Parkway North Students Premiere The Rising

At 19 years old, Webster University student and North graduate David Kirkman celebrated the completion of the movie he filmed, edited, and directed with a red carpet premiere at a Wehrenberg theater on Monday, April 14, 2014.

    Production began April of 2013 with choreographing, learning the script, and training. Filming began weeks afterwards.

    “Our day would normally consist of either Sam or Duncan driving around picking up all the members who were going to be there that day. Once we got there, we would go through some quick warm ups, review the scripts, then run through 20 to 30 takes,” said senior Milo Brucker, an actor in the film.

    The actors and actresses were mostly friends of Kirkman when he was a student at North or other volunteers. Some auditioned and others got involved through past projects with Kirkman.

    “I had worked with David on his last project, a short film called Extraction. It was basically our interpretation of Inception and that was back in March or February of my junior year,” said Brucker. “I got told about it by some friends who said that he needed some extras on set. We went out and filmed for a night. It was a lot of fun. Then, a few months later, David starting talking about wanting to do another film, so that’s how I got involved.”

    The Rising premiered on Monday, April 14. The feature film was shown. Then, there was a half-hour-long Q&A session.

    “[The premiere] was a blast. Your fifteen minutes of fame. Everyone coming out there to support it, seeing it on the giant screen, and being like, ‘Wow, that’s me,’” said senior Sam Williams.

    Kirkman’s next project is yet unannounced, but The Rising’s journey is not over. He plans to remake it when he has a larger budget and more time.

            “A lot of time, a lot of hours got invested into it,” said Brucker. “At the same time, I’m proud of it because of all the work that’s been done of it, but at the same time I feel like we can do better. Whatever the next thing we do is, we will be better.”

By:  Molly Thal  Co-Editor-in-Chief