Newspaper Article

Here is an article that was in the Williamson AM section of The Tennessean on Monday, August 27, 2007:

FILM COMPANY TRANSFORMS VIDEO STORE INTO MOVIE SET
By BONNIE BURCH
Staff Writer

FRANKLIN — The Hollywood Video on Murfreesboro Road, which normally rents out the latest releases, was creating some after-hours movie magic of its own last week.
Among the shelves of DVDs showcasing big-budget pictures, cameras, microphones and lighting equipment bustled around the actors involved in the shooting of an independent short from local film production company Seabourne Pictures.
"Seabourne is based in Franklin, so we really scour around everywhere to find places that would be good to shoot a movie. And this area has some fantastic locations," said Mark Cowart, who is directing Love at First Sight in the local video rental store.
On Tuesday night, the movie shoot was set in the parking lot outside Hollywood Video. But on Wednesday, the crew had moved inside the cooler, less buggy comfort of the store.
Billed as a comedy with a romantic side, Love at First Sight's story centers on the DVD release date of the biggest epic drama of the year — a fictional movie also known as Love at First Sight. Video store clerk Dane, a cynical 19-year-old who hates the Hollywood-style blockbuster type of film, thinks a 1962 French film, Labor of Love, is a better production.
His co-worker, Jessica, makes a wager with Dane that every copy of Love at First Sight will be rented before a single copy of Labor of Love goes out the door. After accepting the bet, Dane then launches a campaign pushing the subtitled film on every customer who wanders into the store.
Seabourne Pictures, a collaboration between Cowart, Christian musician Michael W. Smith and Smith's son, Ryan, is also shooting another short film — this one with sci-fi elements — in the area along with work on Love at First Sight.
Relapse, directed by Ryan Smith, takes place in a not-too-distant future when technology has advanced to the point that human cloning is a reality. But the process isn't perfect — clones can only survive for one day, and one particular person can be cloned only seven times.
In the film, a mother whose son has died is cloning her boy for the final time. The story follows the last day they spend with each other as she comes to grips with losing him forever.
Filming locations included a Franklin cemetery, The Aquarium restaurant in Opry Mills and a building across from Cummins Station in Nashville, as well as inside the Smith home.
But chances are these films won't be seen at the multiplex. Love at First Sight, with an estimated run time of 15 minutes, and Relapse are more likely to end up at film festivals or on a demo reel — a short video used to showcase a film production company's work to others in the movie production field.
"We started Seabourne about 3½ years ago, so now we're trying to make our way into feature film production. When I met Ryan about four years ago we both really wanted to get involved with movies, so we decided to go into this together," Cowart said.
Contact Bonnie Burch at 771-5421 or bburch@tennessean.com.