‘Garageland Chronicles’ gives Spokane filmmakers a chance to collaborate

On a recent fall day, local filmmaker Shaun Springer ordered the chili at one of his favorite downtown Spokane restaurants, Garageland, which doubles as a retro arcade with a punk rock vibe, and until recently also sold records.

Garageland has also served as somewhat of a muse for Springer.

His film anthology of a dozen stories, “The Garageland Chronicles,” uses the shop/restaurant as a unifying feature. All 12 of the short episodes that make up the 94-minute film include a scene at Garageland.

“When we first started working on scripts two years ago, I think I called it the ‘Cookie Chronicles,’ because a fortune cookie always came up in every episode,” Springer said. “But that changed to ‘Garageland’ because this place was so cool that we decided we always had to have Garageland in it … and the fortune cookie.”

Good fortune seems to have smiled down upon “The Garageland Chronicles” of late. Or maybe it’s the direct result of nearly two years of hard work and creative collaborations contributed by more than 50 local artists, actors and filmmakers.

“The whole point became to try to get as many local creatives involved as we could,” Springer said.

Springer’s production company, Slothberg Productions, won a $4,000 Spokane Arts Grants Awardlast month to help with post-production costs on the huge collaboration. Springer will also launch a Kickstarter campaign on Sunday to further contribute to the film’s color correction and professional sound mix. The money will also go toward marketing materials to present the final product to film festivals locally and nationwide.

Springer, sporting a Batman baseball cap and a goatee, said he doesn’t expect a big studio to invest in the final movie.

“But I do believe it could be a film festival darling where people would say, ‘Hey did you see that this weird, quirky little movie about these different stories?’ ” he said. “One story is like a zany comedy, and the next one is really dark. You get to delve into different aspects of the lives of this one set of characters, and it’s all set in Spokane.”

The first episode sets in motion an over-arching plot about Andy Warhol’s great-great-grand-niece, who owns a record store (Garageland) and is gearing up to release her uncle’s final art project (a music album), on the 29th anniversary of his death. The next 10 episodes follow the lives, one by one, of the characters introduced in the first episode until the final chapter ties the movie back together with the unveiling of the Andy Warhol art project. The themes range from a comedy, a love story and a mini-horror movie to chapters dealing with homelessness, addiction and suicide.

One segment is filmed as a music video, featuring the local band Flying Mammals. The 12 story lines, varied genres, and different filming techniques, are unique by design, Springer said.

“It didn’t always happen, but of the 12 segments of the film, I think we had eight different (directors of photography), so only a couple of them have repeated themselves,” Springer said. “We’ve tried to bring lots of creative people around the community into it, and we’ve even kind of grown a community up around ‘Garageland.’ ”

Jamie Junction, a local documentary photographer/filmmaker, is one of the dozens of artists who worked as crew on the film. She started as sound mixer for the first episode, when it was originally just supposed to be a 6-minute entry into the 2015 48-hour Film Festival.

“I remember Shaun called me and said, ‘Wow, we have so much footage. I do not want to edit it out,’” Junction recalled. The team got together and decided to go for a longer movie.

Junction ended up working on several more episodes, sometimes in the role of writer, sometimes producer. The creativity and experimentation over the course of two years kept the work fun.

“I appreciated working with different writers and directors of photography, and (also with) nontraditional actors of diverse ages … ethnic backgrounds and cultures,” she said.

As a child growing up in Spokane, Springer, now 39, recalled that he didn’t just play with his toys. He made movies out of them in his head.

“I kept the story lines going for years and years,” Springer said.

When he was 9, he found his dad’s old 8-mm camera and pretended to shoot scenes around the neighborhood for hours, despite not having any film. Seeing “Edward Scissorhands” in 1990, with its juxtoposition of pastel suburbia and gothic gloom, made a lasting impression on the then-12-year-old.

“I thought, ‘Oh, you can make something weird and different,’” Springer said. “Not every movie has to look like other movies that I like.”

“And I had a huge crush on Winona Ryder,” Springer recalled.

After graduating from Central Valley High School, Springer attended the Vancouver Film School, staying in Canada after graduation in 2001 to work in small and independent films and for a distributor. He moved back to Spokane in 2007 and began shooting short videos, mostly for local non-profits and bands, and competing in local film festivals. He works full-time during the season as a camera person for the TV show “Z Nation.”

Springer was one of the original organizers of the Spokane Film Project, co-founded by Juan Mas and others, to support and grow the local digital community. Mas said he has been thrilled to watch Springer use “The Garageland Chronicles” to engage arts community veterans with new creative avenues while also presenting learning experiences to those who are brand new to the industry.

“Shaun’s given people opportunities to be in positions that they had not done before and to experiment with their creative output,” Mas said. “I think it’s fantastic because it’s such a crossover of professionals and extremely knowledgeable individuals, working together with amateurs or even complete novices, on everything from the performing side all the way to the technical side.”

There are dozens of short films produced annually by local filmmakers competing in festivals such as Mas’s own 50-Hour Slam and Spokane’s 48-Hour Film Festival, as well as by sharing their own stuff on youtube. But there have been very few locally financed feature-length films to come out of Spokane in the last 25 years.

“We are doing great work with shorts and getting people to see the talent that exists here, but everybody wants that feature,” Mas said.

For Springer, that feature is on the agenda for 2018. Maybe next on the list will be achieving his childhood dream of meeting Winona Ryder.