Santa Barbara Painter Sketches Twilight Tinged Short

While University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) grad Karl Ford had to scrounge to fund his directorial debut, cleverly bartering his paintings for return services, he does have one major trump card. The star of Burial is Noot Seear, a Vancouver based model who appeared in 2009's The Twilight Saga: New Moon. She plays a gun-totting killer of men.

Ford's film premieres tonight, at UCSB's handsome Pollock Theatre. Another advantage brought to the project by the filmmaker was his previous time spent working for Ivan Reitman's locally connected Montecito Picture Company. It all adds up to some atypical commercial strains for a gassroots project.

Better known to Twilight fans as Heidi

Ford wrote the script for Burial in two weeks, after basically being dared to do so by Seear (pictured). He tells the Santa Barbara Independent that he also got some helpful input from Reitman's longtime partner and fellow Canadian-in-Hollywood:

Ford’s former boss and mentor, producer Joe Medjuck, gave him advice and timely pushes toward his path of bliss, demystifying the filmmaking process. Ford thinks of Burial as a character-driven experiment, while others consider it an edgy indie action film.

The short was recently submitted to the Telluride Film Festival and several other events, and there is already talk of turning the 20-minute action film into a feature-length project. On a funny side note, the second camera assistant for Burial is named Annie Hall. That's got to count for something. Ford also gets kudos for his cheeky illustrated personal bio.

[Burial]