By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Tyler Savino and Thomas Moeger once dreamed of Hollywood.
Marlee Carpenter dreamed of a New York career in drama.
Now they and a few other film professionals have decided that their dreams can take root in the farm fields of Northwest Ohio.
The new production company Bucketnaut will make its formal launch Monday (Feb. 1) with a splash on YouTube turning the spotlight all the myriad of projects the team has been working on. That includes five feature films in the works.
There’s dark comedy, terror, thrills and drama.
Moeger, a 2019 film graduate of Bowling Green State University, came back from deployment with the Army National Guard a year ago. He wanted to make films, but other than the occasional project, didn’t see films being made here.
But living in California involves high cost of living and being separated from the contacts he’d already developed.
Working with Savino and Bucketnaut he realized: “We can make movies anywhere. We don’t have to go to California.”
Staying put was “the smarter” move. Ohio is cheaper to live and do business in. They know who they can approach for resources.
“Ohio is prime for filmmaking,” he said. “We just have to really push what we’re doing.”
What Bucketnaut is doing is bringing together about half dozen film auteurs, and working with them to realize their films – short and feature length, and then get them distributed whether online or through established channels. Moeger also heads up a commercial wing that produces commercials and web content for businesses.
The name of the company derives from Savino’s first short film, “Bartholomew Bucket,” and the sense of wonder and exploration symbolized by space travel. The logo is a guy in a business suit with a bucket on his head pretending to be an astronaut.
“No matter how entrenched in the real world you are, you can always be creative,” he said.
At first he just used the name as a faceplate on whatever project he happened to be working on. “When it became increasingly clear that this is what I’d rather be doing than working a 9-to-5 and was looking at helping out other individuals it went from face plate to being its own film production company.”
Under Bucketnaut’s umbrella other producers have their nameplates.
Carpenter, an actor and writer, works under the nameplate Mr. Carp. She grew up in Oak Harbor and left to study at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 2011. She was on an upward trajectory, graduating in 2013 and accepted into the school’s acting company. Then she lost her housing, and she couldn’t afford to stay in New York. Her dream of becoming an actor was so close, and then “the rug was pulled out” from under that dream.
Back in Ohio, Carpenter said, “it took me awhile to find my footing.” She stayed active in community theater, and picked up a role in a short film that Savino was involved in. They struck up a professional friendship, and a few years later he called her. He was making his first feature and wanted her as the lead.
That was the dark comedy “The Cran,” which is now being edited.
Carpenter is now working on the score. She’d never written music for a movie before. That’s just another reason “being part of Bucketnaut is an exciting adventure for me,” she said.
“Bucketnaut has given me a safe place to be creative and figure out what fuels my fire and give me platform to tell my story.”
The crew had wrapped up principal photography on “the Cran” a year ago with a final shoot planned for March. “We ended up getting the rest of what needed what we needed in July,” Savino said.
The delay was “a blessing disguise.” He’s pleased with the footage he has, and he’s had more time to work with it. “It’s just a matter of finding the best story in there, sometimes better than what was in script.”
By March Savino hopes to have a finished version that he can start shopping around to festivals. In summer, he’s hoping to have a screening for a local audience.
He’s just beginning work on a follow up “The Refrigerator.” Again, he’s drawing on the talents of a regional talent. Callie Bussell, from southern Michigan, was brought in for a role in “The Cran.”
“She blew us away,” Savino said. Now she’s starring in “The Refrigerator.” That along with Moeger’s “The Anarchist” are still in the works.
Next up for Bucketnaut is the comedy thriller “Eviscerate Me,” written and directed by Elijah Lothamer and produced by Carpenter. The film stars Libby Dietrix as an internet sensation who steps away under mysterious circumstances.
Filming is already underway.
This roster is testament to the company’s dedication to telling stories that don’t make it to the screen now. “If I know where the plot’s going because I’ve seen other movies, I rewrite it.”
For years, he said, “I was super convinced that I was just doing this for myself. I was writing things that I could put myself in and be a super punk assassin … playing the cool guy.”
But he lost his drive to be an actor, settling in as a director instead. “I liked building worlds,” he said “I was the kid who played SimCity every day after school.”
Then as he started interacting with others involved in filmmaking, he was impressed by the quality of their work and “how thoroughly they believe in what I wanted to do. It really became something special.”
Through this web of collaborations his own work “evolved into something more grounded and honest.”
They are films that “convey a message, start a conversation without feeling I’m compromising my initial love of watching movies and making movies.”
Now he had a new purpose. “I would devote the next five years of my life to see these five or six people do what they want to do in their lives, to succeed creatively, to hit those milestones they told themselves as kids they wanted to hit.”
