Tampa Film Fan

in the spotlight:local filmmaker pete bauer

I recently had a chance to learn a little bit about local filmmaker, writer and jack-of-all-trades Pete Bauer. Bauer has written over fourteen screenplays, two of which have won awards. He’s written and directed a number of projects on both film and video, including a short called Justice, which won six awards at the Saints and Sinners Film Festival, and the feature The Box, which screened at the TamBay Film Festival.

A UF graduate who has acted professionally in regional theater, film, television and radio, Bauer has a Real Job as a global IT manager for a local multi-billion dollar company, but his passion has always been filmmaking. A self-described “Hitchcock nut” who finds inspiration in DePalma and Spielberg, he admits to “a guilty pleasure appreciation for Michael Bay’s style over substance approach.”

Bauer had a book published of interviews with ten filmmakers involved in the “microcinema revoluation” when digital filmmaking was starting about five years ago. Originally titled 20 Questions:The Interview Series, his book is at a new publisher and is being re-released as The Microcinema Revolution. He hopes to follow up with more books, depending on the success of the re-release.

His microcinema efforts in the secular realm are produced through his company Local Talent Productions. His faith-based projects are handled at Sonlight Pictures. Bauer thinks that the “Christian film market is very under-utilized, mainly because the products have been low in quality, overly preachy and no one has found the right business model to effectively fill content in that niche market.”

Bauer describes his blog Surviving in Safety Harbor as “a pretty effective overview of my personality…a lot of film, a lot of faith, with a dose of sarcasm layered with my opinion.” Considering himself a writer first and a director second, Bauer started his blog in August to get back to writing and promised himself he’d post a daily entry for at least a year.

Bauer’s current projects include a draft of an action/suspense thriller with Christian themes called Severed and a secular thriller called Mute. He says he is “trying to merge my love of Hitchcock and Spielberg with my faith. Don’t know if the mixture will end up tasting like a fine wine or moonshine, but I’m giving it a shot.”