   |
At
the young age of twenty-three, Steve Balderson has something many film
makers don't achieve in a lifetime: a fully realized artistic vision.
His first full-length feature film, Pep Squad is uniquely crafted and
outstanding in its own quirky-yet-brilliant way, because Balderson not
only wrote and directed it, he was involved in every part of the film's
creation, from costumes, color arrangements, story boards and lighting
techniques to hair and makeup design. A self-described workaholic, Balderson
attended Cal Arts Film School for three years, during which time he oversaw
production on six full-length video projects, including a screen adaptation
of Anne Rice's novel The Vampire Lestat. Though an undergraduate, his
work was being evaluated on a Master's Degree level. At the end of his
junior year, Balderson made and almost unheard of decision and dropped
out of school to realize his dream of making a feature film. In the course
of a single week he wrote the script for Pep Squad and the movie was filmed
on location in Wamego, Kansas for six weeks during July and August of
1997. Though he may seem like an anomaly, it all comes very naturally
to Steve. He's been writing and directing since early childhood, staging
epic home movies on super 8 and video. Interested not just in film but
also architecture, design and elements of time and space, Balderson's
milieu is all-inclusive and his work bears an unmistakable, individual
stamp. Though he chuckles when he says his idea of a good time is 'going
out to sketch a story board,' he's not kidding. Driven and prolific, Balderson
just completed work on his secondary screenplay, which he also intends
to direct. Firecracker is a dramatic and harrowing story based upon a
murder that took place on The Fourth of July in Eisenhower-era Kansas. |
|
