By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Jeff Loehrke felt stuck in limbo. After his graduation in 2009 from Bowling Green State University, he had his sights set on being a production assistant in film.
The film major with a minor in telecommunications worked for two years at WBGU-TV on campus. But those hiring were looking for five years of experience.
Loehrke decided to make a switch and seek work in visual effects. Still in another crowded field, he didn’t have what he needed to show his skills.
He had an idea for a project that would bolster his reel – a film professional’s visual resume. He did it and liked it so much he decided to turn it into a short film. Then he decided: “Let’s just turn it into a feature.”
That film “Gauntlet” just had its first showing, a private screening over Thanksgiving weekend.
“The idea was to make something for me to stand out and get a job,” he said in a recent telephone interview. “But I got the job early. This became a passion project. It took so long because of the gravity of what we were trying to do. I didn’t want to cut corners. I tried to do as best I could with the resources I had.”
Loehrke feels he’s achieved that.
He recruited people he knew from his time at BGSU. The lead roles are played by Bowling Green native Dylan Stretchbery, Kelly Rogers, and Johnathon Byrd.
[RELATED: Dylan Stretchbery & friends produce an arresting comic send up of gritty detective genre]
The movie is about a “lost teenager who finds himself imported into a video game console, retro style, and he discovers his two lost older brothers who have been trapped in the game for the last eight years.”
The character, Michael played by Stretchbery, only has a day to free them because their mother is going to donate the console. She’s depressed and wants to give away all the older brothers’ stuff.
Michael only has one life in the game. “It’s a race against time,” Loehrke said.
The film is set in the 1990s, so one of the challenges was to create the futuristic look of a 1980s game. “My love of games came out in this film,” he said. That love extends from checkers to role playing games.
“Gauntlet” posed a technical challenge in motion design and visual effects. “I really wanted to flex those muscles,” he said. “I even created an 8-bit video game that was in the style.” The game was hand painted and animated. Just that element took him about half a year to complete.
The live action was filmed in 3-D against a green screen in his garage. That’s surprised and impressed people who have viewed the trailer. “You did what?” they ask.
Loehrke was also inspired by his love of the movie “TRON: Legacy.” In that film characters are trapped inside a virtual world within a main frame computer.
But Loehrke thought about the SEGA games he played on his Gameboy, and he wondered: “What if you got inside that kind of machine and had access to all these gaming files?”
Loehrke opted not to crowd source the funding for the project because he knew he didn’t want to face a deadline. This was a passion project. He created it during his free time away from his paying freelance projects and his job doing as an animator and video producer for Northview Church, the largest church in Indianapolis. He’s been employed there since 2019, just before the pandemic set in and created even more demand for online and virtual content.
“COVID gave me a new sense of purpose to get the film finished,” Loehrke said. Now “our plan is to do the festival circuit.”
He has identified eight festivals where he’ll submit the film. Based on how well it is received, “we’re going to potentially sell it to a distribution company.”
He hopes that by the end of 2022, it is sold, and ready to stream into people’s homes.
Before then, though, he would like to bring the film home again. “I’m thinking early spring next year to reach out and have a screening on campus.”
