A calling or an obsession? Indie filmmakers driven by urge to capture their visions.

Byline: Craig S. Semon

They regularly max out their credit cards. They routinely sacrifice their weekends. They ruin relationships. They destroy their lawns. They constantly get dirty looks from their neighbors. They are low-budget, self-financed, independent filmmakers.

And because of an undying creative urge and advancements in digital equipment, many of these indie filmmakers will continue to pursue their dreams and/or unhealthy obsessions at 24 frames per second.

Thomas Pimentel of Manchester, N.H., and Andrew Shanley of Worcester met at Fitchburg State College in 1995 and have been dabbling in independent filmmaking (mostly on the weekends) ever since. They work independently and with each other.

Whether they become the next John Carpenter or George A. Romero - who were responsible, respectively, for "Halloween" (budget, $325,000; box office, $60 million worldwide) and "Night of the Living Dead" (budget, $114,000; box office, $42 million worldwide) - or come up with the next "Blair Witch Project" (budget, $35,000; box office, $248 million worldwide), Mr. Pimentel and Mr. Shanley are in it for the long haul.

Currently shooting with Panasonic AG-DVC60 digital video cameras, Mr. Pimentel, 29, and Mr. Shanley, 32, agree that advances in digital technology have made filming easier, less expensive and, most importantly, better.

Charles Roberts, associate professor of film and video at Fitchburg State College, said digital technology changed filmmaking the same way Photoshop changed desktop publishing. As a result, more people have access to filmmaking tools and are making films, but not necessarily better films, he said.

"Process-wise, technology has changed work flow, how you do things, but it hasn't really changed how you make a good story," said Mr. Roberts. "In other words, the stuff that has been there since 1895 that guarantees that you have a good end product is still the same as it was."

Mr. Shanley, an independent videographer, runs Flipside Films in Worcester and is a public access coordinator at Charter Communications. Seeing movies at the drive-in as a child had a lasting impact on his psyche, Mr. Shanley said.

"When you're a kid growing up, there's no such thing as a bad movie, and what happened with me was it became a real motivation for me to really involve myself in another world," he said. "It's kind of like playtime, in a way, and that's really where it began."

Mr. Pimentel is executive director of TNT Ltd. Productions in Manchester, N.H. He has a day job, at A&L Corporate Coach in Everett, and rents out movie and theatrical props. He said he's constantly seeing flashing images and putting together storylines in his head, and he reaches a point where he has to creatively purge these thoughts on film because he has no room for anything else.

The film that changed Mr. Pimentel's life (and arguably rules it) is "Raiders of the Lost Ark," so much so that his current labor of love (with emphasis on labor) is "Indiana James and the Raiders of the Lost Shaker of Salt." Mr. Pimentel, who plays the whip-cracking, fedora-wearing title role with more than a wink and a nod to Harrison Ford, draws an inspired correlation between the mysticism of the Indiana Jones trilogy and the Jimmy Buffett song catalog.

Instead of a giant boulder, it's a 10-foot beach ball. Instead of a golden idol, it's a golden bottle of tequila. You get the picture.

Four years in production and with a budget approaching $20,000, "Indiana James" won't make a profit, even its creator admits. But it has the potential of being the "ultimate demo reel," he said.

For the infamous boulder (beach ball) scene, a 40-foot-high, 117-foot-long ramp was built in his backyard and stood there five months before Mr. Pimentel wrapped up the scene over the Fourth of July weekend last year, to the delight of gawking neighbors, he said.

"It killed all of my grass, black grass," Mr. Pimentel said. "We missed the Fourth of July holiday. Missed it. Shot all through the night and were literally racing to beat the sun."

Mr. Pimentel plans to work on the project every weekend until the end of September and is eyeing an October premiere in a movie theater or location he will rent.

Last year in Mansfield, in front of 19,000 people, a five-minute clip of "Indiana James" was shown during intermission at the sold-out Jimmy Buffett concert. Mr. Pimentel said the crowd's response made all the hard work worth it.

"Seeing that happen and hearing the crowd respond to it and get everything that you did, it's almost like you're just climbing the steps," he said. "For all the days where you throw up your hands and say, `What the hell am I doing? I need to be paying electric bills instead of buying 50 gallons of fake blood. What are my priorities?' and things like that and everything after, that's the motivation."

Two days later, Mr. Pimentel received 11,000 hits on his Web site. Mr. Buffett even expressed interest in making a cameo in the finished product, he said.

"I always say to my mother, `I'm glad I didn't grow up an excessive drinker. I'm glad I didn't grow up a gambler.' I don't smoke. I don't do drugs," Mr. Pimentel philosophized. "Filmmaking really does control my life. I've lost relationships with women because of this. I've maxed out credit cards."

Mr. Shanley said his motivation is making something never seen before on a screen. In the case of "Hangman," he transfuses fresh blood to the tired slasher genre by making his resident psychopath use a noose to get rid of his victims. The film was shot in three weekends, with the first weekend focusing on all the complicated death scenes. Mr. Shanley said the finished product, screened in July at Shrewsbury Cable Access, cost roughly $1,000.

"I wanted to do a horror movie, but I wanted to do a completely different version of it," Mr. Shanley said. "That's the reason why the film uses a different form of killing than every other Jason rip-off, Freddy rip-off, Michael Myers rip-off."

Mr. Pimentel and Mr. Shanley collaborated together and with indie filmmaker Andy Sawyer on "Indiana James and the Raiders of the Lost Shaker of Salt" and "Hangman." Mr. Sawyer, chief executive officer of New Blood Production and Booo! Master Pictures in Gardner, has been making low-budget films for 15 years, mostly horror comedies, including "The Vampyre Pumpkins of St. Ives," "The Templeton Witch Project," "The Axe Wife" and "Honey, I Burned Up the Baby!"

His last film project was "Ichabod," based on Washington Irving's classic, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." By day, Mr. Sawyer is a children's art and drama teacher.

The three men previously collaborated on "Alien Influx," an homage to the "Aliens" franchise, which cost $3,000 to $4,000 to make.

Mr. Sawyer wrote the script, directed and acted in a small role. He allowed the garage at his Gardner home to be transformed into a space station and constructed the "Alien" costumes, eggs and space station interior from scratch.

The goal of these low-budget, indie filmmakers is to go from making movies in their basements and backyards to getting them on the big screen and reaching a wider audience. They market their movies on the Internet, sell them at trade shows and conventions and enter film festivals.

At the Horrorfind convention last weekend in Baltimore, Mr. Sawyer sold 150 copies of "Ichabod" and Mr. Shanley sold 85 copies of "Hangman," while Mr. Pimentel solicited prop rental customers.

What differentiates low-budget indies from big-budget Hollywood blockbusters is character, story and heart, rather than being all about boffo box office, they say.

"We're used to working on a shoestring budget. We're used to shooting with no money. We're used to recycling props over and over again and doing creative things monetarily," Mr. Shanley said. "And we know that if we're given any amount of money from anybody for making movies that we can definitely guarantee a profit for anyone who did that."

Contact reporter Craig S. Semon by e-mail at [e-mail].

ART: PHOTOS; CHART

CUTLINE: (1) Independent filmmaker Thomas Pimentel stars in the low-budget spoof "Indiana James and the Raiders of the Lost Shaker of Salt," which he hopes to screen in October. (2) Filmmakers and cast of "Alien Influx" are, from left, cast member Ryan Sullivan, filmmakers Thomas Pimentel, Andy Sawyer and Andrew Shanley and cast member Chrissy Rondano. (CHART) Small budgets and bog screens

PHOTOG: (1) Photo courtesy of Thomas Pimentel (2) CRAIG S. SEMON (CHART) T&G Staff