Local filmmaker Jarom Beardall has had a busy year.
Last fall, after finding himself sidelined with an injury from playing college football, Beardall took a gamble and dropped out of school to pursue a career in filmmaking. After packing up his belongings at Valley City State University in North Dakota, he began the long drive home and found his mind wandering.
“It was a 10 hour drive, so I had a lot of time to think – like ‘What am I going to do, I just dropped out of college,’” Beardall said. “During that time while I was driving back, I just had all these ideas about movies that I could do.”
Before reaching home, he set his sights on making a space film. Space and sci-fi films are inherently challenging for a filmmaker, as they typically require extensive set construction, in addition to utilizing advanced computer-generated imagery (CGI), to replicate the setting of outer space.
Those daunting challenges did not faze the 18-year-old filmmaker however.
“I’ve always thought that if you’re aiming higher, you’re going to be more successful,” Beardall said.
What ensued following that 10-hour drive home, has been over seven months of work, culminating in an upcoming showing of his short film, “The Light that Remains,” on June 1 at Big Horn Cinemas. During the filmmaking process, Beardall traveled all over Park County to find filming locations, constructed a set to replicate the interior of a spaceship, and taught himself how to incorporate CGI into his film.
“(After getting home) I got straight to work on the script and CGI effects… Now we’re to this point where things are starting to come together, and it’s really really cool to see,” he said.
Additionally, Beardall has set his goals on earning an Oscar nomination with this short film. Unlike many of the major studio-backed films he will be competing against, Beardall will be funding the entry of “The Light that Remains” into film festivals with his salary from Gunwerks, where he works as a videographer.
The total budget for his film was, “about $150, or around that,” Beardall explained.
Though he may not have the budget that other films have, Beardall is already an accomplished filmmaker in his own right, as he won multiple state and national level awards for projects he completed while enrolled in film classes at Cody High School. Last December, Beardall was one of just 28 students in the country to win a Student Emmy from The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, for his work on a short film titled “Fragmentary.”
