It was approaching midnight on Ferry Point Beach as the Mint Films team pushed to finish filming their 2008 short film, a scene in “This We Have Now” called “Jess & Andy.” After several hours of shooting, the tide came in and stranded Jeff Griecci’s Jeep on an island of sand in the distance. Griecci, director of photography and founder of the production team, didn’t think twice. He was focused on capturing the scene just right.
Halfway through shooting, sirens and blue lights were headed for the band of actors and crew. Approaching them with spotlights and dogs, the police began to interrogate the group, “You’re not allowed here! Don’t you know you need a permit for this? Who wants the fine? The fine for being on this beach is $500!”
Sweating, Griecci pleaded with the officer. They couldn’t leave! His Jeep was parked on what was now an island, surrounded by water too high to drive through. The officer asked when tide would go out. Griecci, who’s spent much of his life on beaches, judged, “One hour, sir.”
“If you’re not gone in one hour,” the cop said, looking at his watch, ” I’m sending another patrol unit, and you’re going to be fined.”
In the next sixty minutes, the Mint Films team finished the entire second half of the scene. They packed the equipment in the jeep, drove over the sand (the tide going out as Griecci predicted), bumped over the dirt pathway to the parking lot, and pulled off the beach, exactly as a cruiser pulled in.
This is the essence of Mint Films. Besides, say, six other characters yet to be introduced, who bring a mix of professionalism and sheer hilarity to the group, USM students, or as they call themselves “four, five, seven-and-a-half year veterans of the program.” The gentlemen who make up Mint Films met in Southern Maine, bringing individual talents together to the film company Griecci started in high school. Since its move to Maine, Mint Films acquired a strapping team that plays hard, and works even harder.
“I think the group we’ve assembled here, we take this seriously. Every one of these films are on my resume, even “Swamp Goblin”. I’ve met guys who are completely comfortable letting me do what I want to do, or say ‘ehh, Parker, that’s not a good idea,’ I trust these guys to give me feedback. And they do, we’re constantly shooting ideas off each other,” says Parker Newton, who graduates from the USM theatre department with a concentration in acting this semester and has plans to move to New York City in eight days to pursue producing. “That’s what I want to do. But you’ve gotta know that all I want is to make enough money to be able to take the Fung Wah back here to make movies with these guys.”
To understand their process, take the means “Swamp Goblin”, their latest short comedy, was created. “One of us says, okay there’s a contest coming up. We all took the weekend off. We sit here, usually I’m pacing,” says Parker. “Barbo takes notes and searches for anything and everything online.” (doing this even during the interview.) Parker explains the idea stemmed from his latest interest 70s horror films. “I said I wanted to make a horrody (horror-comedy), and the ideas kept getting thrown in, until we said.let’s do it.” Ten hours later, they’d constructed the suit for a swamp creature. Twenty-four hours later, Andy Sawyer was slathering makeup on Parker. Forty-eight hours later, they had the finished product.
For something as large-scale as their recent full-length feature, “Transition of Minor Skies”, they met twice a week for two months before beginning shooting, simply coming up with ideas, scripting, based on a mood Griecci wanted to capture.
“When you have this many people who get the job done because they love what they’re doing, you are working with the best people you could ever ask for! Derek will come back with the film completely soundscaped-”
“Sound sculpted,” Derek Gierhan corrects him. “A year ago, they asked me to do some music for them.and they still do.” With three more credits to go, Gierhan graduates USM in the Spring. He’s credited for creating the somber ambiance in Transition of Minor Skies, and creating swamp sounds with a 12 inch Casio keyboard and an accordion.
Griecci recognizes that it’s the other’s accomplishments that drive him. “It keeps me on my toes when I know Ian is writing a play, Parker and Andy (Sawyer) are directing something, and a few guys are making music on the side. Then I see another film they’re in. I want to be creating too! We psych up the other guys with our own projects.” They must be psyched. They say it usually involves about fifty hours to create a three-minute short.
Their own projects also intermingle. Griecci and Barbo live together and are in a band called Grant Street Orchestra, Carlsen and Gierhan are in a band called Robber and Thief, Newton and Sawyer have been in countless plays together, acting, sometimes with Carlsen, even directing a play the other is in. The list goes on. But trust, they say, is the glue of Mint Films.
“I trust Derek to make a sick soundscape and Andy and Ian to get their lines as best, as funny as possible. That’s the nature of us: a lot of trust” says Andy Barbo, USM Media Studies major, producer and boom operator, and also, as he adds, “lubricant to the Mint machine. I get shit done. I prep. I drive all over the place to find a prop. I gotta keep Mint moving.”
Even the first partner in Mint Films is still actively involved, although he attended UMass Amherst and has gone on to work on the David Letterman Show, the Discovery Channel, and now produces shows on Nickelodeon. George Anagnostakos, writer and improv’ extraordinaire was never in the circle of Portland friends, yet, “It was an instant connection with him,” says Ian Carlsen, “I was like holy shit, we’re best buds.”
Their relationship has translated into a number of successes, including being featured in festivals around the state and country. They were featured in the latest Portland Phoenix Film Festival, and competed in Portland’s 48 Hour Film Festival this August. In this nationwide contest, teams have exactly 48 hours to come up with an idea, write a script, and then shoot and edit the piece, and submit it to judges. A technical difficulty burning the final disk caused the Mint Films’ production “Double Oh” to be disqualified for being a few minutes too late. Thus, the only award they were eligible for was the People’s Choice Award. They won it.
Setbacks like this are understandably discouraging but the group takes lessons from them with poise uncanny for a group of young twenty-something fellows. They all want to learn and grow and are all passionate about what they do.
“We’re all not happy unless we’re creating something,” says Carlsen.
Newton adds, “Exactly. If none of us were going to school, and working one or two or three jobs, we’d be making a movie a week. Certainly.” Everyone agrees.
“I get a lot of high fives,” Newton comments on how the public receives their films. “The most gratifying thing is when people I don’t know, and who don’t know me, think I’m funny. People have come up to me, and said, ‘Hey you, your stuff is funny.’ That’s a good day.”
Currently, there is talk of an upcoming project, a possible 20-minute short film in the works. They’re classifying it a ‘Survival Horror,’ but that’s all they’ll reveal.
Mint Films will show their latest feature-film, “Transition of Minor Skies”, this April at a one-day screening at SPACE gallery. Cast and crew will be on hand to talk about the production, their work, and to take questions from the audience. Newton jokes that they’ll have Swamp Goblin posters and cardboard cut-outs on sale alongside dvds of the film. His eyes get big and I see the wheels start turning. Actually, he’s not joking at all.
Mint Films picks their top five films:
1. Transition of Minor Skies
“This was the first full length feature we shot in Hi-Def, and probably the first full I’ve been really happy with,” says Jeff Griecci, founder of Mint Films, named after a nickname he got for eating so much candy.
2. Double Oh
“So much nicotine went into making this film.” So much nicotine went into Andy Sawyer making this film.
3. This We Have Now: Jess & Andy
“So many people went into making this. We made this for projects at USM, and it was our first time in High-Def.” The last of four scenes is attributed to be a Mint Film. This film involved the police on Ferry Point Beach.
4. Swamp Goblin
Although six hours of footage was erased during shooting, the product is flawless and involves a costume that took 10-12 hours to create. Another part of the team, Corey Anderson, played a big role in this one, behind the scenes. The rest of the guys credit him for having the best attitude of anyone they’ve every worked with. “If we said, we need all this gear hauled a few miles into the woods, he’d pause, clap his hands together, and say, ‘Okay!'”
5. Bad Fruit
Talking fruit. Insults.