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I’m not sure when we decided that The Receipt was going to be the longest and most ambitious student film ever made at U.Va. It certainly wasn’t late last spring when my friend Rachel and I were sitting in the luxurious Newcomb Hall talking about filmmaking and she said, “Once upon a time, I wrote a script.” I think that the scope of this film just evolved over the course of time. My intent all along had been to shoot a full 90-minute feature, but I don’t think even I could imagine the scale and professionalism of the project when I told Rachel over a year ago, “Let’s shoot it!” I certainly didn’t envision a movie shot in 1080p with 50 minutes of completely original musical score, with audio quality and mixing to rival Hollywood-level productions, and with an extraordinarily dedicated, thoughtful, and remarkable cast. I certainly also didn’t foresee the immense difficulties in trying to shoot such an ambitious project without the resources of a full-size film school to back us. But we all managed to help each other come up with ingenious and creative ways to make the film work. Everyone involved brought a professionalism and vast scope of knowledge that just kept raising the bar higher and higher and higher. And in the end, what we have is a film made on a $10,000 budget that is almost indistinguishable from one made on a $1,000,000 budget. As our sound designer Mike said, “This project mirrors a typical Hollywood film in every way we knew how to do it.” And I think you’ll agree with me that the end result shows just that.
~ Kevin G. Bender, Director/Executive Producer
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