French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard once said that the history of the cinema was the history of boys photographing girls.
Godard’s comment notwithstanding, there is typically a deeper reason that draws people into the art of making movies. For Nick Crawford, a Milford native who lives in Rehoboth Beach, the reasoning is fairly straightforward.
“I was going to aeronautical school and I was transferring to somewhere else. I had a friend who was going to film school and my mom’s an artist and I enjoy art so I decided to do it,” he said.
Crawford attended the Full Sail Real World Education School in Orlando, Fla., a private university geared toward the entertainment industry. After a two-year stint in Los Angeles doing camera work for television, Crawford came back to Rehoboth.
He is now looking to take his filmmaking to the next level and move back to Los Angeles to pursue his dream of making movies after positive feedback for a film he made about the lifeguards of Rehoboth, entitled “For Life.”
Crawford got the idea for “For Life” after spending summers home from school working for the beach patrol.
“I just had the idea that it would be a cool story to tell. A lot of people see the lifeguards up there but don’t know what’s going on,” he said.
To make the film, Crawford formed Cover Down Productions with his friends Alan Chambers and Scottie James.
“We wanted it to be more than just three guys, we wanted to have a legit company,” he said. “It’s pretty modest but anything modest you can be surprised with the amount you can get done.”
Crawford said the name Cover Down is a lifeguarding term for when guards get off the tower to go in for a save and request “cover down” from the another lifeguard.
The crew shoots on mini digital video cameras but Crawford says the crew hopes to move up to high-definition cameras in the future. Funding from the film came from a variety of local businesses, Crawford said.
“We would definitely like to do film but film is so expensive,” he said. For the last several years, Crawford has been bartending at Fins restaurant and says the experience has helped him meet people in the industry who come down for vacation. He said working there also helped in raising awareness for “For Life.”
The group spent two years making the film, just getting it done in time for the 2006 Rehoboth film festival, editing right up until the end.
“We kept going past the deadline just because we had so much footage; we had over 120 hours of footage,” he said. “We wanted to show everything but you can’t show everything in an hour and a half. The film society was great, even though we kept missing the deadline.”
Crawford said he hopes the film can be sold for wider distribution, as well as to various film festivals. The film recently played at the New York International Film Festival and while the movie was well accepted, he said, the biggest coup was getting it out there to a large audience.
Now, he is looking to go back to Los Angeles in October and further pursue his career.
“It’s really the only spot,” Crawford said. “L.A. is hit or miss. You can find something out there and make your career or you can get lost, swallowed up and be back in a year. But, you got to give it a try.”
DVD copies of “For Life” are available at local restaurants such as Wahoo, Fins, Claws, Arenas, as well as other businesses such as Browseabout Books, Quiet Storm and Liquid, and online at www.coverdown productions.com. A portion of the proceeds goes to the Rehoboth Beach Patrol.
Contact Ryan Mavity at ryanm@capegazette.com
