Life & Work with John Kestner of Peoria, Arizona

Today we’d like to introduce you to John Kestner.

Hi John, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I grew up in front of a TV or in a movie theater in Ohio and dropped out of college to move to Phoenix, Arizona in the 80’s. I’d always wanted to write and make films, but made a good living working in Nuclear Security. I had some close calls in selling feature scripts to Hollywood, but I started making short films in earnest after Covid (I had to stay home for two years and saved up enough to start producing shorts). We’re in pre-production on our tenth short and we’re closing in on 500 awards in the past four years in national and international festivals and competitions. Once our films have finished their festival runs, we put them on our YouTube page at Cavity Search Pictures Films.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It’s smooth in the sense that I’m still here and still doing it! The challenges are probably all the same as every other independent filmmaker: do I have the money for this? Are we going to get a location? Is everyone’s schedules going to link up? Can we find the props we need? The technology has certainly improved enough that anyone can produce films that look and sound as well as anything coming out of Hollywood, so that particular part–a very huge part–of the process is accessible to everyone outside of the movie business.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
The indie film scene in Phoenix has undergone a lot of changes in the past 15 years. Both the creative and the technical aspects have really advanced during that time, especially the technical side of it. I’ve worked with a couple of incredible talents who are literally one-man production teams: they own all of their equipment, do camera, sound, lighting, editing. I saw a local Sci Fi film with SFX that rival studio pictures and I asked the director who did the effects and he said, “Some guy on his laptop in Australia.” I believe the real breakout will come when the creative side evolves as well to make something as good or even better than Hollywood. That’s what we shoot for, and I spend a lot of time on the scripts before and during filming.

What are your plans for the future?
We’re preparing our tenth short, with plans for two more and many more scripts to choose from. I’ve hit the festival circuit in the Southwest pretty hard these past couple of years and I had a great time doing it, but everyone on our team wants to do a feature (so do I). It’s a much bigger venture, but I have numerous feature scripts, including feature scripts of some of our shorts, that we could do on an ultra-low budget. So…we’ll see.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://Instagram.com/Kestner.j
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/john.kestner
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@CavitySearchPicturesFilm-hr9sn

Image Credits
(My own photos)