For Ryan and Cody LeBoeuf and Rachel Alterman, working with UNLV’s Filmmaker Vision Lab is a proud full-circle moment. All three graduated from UNLV’s film school (now known as the School of Cinematic Arts), and returning to their alma mater as mentors and collaborators is a sign of how far they’ve come as filmmakers. “UNLV for me was the place where I found my film family, and it reinforced me wanting to be a filmmaker,” Alterman says.
The LeBoeuf brothers are veterans of the local film scene, as writers and directors of numerous short films, as well as two previous features. While still students at UNLV in 2013, they received the Johnny Brenden Filmmakers Award, giving them $25,000 toward the production of their first feature, Rabbit Days (later retitled The Beast for its streaming release). Their second feature, horror anthology The Haunted History Tour, is currently seeking distribution, but they’re already looking ahead to the next project.
That’s where Alterman comes in. She’s now the director of development at Los Angeles-based Alcon Entertainment, whose recent productions include The Garfield Movie and Practical Magic 2. When she caught a screening of The Haunted History Tour, she knew that she had to team up with the LeBoeufs as a producer. “I was so incredibly impressed with how much their skill jumped from the last stuff I saw them do,” she says.
Now all three are collaborating on a proof-of-concept presentation for It Came From the Swamp, the feature film they hope to make together. As part of the Filmmaker Vision Lab, they will work with a crew of UNLV students on the shoot this August, with the goal of attracting investor interest for the full movie. Led by film professor Adam Paul, the lab is an extension of the co-curricular project created by the late Francisco Menendez, in which UNLV professors direct feature films with students as crew. “What’s unique about UNLV film is we take this notion of community and collaboration really seriously,” department chair Heather Addison says. “Our students are part of the UNLV film family from the time they arrive, right on until they’re alums of 20 or 30 years.”
Alterman and Ryan LeBoeuf first met while working on Menendez’s 2012 film Stealing Las Vegas, Alterman as script supervisor and Ryan as a production assistant. “It was all of us who’d been going to school together and been working on stuff together,” Ryan remembers. “Now we were all a part of this larger project.”
Years later, they all get the chance to pass that forward to a new generation of film students. “For us to be able to come back and do a version of that when it’s where the two of us met, and now we’re building this thing together, is really meaningful for us,” Alterman says.
Ryan describes It Came From the Swamp as “obviously horror, but it has undertones of dark comedy, as well.” The story takes place in a small town in the LeBoeufs’ native Louisiana, which they plan to replicate at the Clark County Museum’s Heritage Street exhibit.
Although all three filmmakers regularly return to UNLV as guest lecturers, this will be their first chance to work more intensively with students.
“There’s this pure optimistic passion to be helpful and to be there as much as they can, to experience every part of the production,” Cody says of current students. “It’s exciting to be around that sort of energy,” Ryan adds. Alterman and the LeBoeufs hope that this will be the first of many projects that they work on together, and the partnership with UNLV is helping to make that happen.
