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local filmmaker spotlight:
interview with Patrick Barry of Blue Llama
by erin thursby    scopes1925@msn.com

      Jacksonville has more filmmakers than most people know. Right now the burgeoning industry is still underground and indie, but if you’re in the know, or if you search for it, there are opportunities for local actors to star in shorts and the occasional full length movie.
      In the beginning of September, local director Patrick Barry held call-back auditions for his latest short flick, Riverside Morning at 9th & Main. Barry runs a small, independent film production company called Blue Llama, which has produced a number of shorts. His last film was a clever little piece called Haberdash, about an artist named Gus who visits a coffee shop, falls in love with a girl and spends all his time drawing the patrons of the shop. The plot takes a turn for the less typical, in a Weird Science kind of way, when his roommate offers him the use of a device that can read thoughts. The primary use of the device is to pick up girls, of course. What else would you use it for? The plot sounds too silly to work, but on film it does work, backed up with a damn good jazz score and filmmaking that concentrates on the details—the swish of a newspaper as a coffeehouse patron turns the page and close ups of the artist’s pen as he scratches the page using an old-fashioned nib-pen and inkwell. Barry’s cinematic approach also zeroes in on the interesting characters you can find in and around Jacksonville. I can tell that Barry loves this city and that he watches the people in it.
      Currently, Barry is working on a continuation of Haberdash.
      “Basically,” says Barry “…I met a film producer at the Norman Studios screening [of Haberdash] and he gave me a little bit of advice. He thought that Haberdash had a decent shot of getting into some of the larger festivals (it’s always a kind of one-in-a-million chance) but he…said if…a major producer is interested in it they’ll come up and say ‘I liked your short. What else do you have?’ And you…have to have something to give them. If you don’t really have stuff they almost have like an ADD mentality…So he suggested that I have something in the same genre or with the same characters.”
      Because of that suggestion, Barry decided to do a full length movie, using some of the characters from Haberdash in a new story.
      “We’re trying to put in as many of the characters from Haberdash without rehashing…it’s a new adventure for Gus.”
      Each film leads to the next for Barry; when one film shows interested producers offer to back his next film. Local and national backers have put money up to produce his films.
      The actors he has involved in his projects range from New York actors to local Jacksonville actors. He advertises on Internet boards, MySpace, through print media and also through his network of working actors, who often help him find the type he’s looking for in auditions.
      For more info on Blue Llama Studios, go to his website bluellamastudios.com. If you’re an actor on MySpace, make sure you friend Blue Llama for updates and bulletins on auditions at myspace.com/bluellamastudios.

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