NMSU students start film company

Left to Right: Ryle Yazzie, Brondon Vallo, and Lynsey Bohannon, all of Grants N.M. recently made the move to start a film production company called Poco Loco Productions. [Photo by Daniel Zollinger/Independent]

By Jim Tiffin
Cibola County Bureau

GRANTS — Three New Mexico State University-Grants students, who have been students in the Creative Media program taught by Doug Bocaz-Larson since January 2005, have formed a professional digital movie production company, “Poco Loco Productions.”

The students, Lynsey Bohannon, Ryle Yazzie and Brandon Vallo, took the name from the college's Poco Loco Players, who were the theater-based student group before the creative media digital film classes formed.

Between the three, Bohannon has the most acting, directing and producing experience, Yazzie is a great storyboard artist and cameraman and Vallo is the computer, technological expert and also a great cameraman. All three are the most skilled and knowledgeable of all the students that have come through the program, Bocaz-Larson said.

“We have grown so far in skills and experiences and there is such an increasing demand for our services, we decided to form the company,” Bohannon said.

The college is receiving numerous requests for its students to produce and assist with commercials and documentaries since the word is now getting out into the industry.

“The college cannot do projects for profit, so the students decided they would begin working on requests from outside the college as a way of working in the industry and getting paid,” Bohannon said.

Yazzie said he has worked on a safety video for a local mining company and on DWI commercials for the Cibola County DWI Program and loves doing this type of work.

“I don't want to do anything else,” he said.

Vallo said the trio can and will do everything needed to create, write, produce, direct, act and record commercials documentaries, or any type of video-related project.

“We will be able to hire some of the creative media classes' students to help with acting and other work,” he said. Bocaz-Larson said students get much more learning out of doing things in the real world than the classroom.

“I really like dealing with people, telling their stories,” Bohannon said.

“You need to make sure the relationship you have with your subjects is real and be able to get real reactions,” she said.

Bohannon and Yazzie are so good at what they do, they have been invited to be part-time instructors for some of the beginning creative media classes at the college.

Vallo was in the computer sciences classes taught by Bocaz-Larson, who is the computer sciences department head for NMSU-Grants, and did so well, Bocaz-Larson invited him to join the creative media program where he has flourished.

Because he is good at technological aspects of the industry, he was able to determine how to use a new JVC digital recording camera given to the college by film producer and director Andrew Coppola, who is one of several mentors who work with the college in the creative media program.

“It came with a handbook and no one knew how to use it because it uses a completely different way of recording images,” Vallo said.

The camera records images in a special compressed program and when one views a playback it decompresses the images, he said.

Bocaz-Larson said the three have created an opportunity for them to work in the real world and create jobs for others as well.

“There is a lot of work locally as well as Albuquerque, it really is an untapped market,” Bocaz-Larson said.

To contact reporter Jim Tiffin call (505) 287-2197 or e-mail: jtiffin.independent@yahoo.com.