The Standard

Issue date: 2/9/10 Section: Features

A group of current and former Missouri State students worked as cast and crew on "Winter's Bone," a recent award-winning Sundance film. The film, based on the book by Daniel Woodrell, is set in the Ozarks and is the story of Ree and her search to find her father, who has been arrested for making meth.

Written and directed by Debra Granik and filmed in Forsyth, Mo., "Winter's Bone" took away the Grand Prize Jury Award for a dramatic piece as well as the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. The Sundance Festival took place in Park City, Utah from Jan. 20-30.

"You can't ever guess how it's going to go," said Lauren Sweetser, a senior acting major at Missouri State who acted in the film. "It's big enough for me to be in a film at Sundance, but for it to win at the film festival, it's just incredible."

Sweetser portrayed Gail, Ree's best friend.

"I never assumed that I would ever get an audition for the real thing or get cast as one of the lead characters," she said. "(Gail) is 16. She's a high school dropout, newly married and has an eight-month-old baby boy. She's young, but she's experienced a lot in her life so far."

It was a long process from the time Sweetser auditioned until the time she actually got cast, she said.

"I sent my audition tape for the table reading to the producers in New York, and I got cast as my character, Gail," Sweetser said. "Then last December, I got called in for a one-on-one audition, and then I got called back seven or eight times."

Sweetser got involved in the film though opportunities outside of Missouri State.

"I actually took a film-acting class outside of school called The Creative Actors Workshop," Sweetser said. "My acting coach, Scott-Arthur Allen, heard about the casting call for the table reading."

Bryan Manning, a graduate of Missouri State who majored in electronic arts, was a set production assistant with the film.

"It was a lot of fun and completely different from other projects I've worked on," Manning said. "I was there for about five weeks, and there were a lot more people. The budget was around $2 million."

David Fleming, who used to attend Missouri State, got involved in the film by photographing some still shots, filming some behind the scenes video and working with sound.

"I told them I would go down and do it for free," Fleming said. "This is definitely the biggest movie project I've worked on and also the biggest photo project."

Continued...

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