Las Cruces provides more than the film venue

The abandoned courthouse in downtown Las Cruces offers filmmakers almost everything they need to turn it back into a prison. It has old jail cells, worn walls and the institutional feel needed for “Solitary,” an independent feature film about five inmates in solitary confinement.

There was just one notable problem during a Southern New Mexico summer: no air conditioning. That became part of the education for AJ Ross. She was among the New Mexico State University students and recent graduates working on the film, produced by NMSU film professor Ross Marks. Ross helped keep people hydrated as temperatures outside pushed toward 100 degrees, but also worked with the art department, transported actors and watched filmmakers solve the inevitable problems that emerge on a working set.

“You learn so much on set,” Ross said. “There’s nothing like just being on set and, even as a PA, I was able to learn stuff I would have never learned otherwise.”

That is precisely what Marks was seeking. He has increasingly made student and alumni involvement part of the formula for films he produces in Las Cruces. “Solitary” may be his clearest example yet: He said 18 NMSU Creative Media Institute alumni and eight current students worked on a crew of about 35, filling jobs in camera, production design, grip and electric, costumes and the production office.

“The students got this incredible learning opportunity and got paid to do it,” Marks said. “How many students have that kind of an opportunity? It’s rare. Very rare.”

But the local connection extended beyond the crew. Because “Solitary” deals with incarceration and the effects of prolonged isolation, Marks wanted people with lived experience on screen. He connected with Crosstown Re-Entry, a Las Cruces organization that houses formerly incarcerated people and helps them find jobs and develop life skills. Five or six residents were hired as actors.

“I thought it was important that we get people that had been incarcerated and get that authenticity and that honesty,” Marks said. “They worked as hard as any actor I’ve ever worked with and did a fabulous job.”

They worked alongside Cameron Douglas, son of Michael Douglas and grandson of Kirk Douglas, who Marks said spent nearly a decade incarcerated, including about three years in solitary confinement.

“There was that kind of life-meets-art with Cameron, and then you bring in these five or six formerly incarcerated, and suddenly it has a reality and an honesty and an authenticity that films sometimes lack,” Marks said.

It fits his larger philosophy: Make movies in Las Cruces and involve people who live here in making them. When director David Midell approached him about producing “Solitary,” Marks agreed but had a pair of stipulations. He needed to shoot it in Las Cruces and hire as many of his former students as possible.

AJ Ross found her way onto the set after taking Marks’ directing class. Born in Las Cruces but raised near Houston, she earned a degree from Texas A&M University in visualization, concentrating on 3D animation. After returning to Las Cruces, she took film classes at NMSU while considering a career in CGI.

Then Marks’ class changed her thinking.

“I was like, wait, I kind of like this better,” she said.

On “Solitary,” Ross worked primarily as a production assistant but moved among jobs. She helped alter individual cells to represent prisons in different parts of the country and, while transporting actors, learned about how they prepared for the film’s dark subject matter.

More importantly, she left with something difficult for aspiring filmmakers to get.

“Students with zero experience are able to have these wonderful opportunities,” she said. “Now that I have this, I feel more confident going forward, like applying to stuff. … I feel a little bit more qualified.”

That pipeline is already working for Michael Kraenzel. A Las Cruces native and Mayfield High School graduate, he graduates from NMSU this semester with a digital filmmaking degree and minors in 3D animation and visual effects. Despite seriously pursuing film for only about a year, “Solitary” was his sixth professional set. His first opportunity came from Marks on another locally produced film, “Counter-Strike.”

“Ross gave me my first opportunity there, and then they liked me so much that I kept just getting calls,” Kraenzel said. “The people that I met on that set have called me back multiple times for different sets.”

On “Solitary,” Kraenzel began as a key production assistant and was promoted to second second assistant director, helping manage actors and other production assistants.

“Nothing quite prepares you like actual on-set experience because it’s just a different type of work and a different beast,” he said.

That progression — classroom, film set, professional contacts, another film set — is what Marks is trying to reproduce. It is also one reason he has shifted much of his attention from directing to producing. Producing allows him to work on more projects and create more jobs for students and graduates.

“Producing is as much mentoring for me as anything else,” Marks said.

He traces some of that philosophy to his late father-in-law, playwright Mark Medoff, who taught at NMSU for more than five decades. Marks remembers Medoff insisting that artists did not have to leave Las Cruces to find the proverbial greener pasture.

“This is the green pasture,” Marks recalled him saying. “This is where the grass is green and you can do anything here and stay home and do it.”

On “Solitary,” that meant using a Las Cruces courthouse as a prison, putting local people with experience in the criminal justice system in front of the camera and NMSU students and graduates behind it.

Instead of practicing for class, Ross and Kraenzel experienced filmmaking first-hand.