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Starting with Nothing - Matthew Balthrop

I love theater. I have ever since I started acting. There is so much that one can do with theater. It can entertain, astonish, provoke, and inform all at the same time. One of the best things about theater though is that it doesn't have to do all of this. One doesn't have to go out and see a show expecting to be intellectually stimulated. I can go see Guys and Dolls and just enjoy it, and then the next day see The Censor, and be truly challenged by it. As much as I love theater, though, I love film even more. And the statements that I make about theater, in my opinion, ring even more true when it comes to film. With film, one doesn't have to make something intelligent. One can just make something enjoyable. Look at all of the "guilty pleasure" movies out there. However, the really great thing about film is that one can make something incredibly intelligent and relevant. One can make something that truly touches people, and maybe introduces them to ways of thinking and feeling that they've never been exposed to. That's putting a lot of weight on the influence of film and what it can do, but I think it's possible. If I'm wrong though, I can always fall back on the entertainment theory.

And that's what G14 wants to do. All of it. Yeah, we want to make quality films that make people think and feel, but hey, we want to have fun. We want to make the silly and wacky stuff too. And hope that people have as much fun watching it as we did making it. As long as somebody out there watches something that we made and feels like it was time well spent, for whatever reason, then I'll feel like we've done a pretty good job.

One of the things that I learned very early on doing theater is not to count on having any money to do anything. Because you're not going to be able to get it. Money's a funny thing; even when you have it, it seems to entice you to feel like you need more. So I learned not to need money to do a good production. It's tough sometimes, but I am strangely grateful to the fact that any troupe I've been with hasn't had a great deal of money. It makes you more creative, in my opinion. You have to be a lot smarter and work a lot harder to do the same things without money that you could with it. In my opinion (but it's true that I am a little biased), that has made the people I work with, and myself, better creators. Now, as we plan to risk it all and venture into the big bad world of film making, I find my troupe again starting with nothing. With film, that makes it a little harder because of the need for, oh, equipment and such in order to produce a finished product, but I am confident that we will find a way. And what we do will be better for it because we've had to work harder. I hope you can support us, and come along with us for the ride. More than that, I hope that we can make quality flicks that you can enjoy. Thanks.