They are two of the most dreaded words in the English language: group project. But for Milwaukee-based filmmaker Ryland Tews, a high school project with his high school buddy, fellow local Mike Cheslik, would end up fueling a dream rather than nightmares. 

At the school's prodding, the two film buffs teamed up for a promo video for Whitefish Bay High School – and the result ended up more like a cousin to that bizarre "This Is My Milwaukee" ARG video from a decade ago. Which is to say it was a total hit. 

"We worked on that together, and there was this big showing for it at the high school," recalled Tews. "It was a big success – it’s on YouTube and everything – and actually a lot of people have seen it and still come up to me to this day saying, 'Oh, you made the promo video? So funny!'"

The two would eventually go their separate ways after high school – Tews headed to UWM while Cheslik went to NYU – but despite the distance and the way life inevitably pulls friends in opposite directions after school, they've managed to stick together, still teaming up on projects and still fueled by the reaction to their first film. 

"What really kept me going since high school was that and showing a huge assembly full of people this silly promotional video we did, with hundreds of people watching at this assembly, having them crack up and think it was hilarious and such a cool, special thing that we made," Tews said. "That gratitude and that positive emotional response – that’s always stuck with me."

A decade after their first group project made its debut, the duo's latest effort is ready to do the same – to a slightly larger audience than a school assembly – as "Lake Michigan Monster" will make its world premiere on Wednesday, Oct. 24 at 3:30 p.m. at the Oriental Theatre, with two more showings to follow. The locally made monster caper follows an oddball sea captain on the hunt for his aquatic nemesis, the titular Lake Michigan Monster hiding in the waters of Cream City – with the resulting journey somehow even more surreal than actually finding a creature in the lake. 

Before it makes its debut, I chatted with Tews about his inspirations – part Guy Maddin, part budgetary restrictions – the cinematic power of the lake and the state of the Milwaukee film scene. 

OnMilwaukee: Why a monster movie for your feature debut?

Ryland Tews: For some reason, whenever I would gaze out at our huge lake or go down to the beach, I always felt this whimsical sense of wonder of movie world. It was kind of an escape to go to the lake. Shooting stuff in an apartment or at a coffee shop or around the city, I don’t know, it’s hard to suspend disbelief. Going to an actual lake, there’s this sense of wonder and mystery there. And there’s not a lot of mystery left in the world, so I just thought I’d go to the lake and shoot some kind of monster movie. 

At the time, I was just delivering pizza for Rosati’s up in Fox Point, doing the same thing over and over – go to work, deliver pizzas, come home, get up, go to work, deliver pizzas. And I was like, just for the hell of it, I’m just going to try to make a monster movie. And I’m going to try to make it feature length, because why not? And I’m going to get a bunch of my friends together, and I’m going to make them do it – just cash in all my favors with my friends and convince them to make this monster movie with me. 

Why shoot it in black-and-white?

Because we didn’t have the equipment; I just used my girlfriend’s old DSLR camera because that’s all we had. These cameras nowadays, the picture is so good, and people are constantly bombarded with images now – and everything is such high quality all the time. So I thought I can’t make an image that’ll reach that quality, so I’ll just take the opposite approach. I’ll shoot it in black-and-white and make it look grainy and have that old 16mm look, like it was dragged through dirt or dug up. Give it the opposite approach and make it its own thing. 

That was my thought process. I wanted to make something that kept you guessing – and a monster movie just seemed to work with the aesthetic we were going for.

What were your inspirations for the story for "Lake Michigan Monster"? Seems like there’s a little Guy Maddin in there – anything else?

Right before I had the idea for "Lake Michigan Monster," I watched "Brand Upon the Brain" from Guy Maddin. And that was a big inspiration because obviously that’s in the same kind of visual style, but also because it took place on an island with a lighthouse and there were scenes on a lake. It had a very spooky movie atmosphere to it. I wanted to have that atmosphere. But he makes art films,  and I can’t really make an art film – we’re just wired different or something. I don’t know how he cuts his movies so nuts, how he decides to make a cut. 

But one of my favorite movies is "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou." That movie has always stuck in my mind. Obviously it’s got the ocean and whatnot, and while the characters are very different, they both assemble a team to go out and reluctantly follow him into battle. That’s always been an influence. 

I just thought if I had that Guy Maddin style – that grainy 16mm look – mixed with my brand of humor, it would make for a unique movie. Because usually it’s one or the other. Comedies, especially nowadays, they’re not very sophisticated. It’s two guys standing in a room. Single shot. Single shot. Single shot. Let’s improvise. 

Just put the camera down and let them ramble and find the jokes. 

Right, exactly. My thinking was we’re not going to do that. We’re going to have actual scenes. And it’s going to move. The movie is 78 minutes long, but there’s like 27 scenes in it. So it moves; it doesn’t waste your time. It goes, it goes, it goes – from one location to the next. 

And the whole time I was shooting, I felt, look, we have no budget – I’m funding this off pizza delivery tip money – so we have to try to make this as interesting as possible. So we have to make it funny and we have to make it move. So whenever possible, we have to try to do dynamic things with the camera. So, in this movie, there’s never single shots. The camera’s always moving or it’s Dutched up (canted) or it’s shoved in someone’s face or it’s under someone with a wide-angle lens or doing whatever I could possibly think of to make an image more interesting. Because again I didn’t have any money, and we have to make this as interesting as possible. No one’s going to want to watch this movie and people will fall asleep halfway through if it just feels like every other movie. So let’s go crazy with the look of it. 

It definitely helps that Mike really pushed it too. He’s a professional editor at Fox Sports, and he’s really good at cutting and knowing what to do with certain scenes. He’s also a big film buff and Guy Maddin guy, so he wanted to push it as well in post-production, thinking what he could do to make the image a little more interesting – whether that’s mirror effects or doubling or adding more smoke or a silhouette around an image or different things with the grading. Just really pushing these images so it feels like it belongs in its own movie world where the characters are a little bit bigger than life and you’re never quite sure what time period it is. 

How do you feel about where the Milwaukee film scene is right now?

I think it’s pretty amazing how it’s boomed. There’s always been filmmakers here and always people with a passion for making movies, but right now, it’s pretty incredible – to see Milwaukee Film spearheading this and saying let’s get everyone together and make this Filmmaker Alliance and let’s take care of the Oriental and provide people with professional equipment and the means to make good-looking movies that people want to see. 

I graduated from UWM in 2014, but even then, there was a lot of filmmakers, but everyone was kind of doing their own thing. Fast forward three or four years, it’s suddenly boomed. The film festival is put on so well, and everyone’s working collectively toward making each other better. It’s been neat to see.

"Lake Michigan Monster" premieres Wednesday, Oct. 24 at 3:30 p.m. at the Oriental Theatre, with two additional screenings on Monday, Oct. 29 at 9 p.m. at the Jan Serr Studio Cinema, 2155 N. Prospect Ave., sixth floor; and Wednesday, Oct. 31 at 9:45 p.m. at the Oriental Theatre.