Just finishing his senior year at the University of Illinois, Don Ferguson would have been happy doing odd jobs on the movie set of Welcome to Tolono. Little did he know that he would be promoted six times, finally winding up as a producer on this movie, which was directed by a top television writer.
Ferguson, a 2006 LAS graduate from U of I, also served as an assistant editor on Welcome to Tolono, directed by Mark Roberts, head writer for the popular CBS comedy Two and a Half Men. The independent movie will premiere June 30 at the Foellinger Auditorium on the Urbana-Champaign campus.
Ferguson says he first approached Roberts in early 2006 when he heard that the movie was going to be filmed in his hometown of Tolono, a small community just seven miles south of Champaign. But he didn't get his foot in the door until he approached Roberts a second time, when the TV writer was in Urbana to see a play he had written.
Welcome to Tolono was filmed entirely in Tolono, which also happens to be Roberts' hometown. This dark comedy tells the tale of six people battling addictions of all types and meeting in an AA-style program in the basement of a church. The shoot, which took place in May of 2006, was an intense three weeks, says Ferguson, with workdays no shorter than 15 hours.
"Just working and sleeping," he says.
Unexpected opportunities, such as becoming a movie producer, are nothing new for Ferguson, who majored in rhetoric at U of I with a minor in cinema studies. He says he had no intention of studying film as he entered his freshman year. But after taking an introductory class in cinema studies, taught by Ramona Curry, he was hooked.
"She's an amazing professor," Ferguson says. "Through her class, I fell in love with film." After that, he made sure he took at least one cinema studies class each semester at U of I.
Ferguson's inspiration has been Robert Rodriguez, director of Sin City and collaborator with Quentin Tarantino in the recent Grindhouse. Rodriguez' first movie, El Mariachi, was shot for just $7,000-an ultra low-budget film project chronicled in the book Rebel Without a Crew.
"He was able to do so much with so little," Ferguson says. That movie earned Rodriguez a multi-picture deal, sending him down the road as one of the best-known directors in Hollywood.
"My ultimate goal is to become an editor," Ferguson says. "I love the idea that you can take what was shot and change it by just adding and subtracting pauses."
He currently has many projects on his plate, including a short film with a friend and writer at the Champaign video game production house, Volition. He's also working on a feature-length script and has formulated an idea for a short film of his own, which will feature his cat. He continues to work with Roberts in marketing Welcome to Tolono to film festivals, and he's trying to keep up with his New Year's resolution of seeing an average of one movie per day.
As he puts it, "I'm falling behind on my goal, but I've seen some amazing movies."
Ferguson also says he hopes to move to Chicago where he can tackle production jobs in a much bigger market-with an eventual eye on moving to Los Angeles.
Then it's welcome to Hollywood...
