One of the most asked questions is when did your interest in filmmaking begin?
So I thought it would be fun to have small Early Years section on my website devoted to some of the earliest films I made from the age of 10 through high school and college.
My initial interest in movies started really young. I was still in a crib when I would stop playing and watch a tv show called Dark Shadows whenever it came on. That series dealt with a vampire so I guess horror was a early interest. Around the age of 7 my parents would take me to Disney films and I remember watching a Herbie movie in the theater where the VW was doing some crazy stunt and turning to my parents at one point saying "I want to do that. I don't know how they do that. But I want to do that." A couple of years later I started filming our family vacations with a Regular 8mm film camera.
It wasn't until the age of 10 that I saw a how to kids tv show where they had a glass of milk drink itself by animating it and have a piece of pie eating itself. With that, I was off with some friends and a Regular 8mm film camera animating milk and pie on my parents dining room table.
Then I saw Star Wars which showed me how much fun movies could be. This was quickly followed by seeing George Romero's Night of the Living Dead and John Carpenter's Halloween which sparked my interest in filmmaking. After shooting off and on with a regular 8mm film camera for animated movies, my parents gave me a Super 8 film camera which I used with friends to do bigger animated movies. That's around the time I formed Astro-Field Productions. At the very beginning, the friends who helped me by starring in my films as actors as well as helping as crew were John Poffenbarger, Chris Young, and Greg Padakis.
My friends and I would kidnap as many neighborhood kids as we could for a few hours every day and have them be actors or crew members. So we were always shooting something - I would direct/produce/ and act as cameraman. In the early days we did animations with original star wars toys - usually the AT-AT / snow walker and would animate it in the snow walking with animated vehicles moving around it. You essentially move it a fraction of an inch and then click off one frame of film. Move it another fraction of an inch, click of a frame of film. And you keep repeating the process. When you project the film back later, the item you animated moves by itself. Very time consuming. And cold as we would film outside in the snow - making sets out of the snow for the vehicles which were to be animated over several hours. A three minute animated film would take us 1-2 days of all day filming to complete.
January 1981 from left to right Making a movie set out of snow.
Jeff Carney, John Poffenbarger, Chris Young.
We needed explosions like the Hollywood movies so instead of scratching explosions onto the film (we did scratch laser bolts onto the film later on) we just used gasoline (not recommended by the way) in small amounts in the self built snow caves that the toys would drive around in that I would film. Sometimes our explosions would be small firecrackers we would set off and film.
January 1981 - filming the destruction. From left to right: Greg Padakis, Chris Young,
From left to right: Jeff Carney, Chris Young, and John Poffenbarger.
and John Poffenbarger.
I would do horror films where neighborhood kids would be killed off one by one. Chase films where one kid would be chasing another. Lots of comedy skits in the vein of Saturday Night Live and Monty Python. I would film skits with friends as news reporters who get themselves into strange situations. Of course, we did one called the “Kitchen Floor Massacre.” That starred my friend Chris Young who was in most of my productions. Chris was great because he was willing to do anything, anytime when it came to filming which was my attitude. While I went on to work behind the camera, he went on to star in the Max Headroom tv series and movies like The Great Outdoors, Book of Love, Warlock 2, etc. Today he is also working behind the camera and is a talented filmmaker. The scariest part of all is I have all the footage we ever shot saved onto dvd now. So it will be around for a very long time. We pretty much looked at our neighborhood as our studio back lot where anything was possible. John's house was one of main shooting locations as well - Thanks to his parents Dave and Judy Poffenbarger, their house was often used as a set for filming. Even in later years, the Poffenbargers were kind enough to let me use their house for filming of an exterior scene in the movie Beauty Queen Butcher where the character portrayed by Tammy Pescatelli (NBC's Last Comic Standing) returns home.
After moving from Regular 8mm film to Super 8 film cartridges, we made the leap into the dawn of the sound. Well it seemed like it for a bunch of kids when my parents bought me a huge video camera that would shoot black and white video with sound but the vhs video tape was on a reel to reel on this huge recorder that you had to sling over your shoulder that then connected to the camera. This was before camcorders which I eventually got into. Since I only had one reel with the camera, it had to be reused constantly. Fortunately I saved the footage as we shot by dubbing it from the reel to a vhs video tape recorder otherwise it would have been erased over constantly.
Our first video with the BW camera shot in May of 1983. John Poffenbarger, far left,
plays a investigator reporter on the trial of drugs who shows up unexpectedly at Chris Young's house. Chris had no idea we were stopping by to film so much to his credit he ad libbed. Greg Padakis on the right plays one of the "law enforcers."
With sync sound on the camera, now my friends could have dialogue and scripts/stories. We even made some music videos (air guitar/lip sync to the playback of the song on a cassette tape as we recorded).
The first music video I shot. Chris Hong belting out Loverboy's Hot Girls
From left to right, John Poffenbarger, In Love song. After all it was the 80's.
in back is Greg Padakis, and on the
right is Chris Hong.
The second music video with a bigger John, Greg, and Chris Young.
band - From left in front, John Poffenbarger
and Chris Hong. In back from left Greg
Padakis, Chris Young, and Zach Morris,
John Poffenbarger finds Chris Young stuck For this music video Chris Young is the
under a car. the lead singer.
A couple of outtakes with Chris Young during filming of just one of many comedy skits.
Chris Young being questioned by a Psychologist played by Greg Padakis in a skit.
Far right, John Poffenbarger interviews two Chris Young as one of his many characters.
horse jockeys (one played by Chris Young).
Flash forward a few years:
Chris Young, his dog Peace, and
Jeff Carney - Los Angeles 1990
Chris Young, his wife Lea Moreno (talented actress
as well) and Jeff Carney - 2001 Quad Cities.
I eventually moved up in 1984 from the black and white video camera to a vhs color camera. Now to us our footage looked like real movies - in color!
This is a montage of clips from different films
I made during my early years. If you were in any
of my early films you might see yourself here but
the montage video still only amounts to about 1%
of what I made when I first started as too much is left
out due to the short length of the montage.
I jammed as much as I could in there!
While still in high school, I spent four years at WQAD-TV (ABC affiliate in Moline, Illinois) in their Junior Achievement program where they had high school students produce weekly half hour variety television shows. We had to be the cast/crew for each episode, find the talent we would feature each week to interview on the show, and sell the commercial time to local businesses. During my senior year, I was elected President of the JA company at WQAD and won Best Production Methods/Company of the year at the JA awards including National JA Delegate status and a college scholarship.
A couple of random shots from two of the JA years showing cast/crew.
Early Junior Achievement show ("Flying High")cast/crew shot during the 1983 taping at WQAD in Moline, Illinois.
Early Junior Achievement cast/crew shot from 1984 during taping at WQAD in Moline, Illinois. This was the last show and after the program was shot, everyone signed the back of the ETC rainbow logo on the back and it was given to me after the show (still have it to this day).
I also shot behind the scenes footage for the band Midnight Express' video Danger Zone, made industrial videos for a national telemarketing company, and produced training videos for The Alliance for the Mentally ill in Rock Island. And a bit of trivia - during high school I was asked to film yearly documentaries on the Trucker's Jamboree for the I-80 Truck Stop (World's largest truck stop). By my Junior year in College my focus went to making independent feature films full time where it has remained.
My cast and crew for the music video I Jus' Wanna Look (Musician Austin McNeal).
I'm in the front row (2nd from the left wearing the cap) - to my right are my crew Tim Edmonds, Rick Lowry, and Paul Manglesdorf. This was filmed in the Quad Cities in 1986 and was a lot fun to make. Austin was great to work with. If you are out there somewhere Austin, get in contact with me! This was one of my first three camera shoots. I shot the main camera and then I had friends shoot Camera B (Rick Lowry) and Camera C (Paul Manglesdorf) with production assistance from Tim Edmonds.
I enjoyed working with Austin McNeal. The shoot was a lot of fun and we had a great time making the music video. Below are some pics from the video shoot (thanks again Austin).
Austin McNeal and Jeff Carney during the filming of a Delorean used in the music video which I made in the Quad Cities in 1986 called "I Jus' Wanna Look."
Filming a portion of the music video at a Davenport Iowa overlook.
Who said making a music video was easy - Austin McNeal gets thrown to the ground take after take during filming of "I Jus' Wanna Look." The actresses enjoyed it a little too much!
Austin McNeal strikes a pose while filming at the Butterworth Center in Moline, Illinois.
We filmed in the Gardens at the Butterworth Center for one day.
Some of Austin McNeal's fans were used as extras for one scene filmed at the Butterworth Center.
Here is a short news clip that I found in my archives which covered the shooting of the music video, "I Jus' Wanna Look" for Austin McNeal back in 1986. It has some good behind the scenes shots during the making of the video. This clip appears on my website with courtesy of and special thanks to WHBF-TV 4.
But a year earlier while I was a senior in high school, I shot a music video for Fred Ricaurte's band Ricky and the Blue Rocks called "The Hands Of Perfect Timing." That video was shot in the Alleman High School gym using classmates as extras and then at various locations in the Quad Cities including South Park mall, Muscatine, and Iowa City. Several local radio personalities had roles in the music video including Spike O'Dell and Jack Carey.
The second video, just of the Alleman concert footage, I edited to show that you could lip sync more than just five words. As I said there was no budget for this so the camera dolly was actually something my father made out of a old tv stand with a board mounted on it that the camera/tripod could sit on. It actually worked so we had several "dolly" shots in the music video.
Also below are both versions of the 1985 music video to watch (Original version and Concert Version) - Both appear here with permission of and Courtesy of Fred Ricaurte (Thanks again Fred).
1985 concert version - The Hands Of Perfect Timing
1985 Original Version - The Hands Of Perfect Timing
with cameos by Spike O'Dell and Jack Carey.
Continued on Early Years Page 2
