Ross to show movie created entirely in Lincoln

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BY L. KENT WOLGAMOTT / Lincoln Journal Star

Four men carrying a black coffin on their shoulders walk backward in a garage.

An old police car shakes and shimmies next to them, courtesy of another guy pushing the Ford back and forth.

Inside, a goateed man wearing a sheriff’s shirt and a blonde woman are “riding” in the stationary vehicle. A tree branch circles in front of a nearby digital movie camera on a tripod.

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Mary Shelley, played by Abbey Bruntz, confronts the shadowy presence of The Aunt, played by Dorothy Booraem, in a scene from "Killer." (Courtesy)

'Killer' at the Ross

"Killer," a full-length feature created in Lincoln by Pete Lipins, will have its premiere at 3 p.m. today at the Ross Media Arts Center. Admission is free.

A few months and many hours later, all that motion becomes four seconds of “Killer,” a movie created entirely in Lincoln by writer/director Pete Lipins, whose garage provided the setting for many of the film’s scenes.

In the film, the four men with the coffin appear to be walking forward, getting passed by a moving police car as it rolls through a tree-lined area — a bit of low-budget movie magic created out of necessity and invention.

“That’s the fun part,” Lipins said. “If you’re not paying people, you have to make it fun for everyone involved.”

The black-and-white psychological thriller is based on a card game that gives the picture its name. At the film’s center is a woman named Mary Shelley, played by Abbey Bruntz, who is first seen playing cards but then finds herself in a real life version of the game.

“Killer” is ambiguous and unsettling — it’s never quite clear what’s going on and whether it is real or a dream.

That feeling, with hints of offscreen evildoing, set the tone for the picture, which, in part, is Lipins’s point.

“It’s about mood and stuff going on in the background” as much as it is about straight narrative, he said.

“Killer” will be shown today at the Ross Media Arts Center.

“I really feel that’s part of the mission of the Ross — to be able to do that for them,” said center director Danny Lee Ladely.

“We’ve always done it. But now it’s more important because with the digitalization of films, there are more of them.”

Lipins’s movie provides a prime example of how digital has changed filmmaking at the most micro, independent level.

Shooting an almost-no-budget picture on film was almost impossible because of the cost of filmstock and the rental of cameras and editing equipment.

Shooting a movie on video was more affordable, but there were technical problems that made building a feature on video a harrowing undertaking.

“A lot of it has been waiting for the technology to catch up,” said Lipins, who started work on “Killer” seven years ago.

“It’s only been in the last 10 years, or more realistically four or five years, it was possible to do something like this.”

Lipins started thinking about making a movie after he returned to Lincoln in 1993 and became involved with the Nebraska Independent Film Projects, a group of filmmakers that helped with and encouraged his filmmaking.

“Killer” is his first movie, but not the first time he’s worked with film.

Lipins said he spent more than a decade working in the national intelligence community, overseas and in Washington. Called upon to prepare an intelligence assessment for President Reagan, who didn’t like to read long papers, Lipins and his colleagues turned their report into a classified video Reagan watched at Camp David.

Making an independent movie and working in national intelligence have little in common, but Lipins said his film’s ambiguity provides a direct connection between the two worlds.

“It’s about like intelligence, which is ‘we know this, we know that’ and from that you can interpret what’s happening in the middle. In the movie, you know certain things and you have to make up your own back story.”

Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.