Today we’d like to introduce you to Garret Replogle
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I grew up in the Mojave Desert region of Southern California. I was always enamored with the vast landscapes and horizon mountain vistas which heavily influenced the cinematography of my current project, Shakespeare’s The Tempest. For as long as I can remember I LOVED movies. A Friday night rental from Blockbuster Video was sacred to me. My mother and father also loved movies, but they definitely had different tastes. On one hand I’d be watching Pride and Prejudice, It’s a Wonderful Life, and Anne of Green Gables with my mom; and then turn around and watch Star Trek, Terminator, and Jurassic Park with my dad. Looking back, my parents inadvertently gave me a large range of appreciation for the art of film.
Eventually I wound up in drama club in high school. I originally wanted to be an actor when I ‘grew up’, but things slightly changed when my drama teacher made me direct one of the school productions. I was completely intimidated as I had never thought of directing as an option, but it ended up being a paramount moment in my life.
In college I majored in Theatre and minored in Film Literature. After college I did the classic starving artist in LA schtick. I was a barista by day and actor by night. I couldn’t afford to live in an actual apartment so I would crash on friends couches, sleep in my car, and if I had the time I would drive over 2 hours back to my parents house to “reboot” my energy. I would basically follow the gig, whether that was theater or film, I would map the couches to crash with friends who lived closest to the job. I will forever be in debt to the kindness of those friends. After about 3 years in LA, I scored the position of Scenic Shop Foreman and Master Carpenter for the Theater Department at my alma mater where I spent 7 years designing and building sets for their stage productions all while acting at night.
Directing came back into my life when I proposed that the theater department host a Shakespeare festival in the summers. They went for it and I directed every summer for 3 seasons. At this time I met my now wife; life was good.
Enter Covid. Theater was shut down completely. So there I was working, sweeping up my theater shop, with no season or sets to build. My wife was pregnant with our first child and I thought to myself, what was one thing that I wanted to accomplish while I have time before fatherhood, and my answer was insane, a FEATURE FILM. I realized that after 10 years working in theater and film across Southern CA that I had a vast enough network to put together a band of actors and crew to create something! We had no budget, so I was counting on my talented friends and volunteers. I built the sets and once a month for over a year we all would pack up for a weekend and set off deep into the desert to shoot in some of the harshest weather imaginable. We began shooting Shakespeare’s The Tempest in February 2021 and here I am, 3 kids later, finally showing it to the world. It is finished and screening at the International Christian Film and Music Festival here in Orlando and various other festivals throughout the North America.
This version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest is a fusion of 3 of my favorite things: Shakespeare, Sci-Fi, and the Mojave Desert.
This film was a low budget passion project of volunteers and a labor of love.
Production included
-12 unique locations
-5 sets designed and built ourselves.
-2000 Mi. travelled
-20 Original Costumes created
-100 Minutes of Original Music Composed, Orchestrated, and Performed
-2 Scale Models Built
-400 VFX Shots and 30000 VFX Frames Rendered
-1000s of hours of labor
-120 Minutes of ONE feature film.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
No, definitely not. The “Hollywood dream” always venerates youthful success. It is very hard as the years roll by as crippling thoughts of “am I crazy? What if I never make it?” and “should I just give up?” creep in. Thankfully, my wife and family motivated me to continue on the journey.
I absolutely underestimated how long a feature film would take to make. Especially because I shouldered most of the post production responsibility. This film was bound by a microbudget of my own money and donations from friends and colleagues, I couldn’t afford post production services so I was forced to teach myself film editing, VFX, Sound Design, Sound Mixing, etc… It was my “hard knocks” film school.
Juggling fatherhood with 3 young kids and editing a film is EXTREMELY difficult. Much of post production happened from 10pm-2am so I could focus. The work I did complete during daylight hours was blessed by a 4 year old crawling on my shoulders, a 2 year old asking for milk, and a baby, well, being a baby. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am a husband to a beautiful wife, a stay at home dad to 3 angel/gremlin hybrids, and on the side I am a film/theater director (with a pinch of actor).
I do not know that I specialize in anything, but I love storytelling and some people around me seem to appreciate my vision for some pretty epic tales, whether they be on stage or screen. Naturally, I am very proud of my debut feature film Shakespeare’s The Tempest. It is a love letter to Shakespeare himself, the Mojave desert, and Sci-Fi, it is certainly unlike any Shakespeare adaptation you have seen before.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
My kids eating. My kids sleeping under a roof. My wife feeling loved and protected. That’s success.
Professionally, my view of success has changed over the years. My youthful dreams of Hollywood fame has changed, but my passion for storytelling has not. I will consider myself successful as long as I am able to find ways to apply my passion in a way that can support my family. It doesn’t need to be big and glamorous, if I can enjoy a porch popsicle with my kids on a hot summer night, I am winning.
Ecclesiastes 3:22 says, “So I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot.” In whatever job or career path you take, if you can enjoy it or the fruits from it . . . you have won the game.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://thetempestfilm.net
- Instagram: @thetempestfilm
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rebelrunstudios/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@rebelrunstudios6891
