A former Issaquah High student and alum of the campus’s iVision news show is trying to get the ball rolling on an independent movie project.
Seth Margolies is raising money to produce his screenplay, “The Trials of Charles” through a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo.
The story, inspired by the myth of Hercules and a character in the Coen brothers’ film “O Brother Where Art Thou?,” regards an aging blues musician whose mother sold his soul to the devil when he was an infant. The musician, Charles, recounts the failed trials he undertook as a young man to regain his spirit. Close to death, he questions how many chances he has left to regain control of his immortal fate.
Margolies conceived and wrote the script last spring, while taking a course on the works of Dante Alighieri at Bellevue College (he’s since transferred to New York University’s exclusive Tisch School of the Arts).
As an aspiring cinematographer — the person on set responsible for the camerawork and “look” of the film — the idea began as a vision of a single, beautiful shot.
With input from a friend, Margolies realized he had something closer to the story of Hercules than “The Inferno,” and he began consciously adapting his story from the Italian literary exploration of Hell to the Greek myth. As Margolies adjusted to NYU and discovered regulations on what students could shoot would preempt his original shot, he tweaked his story to what could be done — a lesson in creativity under constraint.
“It really became nothing like what I originally had in mind, but I think it became something better,” Margolies said.
Though Margolies had written screenplays before, during high school, he knew “The Trials of Charles” was the first project he wanted to see to completion.
“The idea isn’t anything new, but I think I adapted it and added some elements that are unique,” he said. “Especially for a film coming out of NYU, which produces a lot of films about social and justice issues. This is more of a fanciful idea, more playful and fun … I decided this is what I want to see on screen.”
So what will the money Margolies raises — he’s asking for $4,000 — go to? A little bit of everything, including equipment rentals not covered by the university, transportation, post-production work, location rentals and food for his volunteer cast and crew.
Part of the movie calls for a dog, an addition that might seem trivial to the layman viewer, but is well-known for being an expensive choice in the world of movie and television production due to the training and owner expertise required to obtain an animal that will “act” out precise stage directions. Whatever is left over — if movie turns out like Margolies hopes, he said — will be used to enter “The Trials of Charles” into festivals: Tribeca, Sundance and local New York film fests.
The crowdfunding campaign for “The Trials of Charles” can be found under its own name on Indiegogo.com.
