Low-budget indie wins Siskel Center premiere

Brandon Hutchinson took the mid-aughts boom of DIY relationship dramas as a personal challenge in crafting his own debut feature, “How I Killed Mumblecore,” which has its theatrical premiere April 30 at the Gene Siskel Film Center.

He adapted the story from an experience he had in middle school, originally conceiving the film for child actors before maturing the characters to facilitate production.

Hutchinson plays the hypotenuse of a love triangle with Cassandra Bissell and Gizelle Alverio in the story of an office romance tested by home ownership pressures and “a party game gone sour.”

In late 2007 Hutchinson showed his script to producer John Otterbacher of Orange Chair Productions, a former coworker at the Community Television Network.

“He said ?I’m going to make this movie in the next couple of months with whatever I can put together,'” Otterbacher recalls. “I said ?I think you’re crazy. All I can do is help make the film better.'”

Pairing up and shooting mostly on weekends in the winter and spring of 2008, they made the film with an average crew of six-seven, on equipment they owned and borrowed?- including a couple of Sony HDV cameras — and an under-$10,000 budget.

Otterbacher will cover the “How I Killed Mumblecore” premiere for “Orange Chair TV,” a showcase for mostly local filmmakers, musicians and artists, shooting on location and at his Ravenswood studio.

He is targeting the show for public television, aiming to carry substantial content at his web site orangechair.tv