Like most 22-year-old men, Alien Boy’s production assistant, Andrew Saunderson, wants a career directing feature films. But his life has already taken some pretty unexpected turns, and there’s something focused and reassuring about Saunderson, as opposed to many other men his age, that makes you take him seriously when he talks about his ambitions.
Recruited to Lewis and Clark College to play baseball as an undergraduate (Saunderson played second and third base) he realized he enjoyed academics more, and began to focus on his major in communications. Saunderson took a class on documentary form in his senior year at the college, where, smartly, he asked one of his professors about getting Alien Boy director Brian Lindstrom to come in and present to the class. “Documentary speaks to social issues,” he says. “But you’re also able to capture those issues in an art form.”
There, Saunderson hit Lindstrom up for a job, or an opportunity, and this is it. He’s working full time at the Deschutes Brewery to bring in a paycheck, and practically full time on Alien Boy towards his dreams. He’s also just shot a three minute short film for a local public relations firm and looks to be establishing himself as a capable go-to-guy for such things, here in Portland. Saunderson is blessed with an affable and optimistic nature, which has served him well over recent months of shooting. He has helped with whatever is asked of him, from scheduling shoots, to fund-raising, to holding microphones. Through all the inevitable frustrations of making this film, he has never looked even remotely pissed off—which speaks volumes about his character and value to the film.
Saunderson’s favorite documentary is the 2003 Academy Award Winning Fog Of War by Errol Morris, about former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, scored by Philip Glass. The film “bends the line of film techniques,” he says, “and there’s this question about is this really a documentary if you’re using all these techniques like acting to recreate certain scenes?”
What does he think of the Chasse story in particular? “First, I was very surprised that I hadn’t heard of it,” he says. “The story just hadn’t circulated at Lewis and Clark and I was shocked by that. The case itself is just one of those things where all the variables point to nothing good. And the more I heard about the story, the more I felt that nothing about it was right.”
Saunderson says the project is “going well. It’s going to be a long process to try to narrow down all the different accounts and take all of these witnesses and make it into a cohesive film, but really tying it together, I think, is going to be worthwhile, and hopefully it will get shown all over the country.”
Big job or not, with Saunderson on board, this project is in capable hands.
November 12, 2008 at 12:23 pm |
[...] alum Andrew Saunderson (08), life after graduation has been anything but ordinary. After being recruited to Lewis & [...]