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LAS CRUCES - The star of the latest film set in Las Cruces is a 1993 Cadillac DeVille.
The movie is "Low Riders," a seven-minute short written and directed by Mark Steffen and shot in Las Cruces last summer. The film has a "hot, bright, shiny look to it," said Steffen, who is about to release "Low Riders" to more than 30 film festivals, including Sundance and Cannes.
Las Crucens will have a chance to see it at the White Sands Film Festival later this year, he said.
The movie follows the deep red Cadillac DeVille on a non-stop seven-minute cruise, Steffen said.
"The car is in constant motion, with four people in it," he said. "Along the way, they meet five other cars, a 9-year-old girl jumping rope, a homeless man with a dog, a man with a gun and a priest with a dog.
"There are two dogs in this movie, and they are characters in their own right," Steffen said.
At one point in the movie, five lowrider cars do a hydraulic salute to another car. The film leads up to a surprise, humorous ending that is so top secret that most of the people involved in the making of "Low Riders" still don't know what it is.
"That's on a need-to-know basis," Steffen said. "The movie was filmed in such a compartmentalized way that very few people have the overall picture."
The film was shot over a two-month period in the summer of 2010, when high temperatures were routinely above 100 degrees.
"We tried to knock off by noon or one at the latest every day," he said. The only
The bulk of the movie was filmed downtown and in the Mesquite Historic Neighborhood, he said.
"Las Cruces really looks good in this film," he said.
The film was an all-volunteer, low-budget effort. "Low Riders" was financed by Steffen and the film's cinematographer, Tony Martin.
Martin said the film was shot using the Canon 5D, a compact camera that allows for a lot of interesting angles. The camera became the new rage in filmmaking after it was used to make the Season 6 finale of the TV series "House."
Martin said one of his main concerns in the movie was establishing a continuous "open, blue sky" throughout the film, which is why filming wrapped up before the monsoon season.
"It was literally a couple of hundred of hours of work just to get the seven minutes," Steffen said. A good portion of that work was in editing the film, which was done by Ryan Hall, videotape editor for Channel 9-KTSM in El Paso.
A host of Las Cruces actors auditioned to act in the film. One of the key roles is played by Richard Benavidez, the owner and driver of the star DeVille.
"Some people do short films hoping to attract funding to make a feature out of it," Steffen said. "This is meant to be a short film. It works on its own."
Steffen is a graduate of Las Cruces High School and New Mexico State University who worked in the film and television industry in Los Angeles from 1978 to 1991.
He said he had small acting parts in the Tom Cruise film "Losin' It" and the Harrison Ford film "Bladerunner." Later, he was assistant film editor for the "Tales from the Dark Side" TV series.
A member of the Screen Actors Guild for more than 30 years, Steffen has been involved in several TV and film projects in New Mexico, including a long run as producer and co-director of the Las Cruces cable TV show, "Under Development."
He already has another film in the works, he said, a two-hour feature he wrote about a man who gets a second chance at redemption. "I know it sounds corny," he said. "But that's the best way to put it. It's called 'About Face.' "
Most of the film will take place inside a hospital, he said, and will require about five weeks of shooting. He has two downtown Las Cruces locations in mind for the hospital, he said.
"I wrote the script with Jack Black in mind," he said. "He often does quirky independent movies in between feature films."
Steffen said he'll be looking for investors on that one, which was why recognition from any one of the 30 film festivals he's sent "Low Riders" to can be important.
Las Cruces is an "unused resource" for filmmaking, he said.
"The southern part of the state has so many different aspects to it," he said. "It is completely different from the north, where most of the films are done."
Steffen put together the soundtrack for the film, which will contain both classical and hip-hop music, including the 1996 hit "Tres Deliquentes" by the group Delinquent Habits.
"It was so hot when we were making the movie, but that's what we wanted," he said. "I have to give a lot of credit to Richard Benavidez and the three guys who were in the lowrider with him. They had no a/c."
Now that's low-budget filmmaking.
Jeff Barnet can be reached at (575) 541-5476.
