Ricky Fishbeck’s Journey to Making Webster’s Biggest Senior Overview - The Webster Journal
Inside a dark studio in Sverdrup, sitting at a table alongside classmate and producer Adrienne Cannon, Film major and director Ricky Fishbeck stares at an empty chair. Despite many potential actors telling him they’d come, only two have shown up to audition for his thesis project, “Drink, Kill, Praise.” As Fishbeck and Cannon gave their thoughts on the two actors that came, an air of disappointment filled the room.
“After the next day, we learned that a lot of people said, ‘Oh, we got sick,’ or ‘oh, we mixed up the days.’ But it’s like, they should have communicated,” Fishbeck said. “On the day, we’re here for three hours, and we’re like, ‘what is this?’”
Despite the low turnout, the director still harbored hope. After all, it was only Oct. 25 — the first of three audition days. Besides, this isn’t the first challenge Fishbeck has dealt with in bringing “Drink, Kill, Praise” to life.
Originally starting as the random thought, ‘What if the water in St. Louis made people go crazy and kill each other?’ during a night of tossing and turning, the idea grew bigger and bigger within the span of a year. Soon, this thought experiment included cults and politics, along with a tone inspired by “The Last of Us” and the work of Matt Reeves (“Cloverfield”).
No matter how large the scale becomes, Fishbeck remains focused on the core factor of his project: fear. Portraying this in characters Greg and Aiden, he remains interested in seeing how they react.
“It’s more about how these two friends interact with this new world that they’re put in,” said Fishbeck. “And then also it shows how they both interact with fear differently.”
Yet, some of these fears seem to come from Fishbeck himself, having grown up Christian in rural Missouri. Noticing the influence of megachurches and their manipulative nature within religion, the director expresses growing concern of their followers being exploited.
“I’m just worried about people falling for people, using [religion] in the wrong way, and making them hate people,” said Fishbeck. “I was always taught you should love your neighbor no matter what, and I really felt like this kind of story is something that needed to be told.”
And so he took it into action. Announcing “Drink, Kill, Praise” in January at a Webster University program meeting, he immediately knew the uphill battle he would endure to reach his vision.
Instead of working on a simple, low-budget senior overview, he aims to block off entire St. Louis streets, work with professional filmmakers alongside Webster film students, and use simulated firearms/blanks — a first for a Webster production according to Fishbeck. To do this, he would need a larger budget, a budget that he estimates up to $15,000 to $20,000, the highest budget for a Webster student film. According to Fishbeck, the previous record for a school’s student film in Missouri was $6,000.
But first, Fishbeck had to prove himself. He spent the spring semester crafting a proof of concept for his thesis, “Shifting Tides,” a single-location short where a couple fights to the death once the boyfriend ingests the contaminated water. What was supposed to be a simple production showcased the issues Fishbeck knew he would have to deal with for his larger project.
Read the rest of this article at The Webster Journal - https://websterjournal.com/2024/12/03/ricky-fishbecks-journey-to-making-websters-biggest-senior-overview/
L to R: Ricky Fishbeck standing by his director of photography Michael Speckart, during a night shoot. Having worked together before in other projects, this would be the first film involving Speckart that Fishbeck is directing. Photo courtesy of Gerard Shaughnessy