April 19, 2007
 
APPY FILM FESTIVAL: 'I'M TELLING HUMAN STORIES': Director Jon Cring Emphasizes Stories of Ordinary People
 
By Tony Rutherford
Huntington News Network Critic
 
Huntington, WV (HNN) – Welcome to a visual land where the “ordinary” becomes memorable. That’s the philosophy of Jon Russell Cring, Hendersonville, Tennessee, director and producer of F3 Films.
 
“One of the exciting things about my films is love them or hate them, people walk out the door and they talk about them,” Cring said during a telephone interview. “I’m telling human stories.”
 
Calling “everybody’s life a Ben Hur,” he explained viewers are “fascinated” about how you “got through” a challenge. And they nod affirmatively, “That’s just what happened to me” or “I’ve been in that situation before.” Thus, Cring ignores the spaceships and car crash popcorn crunchers in favor of films that closely resemble reality styled 1970s films , such as “Scarecrow,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” and “Chinatown.”
 
“If a movie is relatable emotionally, those movies last,” he said.
 
Two of Cring’s films, “Bernee” and “Lenders Morgan” screen at the Appalachian Film Festival which starts today, Thursday, April 19, 2007, at the Keith Albee, and continues through Saturday. “Bernee” screens at 3:45 p.m. Thursday and “Lenders Morgan” rolls at 6:45 p.m. Friday.
 
Cring, whose wife Tracy serves as technical director and associate producer, has special excitement about the inclusion of “Bernee,” which is one of the films made during what he calls “the extraordinary film project,” where he and his crew intend to make 12 films of entirely different genres in twelve months.
 
“We shoot it in ten days, we edit it in ten days and we do post production which includes scoring and color correction [in ten days].”
 
F3 Films recently premiered “Ought,” which tells the story of a hit and run driver from the driver’s perspective. Over the course of four years, the film follows how the driver “injects himself into the lives of a family … just so he can be close to the boy he hit.”
 
Cring will speak to a gathering of Marshall students today at 6 p.m. in Smith Hall Room 621.
 
“What I like to talk about is how I make them. Here are my tricks of the trade. Here’s the way that I get things for free. This is how you can break down the process of making films. I get sick of people making it difficult on people so they will not do it. I want to encourage people to make films. I want it to be an easier process so more of those independent stories are being heard by people.”
 
Instead of approaching the goal of twelve films in twelve months from the broad perception, Cring starts with simplicity: “I have to get eleven garbage dumpsters. I take it one piece at a time.” In fact, he laughed that “the making of one of my movies will be much more interesting than the movie itself. That’s one of the great things about independent filmmaking.”