Creature features

Sci Fi airs the kind of movies in which the darkness is never empty, the phone calls are never friendly and there’s always, always a monster under the bed. Affectionately called “creature features,” these B-movies form a large wedge of Sci Fi’s weekend programming, and local production company Films in Motion is getting in on the action.

Run by veteran producer Jason Hewitt, Films in Motion saw its Warbirds air on Sci Fi April 19. The film mixed misty WWII romanticism with plenty of Saturday matinee cheese and flying dinosaurs. Online reviews weren’t great, but Warbirds scored the channel’s second highest ratings for the weekend, and it led to Lightning Strikes, the next Hewitt company creature feature.

United Film Organization regularly provides Sci Fi with original programming, and after seeing Warbirds the company contacted Hewitt about shooting its new TV movie in Louisiana. “Because we have experience with the state tax credits, because we have relationships with local crew, we’re basically turnkey,” Hewitt says. “On Lightning Strikes, two producers from [United Film Organization] are going to show up, and at the end there’s going to be a movie.” Similarly, Films in Motion recently executive-produced and helped finance The Open Road, a family drama starring Jeff Bridges and Justin Timberlake.

It is this experience of being on the ground in Louisiana that Hewitt is banking on for future projects. Now settled into offices at Celtic Media Centre, Hewitt, 35, is next door to equipment rental companies and down the hall from two sound stages, an editing bay and a digital theater for mixing sound. Hewitt calls the recent move a significant turning point for his company. “This is the only location in town where I will have walk-in business,” the Sulphur native says, describing Celtic as a filmmaker’s mall. “There are directors, producers and studio executives that come here for tours all the time.”

Hewitt remains tight-lipped about negotiations he is in to bring a potential $20 million project to Baton Rouge this fall. Stepping up to films in that budget range is his goal for the next few years. Meanwhile Films in Motion has just wrapped The Deadline, a thriller starring Brittany Murphy and Thora Birch, and continues to prep Lightning Strikes for Sci Fi.

He says working with a major cable channel like Sci Fi can take time. “They do know their audience well, though, and we kind of look at things a little differently,” Hewitt says. “For instance, looking for a great actor, whereas they are looking for a marketable name. Sometimes those two are not the same thing.”