Seattle filmmakers ready for Sundance

A few nights ago, Lynn Shelton dreamed she and fellow Seattle filmmaker David Russo were traveling together on a perilous journey, helping each other jump from rooftop to rooftop.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Russo was working feverishly to finish a movie that, like Shelton's, was headed for the Sundance Film Festival.

Three Seattle-based projects will be shown at the prestigious independent film festival, which opened Thursday night in Park City, Utah. (A fourth movie, "Finding Bliss," filmed in Spokane, is at the smaller Slamdance festival.)

"We've never had this big of a presence there," said Amy Lillard Dee, executive director of WashingtonFilmWorks, the state-mandated nonprofit set up in 2007 to encourage filmmaking in the state through monetary incentives. Qualifying projects get reimbursed for up to 20 percent of their in-state expenditures — and production help.

Three of the four Washington movies showing in Park City next week got incentive money; Dee hopes that is a sign of the program's viability. "It's exciting. To have that kind of success in your first year is amazing."

On top of the incentives, Seattle's appeal lies in locations, customer service and experienced local crews, she said.

"World's Greatest Dad," a dark comedy starring Robin Williams, was filmed primarily in Seattle's Wallingford neighborhood.

"All producers shop around to see what the best deals are," said Howard Gertler, the movie's New-York-based producer. Seattle "offered everything we were looking for."

The benefits go both ways: The deals help actors, crews and vendors in the Northwest, while local filmmakers gain exposure.

"Humpday," written and directed by Shelton, will have its premiere today and is eligible to win audience and jury awards as part of the U.S. Dramatic Competition. It's the highest step yet in an upward trajectory. Her first feature, "We Go Way Back," premiered at Slamdance in 2006. Her second, "My Effortless Brilliance," played at Austin's South By Southwest.

Seattle is not an overt part of "Humpday," but the city's "sex-positive" attitude helped her come up with the plot, in which two heterosexual men cast themselves as the gay leads in their porn-movie contest entry.

Shelton and Russo are definite Hollywood outsiders. They come from fine-arts backgrounds, never went to film school, and care more about artistic than commercial success. Sundance, the country's largest marketplace for independent film, will give them a chance for immeasurably broader exposure.

"I don't expect a Sundance miracle, but it is the first step in creating an audience for this film," Russo said. His first feature, "The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle," was partly funded by the Northwest Film Forum's Start-to-Finish Program; it uses his trademark combination of animated sequences and live action.

He calls the plot — a hapless janitor is subjected to a scientific experiment, leading to a sort of male pregnancy — both highly unconventional and life-affirming, qualities he sees in his home city.