by: Anghus Houvouras

HALF-EMPTY
Length: 90 minutes
Director: Troy Carlton and Marcus Mizelle
Friday, November 13, 1pm-2:50pm
Lumina Theater

Troy Carlton has been lending his notable talents to the Wilmington film community since his days in the UNC Wilmington film program. Together with fellow alumnist Marcus Mizelle, the two collaborated on Half-Empty, the story of a corrupt executive desperate to cover up a coke deal, who is eventually driven to frame a fellow employee.

Carlton has been working in the film industry for five years as a technician and is making the transition into a full-fledged filmmaker. Half-Empty makes its world premier at Cucalorus 15, proving to be a prime example of the homegrown projects that evolve from Wilmington’s film community.

encore: What should people expect when they sit down to see Half-Empty?
Troy Carlton: To have as good of a time watching it as we did shooting it.

e: What was the inspiration behind making the film?
TC: First of all, the script embraced the feeling of getting shitted on and behaving irrationally because you feel like you’re justified in doing so. The inspiration behind the actual shooting process was to shoot our first feature film for no money, and try to make it entertaining and appear professional, too. At the same time, we wanted to have a lot of fun with friends.

e: Like any independent film, this wasn’t just a one man show....
TC: Right. The other creative forces behind the project were, of course, Marcus [Mizelle], who wrote the original short script, and together we wrote and directed the feature; Jim Mahorney, who we based a character, Sam, on; Nate Panning from Hank and Jed Movie Pictures. Our DP, German Valle, and Michael Kuhn who helped me produce and manage my money.

e: What’s the most important learned experience you took away from making the film?
TC: The greatest lesson I took away from Half-Empty was how a movie can get made not by money or stars but on drive and pure motivation just to finish. The motivation behind making this film independently was that we all knew that we could sit on this idea for years and wait for some deal to make the movie for a million bucks, but the simple reality is that we could wait our whole lives for that, so once we had a good enough script to shoot (after three years of off-and-on revisions), I had some extra money from a couple of well-paying jobs, so I essentially said, “Fuck it! Let’s shoot a movie with the money I’ve got in my bank account.”

e: What other advice would you offer a first-time filmmaker?
TC: My advice to others: Use the shit out of Craigslist, and make a whole lot of compromises while maintaining some level of integrity—and do not give up if you run out of money.