the first segment. It’s very rudimentary, but, it worked. And it gave me the confidence to press forward…
First, though, the script did call for a prop…
A FILM IS MADE 3 TIMES
SECOND: WHEN IT’S SHOT…
The first shoot took place on March 12, 2022, with subsequent shoots over the course of the year. A lot of time in the dark with literally no scenery.
THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD TO… DAYTON?
Four shoots took place at Boxland Media Studios in the black-box studio, and the final shoot required a change in venue, so we relocated to Hills and Dales Metropark in Dayton Ohio. The shoot required shutting down of a road near the park, and a single-day shoot with the cast in full costume, and lots of dialogue to shoot. But the cast was up to the task. We had a teleprompter on standby, which came in handy, but they crushed it. Shooting wrapped on October 10th 2022, my birthday. And I have to shout out to Joe, Raheem, Isaac, Becky, David and Lee Price from Virtual Blacksmith who was on hand that day to help facilitate the shoot.
A FILM IS MADE 3 TIMES
THIRD: WHEN IT’S EDITED
Post production began shortly after the first shoot was finished, with editing ongoing from almost day 2. Subsequent shoots resulted in holes being filled in the timeline, and eventually turned into a nearly 90 minute cut with no special effects, terrible audio, and slow pacing. It was eventually paired down to a 60 minute cut that was screened for an audience at Boxland in January of 2023. The film was well received, but needed some work, and a lot of work.
I MADE A MOVIE! NOW WHAT I DO WIF IT?
This is the part I am the worst at… Promotion. At least, I was 10 years ago with A SPHERE IN BOXLAND. Now it’s much easier to market oneself. Late 2023 the film was shown to a small select audience with a new runtime of around 45 minutes, and was received very well. This cut featured several new special effects, improved audio, and a much faster pacing.