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Rick Peters

I make movies.

21 years old

Chicago, IL

Male

About

I'm a 21-year-old aspiring director and am currently attending DePaul University. I've made over 85 videos since I began making videos 10 years ago. These videos range from narrative movies to high school sports videos to music videos, trailers, documentaries, and more.

When I was about 10 years old I made my first movie, entitled "Who's The Killer?" It was a poorly shot, edited, and acted little movie about talking dogs on a horror movie set who become victim to a real killer. It was fun child's play as I employed my sister, father, and mother (and an assorted cast of stuffed animals) to act in this ambitious first project. I shot it with one camera, did all the editing in-camera, and scored the movie by playing CDs on a boom-box just off-camera.

Over the next four or five years I made a series of documentaries about my sister performing in school events, again all edited in-camera.
The culmination of my in-camera editing skills was a comedy entitled "Police Cops" that featured my sister and myself as a pair of cops dispatched by the police chief (our father) to find a drug lord (our father again) with the occassional help of another agent in the field (our father once more). Another wildly ambitious project considering it was shot and cut in-camera, featured many locations, and a great deal of improvised dialogue.

In 2002 I began my freshman year of high school. I also was given a new camera and my first editing software. With these new tools I shot and edited my first "real" video: a short called "The Shooting" that featured my sister playing a set of twins involved in an unheard conversation that turns stylistically violent.
That year I went on to shoot and edit the first video I am truely proud of: another short entitled "Run" which is a stylish, but nightmarish chase sequence with a twist ending.

Once my sophomore year of high school began, I was fully adjusted to that new academic world and I became involved in the Broadcasting classes, television station, and the swim team. For English classes I shot and edited videos based on 'The Merchant of Venice' and '1984' that were the best videos in the class. I also shot and edited an introductory sequence for the school's televised news program "The Scoop" and I was givin the task of editing the men's swim team highlight video that was shown at the end-of-season banquet. I had my first financial success by selling DVDs of that video at the banquet.
Around this time I began writing the screenplay for a feature length action/satire called "Hurt Kurt" which will come up again later.

During my junior year of high school I became even more involved in my high school's swim team, even taking on the responsibility of fully shooting and editing the entire women's and men's swim team videos, whereas all I had to do previously was edit someone else's footage. With these videos, I was able to tell a story by giving the videos structure and order. The DVDs featured 'special features' that included even more footage and it was a point of pride to me that I was able to include several shots of ever single swimmer on the teams, not just the good swimmers. All of these DVDs included animated menus and full-size plastic cases with covers, labels and booklets (all designed and produced by me).
Academically, I was also producing work that reached a whole new level for me. I shot, starred in, and edited a music video for the song 'Boris the Spider' by The Who. This video went on to win the Gold Award at the local student film festival.
I also tried my hand at stop motion animation for a video called "The Lunch" as well as commericals for the school bookstore.
Again for the English class that year I directed a video based on "A Raisin In the Sun" which was very successful.
I also wrote a screenplay about the Vietnam war entitled "The Things They Carried" which was based in part off the novel of the same name, while also featuring a lot of original sequences. I was able to borrow vintage military clothing and gear from a friend of mine who did reenactments and my group members and I trekked into a nearby forest preserve and spent three days shooting a full fledged war film. It was the most ambitious project I had attempted at that point and it was a major success, creatively and academically.

Entering into my final year of high school I began producing some of the best work I have ever made. I shot and edited my last two swim videos which were the best I've made and both coaches agreed that they were the best videos ever made for the swim team (and the head coach had been around for 30 years and had seen the previous videos that were made by a professional video production company before I took over). I also wrote an original screenplay entitled "Gridlock" that I was able to shoot and edit and turn in for a Film Study final project that is among the best narrative films I've made. It was a huge success in the class. To top off that year I campaigned for the job of creating the "Senior Video" for prom. Hundreds of students turned in thousands of photos and it was my job to make a video out of them. After choosing the photos I wanted to use, I scanned them into the computer, used Photoshop to color correct and clean up each photo, then I applied the 'Ken Burns' effect liberally and created a powerful slideshow. This slideshow was bookended by nostalgic segements of video that I had been shooting in anticipation of getting the job and video I had shot once I got the job. Emotional music such as Aerosmith's 'Don't Want to Miss a Thing' and Faith Hill's 'There You'll Be' and Vitamin C's 'Graduation' were used. It was screened at my senior prom in front of 500 students and faculty. The 25-minute video recieved a massive ovation and I received many teary congratulations on creating what many faculty called "the best senior video [they've] ever seen."

After graduation I attended Loyola University and majored in Communications. While there I was able to create a noir-style detective mystery shot entiring in still photos with overlapping music, sound effects, and dialogue. The intention was to create a moving comic book. During this time I was becoming less and less interested in contining to attend Loyola. Because of that, I began writing more scripts, specifically, I began re-writing "Hurt Kurt." What began as a 35-page rip-off went through no less than seven re-writes and ended up becoming an 86-page satirical action picture.

After making the official switch from Loyola to DePaul in the summer of 2007 I began production on "Hurt Kurt" which has been my first feature-length motion picture.

Throughout the summer of 2007 and the summer of 2008 I spent 23 days shooting the film. The intention of "Hurt Kurt" is to criticize the current movie climate where it seems that so many films are rip-offs, remakes, sequels, prequels, homages, etc. So to take that concept to a satiracal level, "Hurt Kurt" features a reference to some other movie or movie genre in every single scene. However, I can't stress enough that the movie is NOT a comedy or a parody. It is a serious action movie that can be enjoyed as a wall-to-wall action picture, but it can also be enjoyed on a deeper level as a satirical look at movies in general.
In August 2008 I rented out a room at my local public library and screened the full cut of "Hurt Kurt" to an audience of about thirty people. It was a huge hit and it was my most ambitious, biggest and most successful project to date.

Throughout 2009 I have continued to produce narrative shorts, photovideos, and music videos while also writing several screenplays.

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