WELCOME TO PACIFICA >>>

Many times when I set out to make a short film I wind up with a script that crams in too many scenes and too many events, thereby abusing the purpose of the whole "short" concept. So for inspiration I look to filmmakers whose works succeed, because to me they seem to follow a "less is more" approach. These stories give viewers a brief but vivid outline of characters and their world, yet leave enough details unexplained to keep us wondering.

Pacifica: The Biggest Stick by Olympia's Mutually Assured Productions adopts this minimalist technique effectively. A simple visual effect in the film's first shots immediately grounds us in a timeframe: the future, and possibly a dystopian one on the order of Blade Runner. Two men (Rob Taylor and Kurtis Bissell) drive a van carrying some illegal cargo across a dark landscape called Pacifica. We quickly discover they are revolutionaries, about to receive a hard lesson on the true nature of power.

The rendering of Pacifica's dismal world feels complete in only nine minutes, yet writer and first-time director Charles Chadwick doesn't rush the pacing. Facts and information reveal themselves quietly through ambience, music and dialogue. The cast and crew shot nearly everything outdoors during four bleak December days last year. The unsettling, pervasive score (comprised of cello and industrial sounds) comes courtesy of Bert Stanton (Chadwick's pseudonym) and Ken Carlson, who also directed photography and worked as co-editor.

Carlson tells me he would have had Pacifica completed much sooner after shooting wrapped, but he and his Mutually Assured cohorts spent the spring putting together the first-ever Olympia Awesome Film Festival. Carlson began shaping his vision of a futuristic society gone wrong after watching a documentary about, of all places, North Korea. The film, he says, "really got me thinking, ‘How far do people have to be pushed before they actually rise up?'"

Chadwick ran with that question and produced a script that enacts its own rebellion against audience expectations. Offerings to this genre typically cast big government as the villain, but Pacifica suggests a more nuanced view. "I wanted to give the government not necessarily sympathy," he says, "but (to) give them some edge" and add confusion to the insurgents' rigid morals.

Pacifica also reverses conventional gender roles, placing the female prominently in the drama and making the character more volatile and action-oriented than her brothers in arms. While on set, actor Ember Cossette displayed some motherly affection for the AK-47 she brandishes in the movie, dubbing it Vera. She recalls, "just holding her, and then one day she looked up at me and said, ‘My name's Vera!'"

Some important guy said something once about speaking softly and carrying a big stick when it comes to power. Pacifica works its own power through quiet pacing and questions with no easy answers.