James A. Ward wrote, directed and starred in a rather clever take on the swapped body, Freaky Friday type of film called Identity Theft, in which a guy's mind is mysteriously, and purposely, transferred into the body of a beautiful young woman. I asked James all about his experiences in making the film, and I also wanted to know more about his beautiful lead actress, Laura Weintraub, who's also a well known TNA Roller Jam star.

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Let's start off by having you introduce yourself to everyone.  Tell us all a little about yourself.

Hi, my name's James and I'm a filmaholic!  Just kidding, well sort of!  My whole life I have been into movies, watching them, talking about them or quoting them, sometimes all at the same time.   I won a walk-on role on the show Beauty and the Beast back when I was 18 and then started to do work as an extra for a time, but eventually gave that up for a steady job.  Then I had some health issues, but one kidney transplant later I was as good as new and ready to take on the world.  I've was doing theatre for about 10 years when I started to do my own videos, which lead me to my movie Identity Theft.


You don't have any formal training as a film maker, but back in 2007, after being inspired by videos you saw on YouTube, you bought yourself a video camera and made a film series called The Wand of Change.  Tell us about the series and your experiences in making it.

The Wand of Change was a great series to work on!  The series is about a guy named Eric who thinks that his girlfriend might be cheating on him, so he buys this magic wand off of Ebay with the power to make him look like anyone he can think of.  He plans to use the Wand to change his appearance so that he can go to a party to spy on his girlfriend and he is trying to think of who he should turn into, when he gets a call from Kim, his girlfriend's best friend.  She can't make it to the party, so Eric uses the Wand and turns himself into Kim and goes in her place.  Drinking too much at the party, Eric returns home with a hangover, some guy's shirt on, a mysterious note, and discovers the Wand is missing.  From there 'Eric/Kim' goes on an adventure to try and find the Wand to get turned back to normal.

My friend Kim and I came up with the initial concept one afternoon while we were out shopping, even before I bought my camera.  So once I got it, my first was a Panasonic PV-GS300, I called Kim and we filmed the first episode of The Wand of Change…and it was TERRIBLE.  The lighting was bad, I had sound issues, it was a mess!  So we refilmed it.  Then we filmed it again, and again, and then one more time to finally get it right.  When it was done we posted it and we didn't really expect to get the response we did, we figured maybe 500 people would watch it and that would be that.  Instead it got a lot of hits and people said we should do a sequel, but instead of that, Kim and I decided to do a series.  We had a great time filming it.


What were some of the biggest lessons you learned about the film making process from your experiences with The Wand of Change?

I learned my first hard lessons about lighting and sound.  In the first episode I made so many mistakes, that we re-filmed it 5 times until I got it right.  After that I was done and we were filming other parts of the series I became more and more sensitive to the ambient sounds of the filming locations.  The series was also my 'learn as you go' for my editing skills.  I would often picture what I would want to happen, then film it and figure out the software to make it all work.  Now it seems easy, but at the time I was filming split screen shots, with never actually having put one together, so it was really a lot of faith in myself that I could figure it out and put it all together.


Identity Theft is actually kind of a spin off of The Wand of Change.  How similar are they?  Are there any elements from the previous series that found their way into this film?

I wouldn't really say that Identity Theft is a spin off of The Wand of Change, but they are definitely related.  I had originally planned on making The Wand of Change into a movie, but when Kim couldn't do it, I decided to come up with something similar, but also completely different.  They are similar in that they both deal with a main character who finds themselves trapped in a woman's body and they both deal with the journey of the characters trying to get their original bodies back, however in the WOC it was the main characters choice to turn into Kim, while in Identity Theft, Matt is forced into becoming Karen and someone else assumes his life.


While the idea of switching bodies isn't new, your execution of it was rather fresh and inventive.  When you were writing this film, was that something that was trying to make it different from those other body switch films always a major consideration during the creative process, or did you just write it out as you felt it should be without thinking too much about how it would be compared to other, similar themed films?

I like to think that writing is one of my strengths as a filmmaker, having a degree in English and a back ground in creative writing, I tend to always give characters motivations for what they do and try to make them as true to life as I can.  In Identity Theft I set up the initial situation of the body thief stealing Matt's life and leaving him in Karen's body, and from there I just let the characters go where they would go.  Matt would go here, or Matt would do that when this would happen and from there the story was written.  Now I did watch a number of other body swap type movies and either tried to avoid the things I thought they did wrong, or I would do something that I didn't think any of them were doing, but it really always came back to the characters motivations.


Laura Weintraub was amazing in her role as the guy in a girl's body.  She's also a well known Roller Jam girl.  How did you end up casting Laura in this role?  Did you know her already or did she just, by pure chance, end up auditioning for it?

I've known Laura for a number of years through working in theatre, but we hadn't ever worked together until recently.  Actually the first time we worked together is when I called in her in to work on the Wand of Change.  I had someone flake out at the last minute on me and Laura was the first person I could think of who could do the role, and she came in and totally saved me.  She came in, nailed the scene, and was really professional.  From there I knew I wanted to work with her again and so I called her when I first started thinking about doing Identity Theft.


Identity Theft wasn't initially planned as a feature, but thanks to Laura having an available block of time in her schedule, you expanded it into a much longer film.  Obviously this had to change everything in how you prepared for the production.  How long was the film in pre-production before you actually started shooting, and tell us about some of your experiences in trying to get the whole thing together.

Yes, originally I had a silly two-page script about a guy who wakes up in the wrong body and the police won't help him.  I called Laura with the idea and asked her what her availability would be and when I found out she had some free time, I asked her if she would mind if I made the script a bit longer.  She said OK, so I threw out the old script and spent about a month writing the new version.  After that Laura and I were cast in the play Noises Off, which took a lot of our time, but I also used a few actors from that production in Identity Theft.   I managed to get all the pre-production done in about a month and half, and we started filming the Monday after opening night.  Another lucky moment was when my Associate Producer Lorraine MacDonald found the bar we filmed in, which was the hardest of the locations to lock down.


Did you run into any unexpected problems or setbacks during production?  If so, how did you deal with them?

Absolutely!  My Director of Photography had to miss three very important days of filming because his girlfriend's sister was in a bad car crash and they had to go up north to be with her.  Surprisingly I was amazingly calm during this setback, as I knew I could film most of the scenes myself, but I did have a problem as I was going to be in some of the scenes, so I had to start making calls and finding someone else who would be able to film the scenes that I was in!  Luckily it all worked out and I think all of the scenes came out great!  When I talked to my DP when he got back, he explained that luckily the crash wasn't as bad as they were first told and it turned out that his girlfriend's sister had been giving a blowjob to her drug dealer, who lost control of his car.  So yes, my movie was almost ruined by a bad driving drug dealer getting a blowjob!


Many times when I see films that are made early in a film maker's career, I notice various equipment limitations in the production relating to visual quality, sound, effects or whatever.  What sort of gear did you use during shooting (camera, lighting, sound, editing, etc...), and looking back on it now, do you feel it all performed up to your expectations.  If you could go back and do it again, what gear would you swap out and what would you swap it out for, if anything?

Filming the movie we used both a Canon XH G1 and a XH A1, which both worked perfectly.  The lights were an assortment of various lights I have been putting together over the years, so that is one of the things I plan to upgrade in my next production.  I am absolutely upgrading the sound in my next production! I edited with Adobe Premiere and am very happy with the software, but am looking at switching over to Final Cut. 


You had a pretty nasty experience on the way to a film festival where your film was being shown to an audience for the very first time.  Tell us about that and how it all worked out.  When you finally got there, what was it like for you getting to see people's reactions to your film?

My girlfriend and I were driving to the Ventura Film Festival where my movie was being shown for the first time and we were in stop-and-go traffic on the freeway, and the car in front of me stopped…I stopped…and I look in the review mirror see this truck coming at me full speed and it slams into the back of my car, shoving me into the car in front of us…totaling my car.  Everyone was ok, and after dealing with the car, the police, the tow truck driver, getting a friend to come pick us up, we got to the festival and the movie was about half way over.  Of course we were still in shock from the accident, but from what I remember the audience really loved the film.  People laughed at the right moments and were engaged through the whole movie.  It was great.  Then I got called up to talk about it, but still in shock from the accident I really can't remember much of what I was asked.


Before any of this, you had actually spent many years in the theater.  Tell us about some of your more notable theater experiences and how you made many of the contacts you ended up working with in Identity Theft.

Well, for 10 years or more I have been doing theatre all around Ventura County playing a number of roles, including: Bo in Bus Stop, Willum in The Nerd, Freddie/Phillip in Noises Off, David in Company, Slim in Of Mice and Men, Hamlet in Rosencraztn and Gilderstern are Dead, Peter in Prelude to a Kiss, Aladin in Aladin, Dick in Play it Again, Sam and The Father in A Christmas Story, just to name a few.  I meet many of the actors, and also Rick Pratt who did the scoring and several of the songs, from my time spent in theatre.  It’s a great resource for finding talented actors.


You've been an extra in several movies, and also had a pretty cool walk on role in the television show Beauty and the Beast.  Tell us about some of those experiences, and what it was like hanging out with Linda Hamilton and Roy Dotrice.

The day I spent on the set of Beauty and the Beast was AWESOME!  I had won a walk on role at a Boy Scout function, but due to the writers' strike of the late 80's, it took about a year or so before I actually got to go on the show.  On that day Linda Hamilton and Roy Dotrice who played Father, were both there and they were so incredibly nice, showing me around the whole set and taking several pictures with me.  Also got to meet Armin Shimerman who went on to play Quark on Deep Space 9 and the Principal in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Another fun experience I had was working on a film called Across the Tracks with this no named actor that everyone thought was Chad Lowe.  It was a track movie and having done track in high school I knew the easiest thing to do was the high jump, so I volunteered for that and pretty much ran for five seconds every take and then kicked back on the big foam mat for the day.  So during one of the breaks I was kicking back on my mat when someone jumps on it, I look over and it’s that 'Chad Lowe guy', so I say hi and he says hi, and we kick back on the mat for a few minutes until he has to go for the next shot.  And today the 'Chad Lowe guy' is known as Brad Pitt.


I know you have a desire to do more features.  What kind of stuff can we expect to see from you in the future?

I have a number of things I want to do, but nothing firm on what's next.  I'm looking at a couple of zombie scripts, plus I have an idea for a super hero feature, a hit man feature or even making the Wand of Change movie.  There's also some documentary films that I have an interest in, just a matter of deciding what I want to do next.


If you could go back and change or re-do one thing in Identity Theft, what would it be and why?

One of the things that I would go back and re-do would be the strip club scene when Karen comes out in the roller-skates.  When I had planned it out there were supposed to be 20 to 30 people there for that scene, but being that it was a Sunday morning with only copy and credit as pay, only a few people showed up.  That was really disappointing to me, but its such a quick scene that only a few people probably noticed…until now.


Do you have any advice for other folks out there who are on the road to making their first film?  What pitfalls should they watch out for?

Be ready to do everything!  It's your movie and you're making it happen.  You will run into people who are all gung ho about it when you are planning it and they will volunteer either time or locations, but when it comes time for them to deliver, you will find that these people are all talk, so you will have to think on your feet and always have a backup plan, or two, in your head if things go wrong!


Are there any upcoming festivals or showings where people will be able to check out the film?

Well, I just submitted my film to the Arizona Underground Film Festival in Tucson and the Vampire Film Festival (under the supernatural category) in New Orleans.  Hopefully I will get into one of those.  I am also looking at a number of other festivals, but haven't applied to them yet.


Is there anything else you'd like to mention before we wrap this up?

Yeah, you can buy the DVD on my website: www.threedegreesoffcenter.net and you can also look for my future projects there too!  Thanks Duane!