Trike Warz

For my second lived experience blog post, I decided that instead of reflecting on another film, I would interview my mom, who directed, co-wrote, and co-produced an independent short film entitled Trike Warz. I was about 8 or 9 when she made it. It was shot at the house we were living in at the time. My best memory of it is being upset at my mom because she wasn’t making a film using my idea, which included just a bout the entire DC universe of comic book heroes and more special effects than Star Wars. Hindsight has proven her idea the better one given the circumstances.

Q) About how long had you been in business when you made Trike Warz
A) I had been in the business about 6 or 7 years by the time we made it. I was working as a production manager at that point.

Q) How did Trike Warz come about?
A) I wanted to build a reel. So I wanted to make an independent film that I could shoot easily. Since I had three kids, knew them well, and had a lot of kid things around, I knew a story involving children would be best. It’s the classic write and shoot what you know, and I knew kids.

Q) Was Trike Warz completely yours?
A) No, I directed, but it was Meighan McGuire’s story, and Mike Hartzell was the DP.

Q) How does Trike Warz go?
A) Well it’s based off a story from Meigahn McGuire’s childhood. Meighan has an aunt who was the same age as her, and they would hang out all the time. When her aunt turned five, she got a brand new tricycle. Meighan really wanted to ride it, but everyone kept trying to tell her that it was too big for her. So Meighan plotted that when everyone else was busy with the cake, she would take the tricycle for a ride. But once she got outside to it, she realized that it was too big. So she took it to the top of the hill on the block and was just going to ride it down. It was right about then that everyone at the party realized that she had gone. So, as she comes screaming down the hill on the trike, the adults run outside just in time to stop her from going in to the middle of a busy street. This taught Meighan to stick to her own tricycle.

Q) How did you finance Trike Warz?
A) Well the first round of financing was calling in favors and seeing what I could get for free. The second round involved some bartering. I had to work a few free days on projects to get film. Then we agreed to feed everyone who worked on it, and I had to pay for my own processing.

Q) Was it hectic shooting a film in your own house?
A) Yea, because the crew would treat the house like any other location, it got to be pretty stressful.

Q) How did Doug Elliot’s death affect the film?
A) Well, when he died a lot of people wanted to know what happened to the footage, and if there was a cut so that they could show it at the memorial. Unfortunately we didn’t have the money to cut it together, so we couldn’t show it. But at the memorial, everyone who worked on it with him talked about it a lot.

Q) Any final thoughts on Trike Warz?
A) I probably wouldn’t do such a collaborative thing again. Since the three of us, Meighan, Mike, and myself, didn’t really have defined roles, we just kept stepping on each other’s toes.
I was also a bit upset that I couldn’t process for free, since I had worked so much with the same lab over the years.

It was a lot of fun using people who worked behind the camera as actors. Like Lisa Van Dyke, who is a grip, played the mom; and Doug Elliot, who played the dad, was a production manager/coordinator.

It was also a lot of fun working with the people who were there because they were there because they really wanted to be. They all had great attitudes, and they all were people I love to work with anyway. And your dad (who at this point was in the middle of earning a culinary arts degree) cooked all of this really amazing food for everyone, so they felt really appreciated.

Q) Any plans to get Trike Warz cut and do the voiceovers? You shot it MOS, correct?
A) Yes, we shot it MOS. We did that to save money, and we knew we could fill it in with music later. Plus we liked the idea of doing voiceovers more because, since the film involves a lot of kids running around, we felt that trying to have sound would inhibit that.

As to cutting it, I would like to, but it costs too much. I basically did the film because I was tired of being told by directors that I didn’t know about this or that, so I just did the project for myself. I wanted to prove that I could do it.