By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer

Local independent filmmaker John Barnhardt has some short films under his belt but is now shooting his first feature-length movie.

Titled “The Man Who Shot God,” the 93-minute film, being shot entirely in the Lowcountry, is about four men who lose their religious faith but regain it during the Apocalypse.

Barnhardt, the movie’s writer and director, says he will wrap up filming this summer and hopes to show the picture this October at the James Island 8 movie theater. To whet the public’s appetite for the full-length feature, Barnhardt will sneak preview the film’s first 30 minutes at the James Island theater in February.

Making the movie is the relatively easy part. Marketing the film to moviegoers is the hard and expensive part, Barnhardt said. He has hired a publicist and created the Web site www.themanwhoshotgodmovie.com to spread the word about his new film.

A local movie publication would make it easier for Lowcountry filmmakers to market their projects, he said.

“There is no independent film newspaper here,” Barnhardt said of the Lowcountry. Such a publication would help filmmakers advertise their movies to the public, attract advertisers from different corners of the national movie industry and put the Lowcountry more visibly on the nation’s movie-making map, he added.

A newspaper or magazine would “be a great idea to help local filmmakers and market the city as a production location,” said filmmaker Nick Smith. However, considering the Lowcountry’s limited market size, the publication would be more feasible if it covered the entire Carolinas and not just Charleston, he added.

“I think anything to help support the film community and make it more cohesive is a good thing,” said local filmmaker Brad Jayne, whose short film “Song of Pumpkin Brown,” about South Carolina’s impact on jazz, is scheduled for a Feb. 22 screening at the American Theater in downtown Charleston. “A Web site, where listings and projects could be presented and changed without having to go to press every time would make more sense. This would also create an online forum to help solidify the physical one.”

Any publicity would help, said Rich Carnahan, a principal of West Ashley-based motion picture company GryphonPix Entertainment, which has two feature films in the works, “The Interview” and “Hidden.”

For “Hidden,” a thriller about a group of ambitious filmmakers who do a documentary about a closed penitentiary, GryphonPix is using the Internet to help create buzz about the film. In February, the movie company will launch on its Web site, www.gryphonpix.com, a national casting competition in which film lovers from across the nation can go online and chose among a group of unknown actors. The winners will play two of the film’s supporting roles, said Carnahan, the film’s writer and director.

Barnhardt points to Austin, Texas, as an independent filmmaking center the Lowcountry can emulate.

“Charleston is like Austin before (“Sin City” director) Robert Rodriguez and (“Before Sunset” writer and director) Richard Linklater put Austin on the map,” Barnhardt said, referring to two famous filmmakers who in the early 1990s made independent low-budget films that drew the film world’s attention to Austin.

The Lowcountry has the filmmakers. What is missing is not only an independent publication but an entity like The Austin Film Society, which screens and promotes local films, Barnhardt said.

Dennis Quick is senior staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.

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