Avant Garde Filmmaker Makes First Movie With Kids

Byron Conrad Erwin’s journey as a full-fledged filmmaker has been a long time coming down the pathway of successes and failures that shapes the profile of any true entrepreneur in the marketplace. Erwin’s journey, however, stands a bit unique compared to today’s landscape in that he started his career working with actual film stock versus the digital video format modern filmmakers enjoy.

“It made me very organized and disciplined about how I work with projects,” Erwin says of his humble beginning with film.

Born at Piedmont Hospital, Erwin moved to a rural area just outside of Richmond, Va., with his family when his was about 10 years old. Shortly thereafter, his parents purchased a Super 8mm camera for Erwin. He says their expectations were that he would document family gatherings, socials and birthdays; instead the complete opposite happened.

“Before I got into film, I really liked magic,” Erwin says of his childhood. He recalls his parents buying magic sets for him as he loved to entertain both friends and family wowing them with the illusion of magic tricks. When he received the camera, it was a natural progression that Erwin would want to continue those same experiences of entertaining people but through a new and different medium.

But it wasn’t until high school that Erwin’s parents began to take him seriously. Erwin would find ways to tie in his creative video shorts with class assignments. He was in essence a one man show as he would shoot, produce and edit each of his short pieces. Erwin notes in those days it was much more difficult to complete a piece of work as editing required a technique called ‘splicing’ where the film stock was cut and placed together to create the final reel for projection.

At the tender age of 16, Erwin gave a shot at his first Super 8 feature film called Men in Black, not to be confused with the Hollywood version. Erwin says he was always obsessed with alien life, close encounters and aliens threatening the human existence, which was the premise for the film. Though the film was never distributed, it gave him a new take.

“It gave me perspective as a filmmaker; it was the first time I did a project like a real film with a beginning, middle and end,” Erwin says of his first endeavor.

It would not stop there. Attending the now defunct Virginia Film School, Erwin learned even more about developing his craft and perspective from other filmmakers and artists. He says he found his place among a group of students rebelling corporate America. They thought him to think more critically on the choices he made with the music he listened to, the movies he watched and eventually the movies he would make.

“The experience made me sort of an avant garde, which is usually looked at as not being marketable… but I don’t want to be seen as the household cookie cutter filmmaker either,” Erwin states passionately of his need to be different.

Erwin recalls that computers were only being introduced to the classes when he was leaving the program, which was around the time the industry started to change. Over the course of the next few years Erwin worked with National Geographic and the Discovery Channel cutting negatives of documentary footage from cameramen’s travels to the Okavango Jungle, Mount Everest and the trains of India.

“I didn’t see it coming,” Erwin admits of the complete shift to digital technology with the digital revolution of recent years. After working a short stint with Comcast in Charleston, S.C., Erwin relocated to Atlanta where he edited a project for a local production company which led to him later directing his first widely distributed feature Lynch Mob, starring Tony Darrow of the hit show The Sopranos.  

The Lynch Mob movie making experience was a challenging one for Erwin as both the director and editor of the project requiring a nearly three-year commitment of his life; however, the end result was a theatrical release and worldwide distribution for which Erwin sees as an accomplishment few filmmakers can claim.

After meeting Brent Brooks of , he and Brooks decided to team up creating series of shorts over the summer of 2010, an effort he says was to refine their craft. In the fall of 2010, Erwin embarked on the production of a charity movie called Tiger Lilly (currently in production) supported and designed by a cancer research company for the purpose of raising awareness and funds for cancer research.

Last but not least, Erwin has wrapped production on his very first movie dealing with kids titled Cardboard Castles, which is about the struggle homeless children face on our streets in America. He says it’s a sobering look at the situations these kids face and the realities in which they live. The film is currently being scored.

Erwin says of his latest creation, “Though I feel like it’s a good movie, the only person’s opinion that matters is the audience.”

Byron Erwin can be contacted at byronerwin.com for considerations of film and video projects and graphic design. Lynch Mob is now available on DVD at Blockbuster Online.