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Imagine yourself in the shoes of a director who is recording a scene of a film. As a film maker, you are having to find actors, money, props, and a backdrop along with a story idea. Your passion is to create short indie films that will inspire your audience. David Keninger, Gabriel Tejeda-Benitez, Ahmed Obayes, and Caleb Harris are four individuals who have a passion for just that.

Harris said that he attended high school with Kenninger and then later met Tejeda-Benitez through the Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC) film program.

Tejeda-Benitez had always wanted to make films ever since he was six years old. He had a passion for it and when he started middle school, he created his first short film.

All four of these unique individuals do not create the films just for people but for themselves as well. Tejeda-Benitez said he would still make films even if he had no viewers.

Although indie short films might not get the most viewers, a few of Tejeda-Benitez’s films reached over 1000 viewers.

Keninger started working on short films because it was something he was very passionate about as well. He said that he could go and get a nine to five job but he would not feel a sense of fulfillment.

His interest in film making picked up when he was about nine or ten years old. His parents provided him with a small video camera and he started videotaping his action figures in his backyard and then he upgraded when he went into high school and started videotaping his friends.

A few years later, he had to ask himself an important question. Does he want to continue filming as a hobby or is it something he wants to do full time? He started to attend film school and made his decision. He would rather have a job that he is passionate about and makes him feel fulfilled.

“This generation wants to be a part of something. You want what you’re doing to have an impact regardless of your audience. When you are creating what you love, it is always fulfilling,” Keninger says.

Each filmmaker typically wants their audience to take something away from the film to remember. When Harris creates scripts, he wants his audience to laugh and have a smile on their face.

“When I was 15 or 16 years old, me and my friends would run around the mall with a little flip camera and we would film us hitting on girls and getting rejected and then we would put it in a mash-up video,” Harris said.

At that point in his life, Harris didn’t know if that is what he wanted to do but the knew he enjoyed it a lot. He particularly enjoys making short films because it helps him express his voice.

Now imagine yourself having a passion for something but you have to come up with money to make that passion grow.

When being in the indie short film making business, costs can be a little tricky. Obayes says that when he was creating his first film, he shot his whole film in one day. The reasoning behind this is because he had to pay out of pocket and he would have had to pay more money if he took longer recording his film.

Tejeda-Benitez, on the other hand, raises his money by himself. Similar to Obayes, he does spend money out of pocket. He sometimes asks his friends and family for help along with donations.

Hiring actors can also cost money as well. Tejeda-Benitez says when he started out, he asked his friends and family if they could star in his film for free. As films became more serious, he would then hire actors and actresses through different theatre programs.

All short indie films different in time. Obayes first film was approximately five minutes long and no talking was inserted in the film, only an instrumental piece. He comes up with some ideas from watching good movies and he especially learns a lot from bad movies. Goodfellas was one particular movie that inspired him with more ideas.

“Stop making sh*t up” is what Tejeda-Benitez’s teacher once told him when it came to thinking of a topic. He said that the best stories are the ones that already exist. His teacher told him to pick up a newspaper and find a headline that interests him and create a story from the elements that you read from the article.

“Creating stories that come from something that already exists is where I get inspired. It is stealing. There are good stories out there and it doesn’t matter if you copy them. Everything is already a remix,” Tejeda-Benitez says.

As mentioned above, coming up with money isn’t always easy when creating a film. Likewise, some people decide to take on another job while being a filmmaker while other people decide to film as a full time position.

Harris, Obayes, and Keninger all said that they are full time filmmakers while on the other hand; Tejeda-Benitez also works at Principal Financial as a photographer. He expressed that the money he gets as a photographer usually pays the bills for his films.

Each individual has stories of successes and failures. Keninger opened up and explained what happened on his first day on the top of a camera operator.

Keninger became a camera operator in the first TV show that he had ever worked, which was a 1.5 million dollar show. The first day Keninger worked on the scene, a worker handed him a filter, which is a square piece of glass, and Keninger ended up breaking it in the first 20 minutes because of how nervous he was. This could have potentially gotten him fired.

Harris described a different story when he was actually staring in a film. He got assigned a part where he would have to kiss a girl.

“It was my very first kissing scene with a beautiful woman who was way older than me and I was super nervous. I was standing on home plate and the director wanted me to lift up my back foot when she kissed me to make me look like a dweeb. I lost my footing and fell and dragged her down with me,” Harris said.

“There are a lot of people who like making movies but that’s as far as it goes. People could be more disciplined into making better stories and better productions. There’s few people who strive to be the best that they can,” Tejeda-Benitez says when describing what could be improved.

Through these four individuals, you learn that indie filmmaking is quite a big deal to them and they are very passionate about what they do.