If you haven't had a chance to catch a screening during the Atlanta Film Festival, going on now, you still have time. The festival's final screening, the film A Band of Rogues is Sunday night.
A Band of Rogues tells the story, in 11 chapters, of four American musicians who are stuck in Argentina after being arrested for the possession of drugs. The film is gaining major recognition and was a 2012 official selection at the Madrid International Film Festival.
Band of Rogues writer and director Tim Morgan said ABOR is his first feature film, and when he began writing it, he knew he wanted it to be something that could be shot with a lower budget and in Argentina after he lived there for a while. Many of the producers and actors in the film are from Atlanta.
Patch caught up with Morgan, from Newnan, Ga., this week to find out more about the film and about his inspiration for the film.
How long did it take you to write ABOR from start until the time you felt it was finally finished?
"The film was based on improv... We were rewriting the dialogue even as we were boarding the plane to Argentina and even in Argentina... It never got to a place where it was set in stone."
How did you shoot the film on a relatively small budget? What advice can you give to other aspiring filmmakers who think they lack the financial resources to make a feature film?
"We just laid out what amount of money we'd be able to raise," Morgan said, adding that he knew they wouldn't have a million-dollar budget. "Just look at the resources you currently have and make your film around that."
"I don't think we fully grasped what we were getting into," he said.
Tell me a little about A Band of Rogues.
"It's based around a group of musicians, living the artist life. It also deals with substance abuse," Morgan said.
One musician in the film realizes that he's made the "same choices which have led to the same results. So he took a leap of faith to escape that life."
Throughout writing and filming, Morgan said he kept returning to one theme.
"If you make the same decisions you've always made, you'll have the same results you've always had. You have to make a big decision that stretches you, but in the end pays off."
How does it feel to be a part of the Atlanta Film Festival, here in your own backyard?
"It's really exciting. It's been nice because we've done a lot of screenings (nationally and internationally), but this is the first time our family and friends can come and see it."
After selling out its first screening, the Film Festival will show ABOR again on Sunday night. Morgan said the encore screening of the film is "exciting and satisfying."
The film's first Atlanta Film Festival screening on March 17 sold out, so the festival is bringing it back for an encore screening on Sunday, March 24 at 9:15 p.m. on the main screen at the Plaza Theatre. Buy tickets here.
