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September 2020
www.GlobeMiamiTimes.com
FILMING A PEARL 12 Westerns in 12 Months with Travis Mills Film locations in Globe included the Chrysocolla Inn, where this scene of Pearl’s earlier days of courting her first husband were shot. Other locations included the train depot and freight station and the 1916 territorial jail. Courtesy Photo
Kevin Goss and Lorraine Etchell run through their lines for the soundman. Photo by LCGross
Actress Babe McGuire (on the dais) was hired to play the part of abolitionist and suffragist Julia Ward. Assistant Director John Marrs seen here prepping the scene. Photo by LCGross.
By Linda Gross
Some say the Western genre is dead. But don’t tell that to Travis Mills, an independent filmmaker who is on a mission this year to complete 12 Westerns in 12 months in one of his most ambitious projects to date. His previous project was 52 films in 52 weeks. He spent July in Tonto Basin filming #7 in his series and all of August in Globe, where he not only shot his 8th film - about Pearl Hart - but played the supporting role of Joe Booth, her partner in crime in the infamous stagecoach robbery. In September, he will move north again to Young to shoot a film about the Pleasant Valley War. Mills, who graduated from the ASU Film School in Tempe in 2010, says he feels the education he got in film school fell short in providing enough hands-on, practical training. He has a theory that to get good at directing, you have to shoot a lot of films - giving as much attention to quality as your time, budget and ingenuity afford. So, shortly after graduating, he partnered with his professor to create Running Wild Films and dedicated himself to being a full-time director. Since then he has completed more than 100 short films and 10 feature films. It was just after completing a project as part of the 52 short films that he settled on his next big challenge: why not do 12 full-length feature films in 12 months? He settled on the Western genre after the success of one of his earlier movies, “Blood Country,” which garnered more than 500,000 downloads on Amazon Prime. While the Western may no longer hold the sway the genre once had with moviegoers, having been replaced by today’s superhero tales, Westerns still have a strong following. This factor is worth considering when determining if the market for a film is sufficient to make a profit. And turning a profit on his films is important to Mills and his investors and is what keeps him in the field making more movies. While the idea of producing a full-length feature film every month sounds crazy, to Mills it has become his MO as a director. “In film school we made three films in two years,” he says. “We just didn’t make enough films. We wrote 30 essays and did three films. That’s not the way I think it should be,” he says. Film school, he says, didn’t teach him much about casting parts, directing actors, financing a film, or marketing the final product. He learned all those things by just doing them. It’s the “experience-through-doing” that gave him the resilience and skill set to plan the production of 12 separate feature films in 12 months. While shooting for his most recent movie - the one about Pearl Hart, shot in Globe this August - Mills was simultaneously lining up the location and casting calls for his next movie - the one to be filmed in Young - as well as wrapping up post production on the first movie, which he shot in January, and getting it ready for release. Filming A Pearl, Continued on page 9
Shooting inside Globe’s 1916 territorial jail, Mills confers with cinematographer Sushila Kandola. “I had seen some short films where she (Sushila) acted and knew she wanted to move up and get behind the camera. I wanted someone not ingrained in the film industry and who had the kind of experimental energy it takes to film a full length feature film on an iPhone,” says Mills. Photo by Todd South.
In Mills’ version of the story, Joe Booth pleads with Pearl to yell and scream at him so others will blame him for the robbery and go easy on Pearl. Photo by Todd South.
