MIFF to screen Downstate couple’s 3rd feature Tuesday

“Full Frame’s” Christopher and Victoria Kelley

Victoria and Christopher Kelley of Downstate Quincy take pride in the fact that they are a husband-and-wife team of filmmakers. 

Their company, Table Sixteen Productions, produces commercials and corporate videos that help feed their four cats, she says, while they spend weekends working on their passion: feature films.

Married and in business for 10 years, the Kelleys’ third film, “Full Frame,” a dark, 1940s-like noir shot in black-and-white, will premiere tomorrow night, Aug. 4, at the Midwest Independent Film Festival.

The 90-minute suspense thriller about “a photographer who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time,” as Victoria Kelley describes the plot, looks like a pretty good film, judging by the trailer, considering its budget.   

The cost was $10,000, helped by a “small investment” from three couples, who are friends of the Kelleys. Chris Kelley was the writer, director, DP and editor; Victoria the producer.  They shot weekends over three months in Quincy in early spring, 2014.

Helping to stretch the budget was their large cast of talented amateurs who volunteered their services.

Kelley describes the star, Frankie Murphy-Giesing, who plays “the spineless, busybody photographer,” as “an entrepreneur, who works in his family’s water purification business and is also starting a night club in Quincy.

“Charles Whitcomb, who plays the villain, owns a bow shop (as in bow and arrow) and he’s a master sky diver,” she explains, adding that he is from South Africa and his wife is from Quincy. 

“The Girl,” as female lead Natalie Siebers is called in the film, is a St. Louis photographer and model.

Table Sixteen produces commercial and corporate videos

The Table Sixteen name derives from Chris Kelley’s college days when he and his friends sat at the same number 16 table at an all-night eatery, talking movie ideas.  After college, he got into the visual media business at WGEM-TV in Quincy, working as a news photographer and spot producer. 

Victoria met Chris when she answered his ad seeking actors for a short film. “I got a part and we started dating during the making of the film,” she says. They married and started their business in 2005.

Table Sixteen’s clients include Dot.food, the Quincy Medical Group and St. Louis-based Ronald McDonald Charities and Eye Care Charity of Mid-America and Texas-based Maxi-Lift agri elevator buckets and accessories. 

The Kelleys’ first feature, “Hampshire, a Ghost Story,” garnered Netflix distribution and played on Video on Demand on the West Coast, she says. 

Their second feature, “Villany for the Lonely,” also written, directed and edited by Chris Kelley and featuring Victoria, plays on on Vimeo.com and VHS.

“Full Frame” will start heading for the festival circuit after Tuesday’s world premiere.

At Landmark Century Cinema, 2828 N. Clark, doors open at 6 p.m. Producers Panel at 6:30 p.m., screening at 7:30; tickets, $10. Victoria and Chris Kelley will be in attendance for post-screening Q&A. Tickets, $10, may be purchased here.