ELY-—The Timberjay recently sat down with movie producer Erin Mae Miller to talk about the business of making movies and how her film landed in Ely. The working title of the film is “Athens,” named after Athens, N.Y., which was the original location for this coming-of-age film about a 12-year-old boy attempting to learn the truth about his mother’s rape and efforts by adults in his family to keep it a secret.
Miller talked about how she got into the film and TV production business, why she went into independent filmmaking, and why Ely was the perfect location for “Athens.”
Indie films
“Athens” is what’s known in filmmaking as an indy film and a festival film. Indie films are independent of the Hollywood corporate studios and film distribution companies. A festival film is one that targets the vibrant film festival scene. With the demise of the once robust “art house” movie theaters in the U.S., film festivals can now pave the way to success for an indie film in the face of the film distribution system which makes it difficult to compete for screen time against the big studios.
Indie film production has larger risks but more creative freedom than the corporate studios. As “Athens” producer Erin Mae Miller told the Timberjay, “I never even looked to do a studio model or get into a corporation so I could climb the ranks because I want to have a say about the projects that I put my effort and work into. I want the content I make to matter. I don’t want to waste my life making crap that I feel is not making the world a better place. I don’t want to make junk that, in my opinion, is making culture worse.”
Miller talked about how the pandemic and its economic downturn affected the independent film industry.
“In the mid-2010s,” Miller explained, “it was like the independent film was the way of the future. The streamers and the executives at companies like Amazon—they wanted to empower the independent filmmaker and make content that they really believed in. I’m sure they still do want to do that to a certain extent, but … there’s a lot of things being up-ended.”
Miller said staff cuts across the sector as a result of the pandemic have created major challenges for the entertainment industry and independent filmmakers in particular due to the loss of networking ability.
“As an independent producer,” Miller commented, “you’re going out to these (film business personnel), trying to make relationships with all the various distributors and streamers. Then you go talk to somebody, you go to reach out to them, and you discover they are no longer at XYZ. And the people there, they don’t give you someone else to contact.”
The economic downturn hasn’t killed the independent film makers, but it has made filmmaking more challenging.
Miller did affirm that “Athens” will likely be part of next year’s End of the Road Film Festival in Ely.
“Athens” as an indie
The “Athens” project fits into Miller’s concept of creating films with creative and meaningful messages. “You can go and work for the machine and you can put out junk food for the eyes, or you can go independent to try to make something that you’re proud of,” she said. “It’s so fulfilling to put together a team of people who are like-minded and work together for the common good of a story that’s going to make an impact… to get people talking about something that’s worthwhile. That’s my goal in producing, to make films that are going to positively contribute to a social conversation.”
Miller has been working on the “Athens” concept for years already. At one level, “Athens” is a coming-of-age story wrapped around a family tragedy. On another level, “Athens” is about how communities react to sexual assault and its victims.
According to U.S. Dept. of Justice statistics, one in five women in the nation will experience rape or attempted rape in their lifetime. Measured against those sorts of statistics, the underlying themes in “Athens” pack some serious punch for the social conversation Miller aims to illuminate with her work.
Picking Ely
“I came originally in February,” Miller explained. “Mayor Heidi Omerza met with myself and my director, Tessa Blake. We were touring everywhere on the Iron Range to see where we would like to film this movie.” Miller was giving the area a serious look because of the incentives that the state provides for films made in Minnesota.
“I made a phone call to someone at Vermilion College,” Miller recalled. “I was telling her about our film, and she said, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re describing Ely. You have to film this in Ely.”
The contact at Vermilion then “opened up her rolodex” and provided Miller with the names and numbers of who to talk to in Ely. “Everyone was saying the same thing—that this was just a wonderful, beautiful community that we needed to check out.”
Miller was given even more encouragement when she visited the community. “It was kind of humorous when I came, and people would be like, ‘Oh, have you talked to this person?’” Miller ran into that everywhere in Ely. “It’s such a small town that everybody was happy to connect us to people and make that process easy.”
Miller and Blake looked at several area communities, like Virginia, Hibbing, Chisholm, and others, but the reception Ely offered to the filmmakers made the difference. “Heidi (Omerza) was the first mayor that met us for any sort of (location) scouting.” The helpful reception of Police Chief Chad Houde was another welcome that Miller mentioned.
Miller mentioned the “timeless” feel of Ely as a community, the beauty of Ely’s two schools and how the new addition preserved the historical feel of the school campus, and even the layout of the town where the main character, Michael, can look out his bedroom window during the film and see his mother come home.
“We started looking around town and fell in love,” said Miller.