“Film was never on my radar,” says Daniel Lewis. After graduating from LSU with degrees in finance and psychology, he started his career. “I was working at JP Morgan Chase,” he says. “I was a banker there. I didn’t know what direction I wanted to go. I didn’t know whether I wanted to stay in Louisiana or move out of town. I had no idea.”
Then in 2007, some local producers came into his branch to set up accounts for their new, local companies. Lewis developed a rapport with his customers and “it got to the point where those businesses were off the ground and they needed to hire some local people to help them run the business,” he says. “They offered me a job, and I made the decision to take the opportunity when I was young rather than kicking myself twenty or thirty years from now.”
With no formal training in film, he began to learn the ropes just by working on films. “To understand the business, you’ve got to just do it and you’ve got to be thrown to the wolves, and it intimidates a lot of people,” he says. After working in Baton Rouge for a production company, he was asked to begin working with Active Entertainment in Lafayette. “I had a pretty good handle on the production side of things, but when I went to Lafayette and hooked up with Ken [Badish], I started to understand about the business side.”
While Lafayette has seen its share of major productions, including hosting Disney’s Secretariat, Active Entertainment and Daniel Lewis have been producing independent films in Lafayette for years. “Being in Louisiana, it is interesting because as a producer, I am twenty-eight years old and I’ve been in the business for four years and I’m about to executive produce and produce my twelfth movie,” says Lewis, appreciative of the opportunities his home state has afforded him. “If I was in California, I would still be picking up cigarette butts for free on the Warner Brothers lot and nobody would even speak to me. It is the same for the talent here. A lot of people are starting to recognize that those opportunities exist here. There is this girl Stacy Asaro from New Orleans. She read for us, the director liked her so we casted her. She had a good look, she did a great job, and she probably has sixteen minutes of screen time as Jeff Fahey’s daughter. She is having scenes across from Kari Wuhrer. All of a sudden she is on a movie that the world is going to see. Yes it is a SyFy [Channel] film, but this is a business. Tens of millions of people are going to see this film internationally on their television station and boom. I am going to hire someone from Louisiana before I hire someone out of state. That is just the way it is, especially at this budget level cause at this price, you’ve got to try to keep as much money directly on the screen and keep costs down because you are not getting the same returns as you used to get.”
Many major production companies have folded during the recession, but Active Entertainment has opened corporate offices in Baton Rouge at Raleigh Studios at the Celtic Media Centre. “The whole purpose of expanding to Baton Rouge was that we would create a corridor between New Orleans and Lafayette, with Baton Rouge being in the center of that,” says Lewis. “A lot of the crew that we work with is out of New Orleans. A lot of the crew comes out of Lafayette and Baton Rouge. So by having a presence in Baton Rouge, it allows us to not only deepen the relationship between vendors and crew across the state but it also allows us to tap into bigger resources.”
Along with its newly expanded operations, Active Entertainment is expanding its creative brand. “We are going to start being involved in some bigger pictures, which aren’t necessarily Syfy driven. Active Entertainment’s brand right now is seen globally as one of the leading producers of Syfy movies but I think our involvement with Dirt Road to Lafayette and a couple of other things on the horizon will allow us to be seen differently and it will be good for the company.”
With a stellar cast that includes Sam Shepard, Blythe Danner, Dougray Scott and John Hawkes, who was Oscar-nominated earlier this year for his standout performance in Winter’s Bone, Dirt Road to Lafayette will begin filming this fall. “It is cool to continue doing production in Lafayette, because a lot of people viewed our expansion into Baton Rouge as a move,” says Lewis, “but realistically our post-production company is still in Lafayette this is going to allow us to spread our roots into the ground across the state. There is going to be a lot of live music being recorded and the score for Dirt Road and all the original music and the bands for this thing…it is a lot of Louisiana locals and Lafayette zydeco that will be featured in the movie. So it will be cool, but we will spend a lot of time in the post side of things really making sure its right, because the music is almost one of the lead characters.”
Next up for Syfy: Active Entertainment will begin filming Haunted High School in early August, with another Syfy title ready right behind it. “You’ll love this title,” says Lewis. “It’s called Arachnoquake and we are setting it in New Orleans.”
