Locally-produced film 'The Candy Ban' to screen in Idaho Falls - East Idaho News
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Locally-produced film ‘The Candy Ban’ to screen in Idaho Falls

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Courtesy Scratchboard Productions Facebook

IDAHO FALLS — “The Candy Ban,” a film shot and produced in Ammon and Idaho Falls, is set to screen at the Paramount Theater in Idaho Falls next week.

The film is a family-friendly heist comedy starring local actors and filmed on locations in Ammon and Idaho Falls. The movie is set in a community where the mayor and the school principal have banned sugar.

“It’s about these kids that team up together to make candy and then they sell a whole bunch of it,” Travis Parker, the film’s writer/director, told EastIdahoNews.com. “There are a lot of supply chain issues where people just don’t have any sugar available, so they have to start stealing it from their neighbors and taking other peoples’ sugar supplies.”

Parker said the movie sprouted from a seed he found on the internet.

“I went online looking for ideas,” Parker said. “Just one-line ideas for a story. One line that came back was ‘kids start selling candy as an underground drug ring.’ I thought, ‘Oh, that’s kind of cool. What would bring about that situation?’ So I started writing reasons that would happen and why kids would have to sell candy in an underground ring.”

“The Candy Ban” gives Idaho Falls residents a chance to see locations they might recognize on the big screen.

“A lot of the locations were around in our neighborhood,” said Parker. “Most of the film was shot in the Cornerstone neighborhood in Ammon. We did film a bit in the Praxium School, which is somewhat connected with Rocky Mountain Middle School. Then a lot of it was shot outside around in the town. We did some drone shots out at the Evans Grain Towers and then a bit at Ammon Cemetery.”

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Courtesy Scratchboard Productions Facebook

Along with local settings, “The Candy Ban” also features a lot of local actors, many of them children. Parker said that working with young people can present some unique challenges.

“There were quite a few kids who had done plays before, but then there were kids who had never done any acting before,” he said. “There were quite a few takes where I’d have to go out in front of the camera and tell them how I wanted it acted out and have them try it a few more times.”

“One of the biggest issues is that some of the kids always had something going on in the summertime with their families,” he added. “It was mostly scheduling issues because you’re not only working with the kids’ schedule but also with their parents’ schedule.”

Parker also said the “wonderful Idaho weather” caused issues for the production.

“The wind was pretty tough,” he said. “A lot of times, we would be filming outside, and the wind would start picking up we would have to call it for the day and come back and try it again.”

Parker’s own schedule also presented some challenges to getting the film completed. Parker works a day job in a paint store and operates a screen printing side-business, Awesome Apparel, in his off hours. Finding time to produce a film required some resourcefulness.

“I mostly just don’t sleep,” he said. “I work all day at the paint store, and then in the evening times, I get home, and if I have any shirt jobs, I’ll get right on those. I’ll usually work on that for two or three hours. Luckily, this summer we were really slow with screen printing. So I had a lot more time this summer, and we just scheduled out every Wednesday as days we were going to film.”

Parker recently completed postproduction on “The Candy Ban” and is excited for it to finally get in front of audiences.

“If you live anywhere on the eastern side of Idaho Falls, you’ll probably see somebody that you know in the film,” he said. “It’s a completely Idaho Falls-born film: written here, filmed here, edited here, the music was done here. Everybody that’s in the movie is from here, so it’s totally native to Idaho Falls.”

You can see “The Candy Ban” when it hits the screen at the Paramount Theater in Idaho Falls. The film screens from Oct. 4 to Oct. 8 at 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. Click here to get tickets.

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Courtesy Scratchboard Productions Facebook

Thanks to Fat Cats in Rexburg for providing screenings for movie reviews on EastIdahoNews.com.

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