Auditions for short film are Saturday in Eldorado
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Columbia College Chicago graduate student Brantley Ping plans to shoot a short film somewhere in Saline County and hopes to be holding auditions for local actors 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the Eldorado Public Library.
Ping is an Eldorado native and wants the film to depict a difficult interaction between a mother and son in a small town.
"I'm only looking for two, a mother and a son," Ping said.
The tone of the film that he wrote himself is somber.
The single mother gives her seven- to nine-year-old son a box of dog treats. She gives him the warning he can only give the dog one because any more will make the dog sick. Her true reason for telling him this is she does not have the money to buy another box anytime soon.
Instead, the boy goes outside and dumps out every single one. He sneaks back in with the empty box hoping his mother won't find out what he has done. His mother spies the dog biscuits in the yard, checks the empty box and sends the boy to bed early as punishment. She tells her son to keep his fingers crossed the dog is alive the next day.
While the boy is in school the next day the mother hears a sound, looks out and sees the dog has been struck by a vehicle and is dead in the road.
She buries the dog and when the boy comes home she tells him the dog is dead and comforts him.
"It's a short film I'm hoping to take to Sundance Film Festival," Ping said.
Ping is also working on a documentary about the Second Chance Program that works to rehabilitate convicts and get them to hold down jobs, the only such program in the country, Ping said.
"I just met the right guy at the right time. The head probation officer was watching a school play. We got introduced and he started talking to me," Ping said.
When Ping mentioned he was a film graduate student the man became interested and pitched the idea for the documentary to give the unique program some exposure.
Ping's third project is a western short film he is shooting in Monument Valley at the end of March over a two week period. The college received a grant of $14,000 for the film that was written by one of Ping's fellow students.
The plot involves a sheriff arrested a man who he knows to be innocent. The sheriff plans to bring the man in and work out a solution set the man free. However, a bounty hunter assassinates the sheriff, the only man who knows the man's innocence, and takes him for the reward.
Ping and his crew use $100,000 Panavision 35 mm camera's, the industry standard.
Ping is the son of Faye and Dann Baugher of Eldorado.
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