Anc Movies: Wife and husband Trisha and Charles Borowicz (right) and their partner, Barnaby Aaron (far left), are local film makers from Greenfield, Indiana. (Frank Espich for The Star)

While Hoosier filmmakers see their home state as a great place to make movies, the plot thickens when talk turns to money.

Filmmakers say Indiana, rife with great locations and supportive people, lacks the tax rebates and financial incentives found in other states.

Those breaks are so hard to pass up that even a new movie about Hoosier high school basketball hysteria was primarily shot outside Indiana.

The movie, "Home of the Giants," will screen at this year's Heartland Film Festival (Oct. 18-26). Its writer and director, Marion native Rusty Gorman, said he fought to shoot the film entirely in Indiana. He ended up with two days in Marion and one in Indianapolis. The rest happened in North Carolina, which offers a 15 percent tax rebate, and on a faux Midwestern town built on a back lot in California. "Creatively, the film would have been better served in Indiana," said Gorman, who lives in Chicago. "But it doesn't make financial sense to shoot in a state that doesn't offer rebates."

Legislation to boost incentives for filmmakers easily passed in the Indiana House and Senate earlier this year. But Gov. Mitch Daniels vetoed the bill in May. An override vote could happen in November. Leigh Durbin, director of film development for the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, said Daniels vetoed the bill after changes in its language moved some oversight away from her office. She's hoping new legislation offering a competitive rebate could pass in January's session.

"I'm excited that we are getting the building blocks in place to really help the film industry take off in the next year," said Durbin. Right now, Indiana offers sales-tax exemption for filmmakers buying equipment here and seldom-used economic-development rebates for people building studio facilities. But that's not enough.

"It seems pretty simple if you just look at the numbers and do the math," Gorman said of tax-break benefits. He gave Louisiana and New Mexico as examples of states offering bigger breaks to aid budding film industries. "They have more productions than they can handle, with crew members moving there and people building film studios," he said. "It just grows and grows."

Durbin understands why filmmakers are following the money. "Ten years ago, incentives weren't as important as they are now. But, with so many states offering them, production companies have to look at the bottom line," she said. Once the incentives are in place, Indiana -- with its varied settings -- is perfect for filmmakers, Gorman said. "Indianapolis is big enough to play for the metropolitan stuff. And the state offers all kinds of other looks -- the rolling south, the flat plains in the middle and industry up north. You've got diversity. It all comes down to economics." But sometimes there's a cost to saving money. Gorman, for instance struggled to find extras to fill basketball gyms in North Carolina. That wouldn't have been a problem in Indiana.

"The people of Marion were very supportive of the project during our days of shooting there," he said. "Everybody said, 'Whatever we can help you guys with, we'll do.' "

Jaron Henrie-McCrea, 25, an Indianapolis native studying film at Columbia University in New York, said Indiana is where he feels most comfortable making movies.

"Everybody has been really nice and accommodating," he said. "They understand what you are trying to do and want to help."

He pointed to a shoot when he was dancing at Monument Circle. Police officers came by to see what was going on, but once they all talked, the officers wound up in part of a scene.

That kind of attitude extends to the community of filmmakers in general, according to Indianapolis director Dan T. Hall. "It's fabulous how people are eager to get involved and help each other," he said. "I equate it to the old days of your neighbors getting together to help raise a barn."

Filmmaker Kate Chaplin, 30, who moved to Indianapolis in 2004, also has found lots of support. "It's incredible how open and inviting this community is," she said. "We're all trying to make films. And we realize nobody does it on their own." Here's a look at several local filmmakers who are making moves in the movie industry:

Chris Sickels
Chris Sickels doesn't design his puppets to move like marionettes; they don't have strings or rods attached. And while they're usually very still -- photographed in lush theatrical scenes for the illustration work he does -- Sickels enjoys seeing his clay, wire and fabric people move. The Greenfield-based artist and filmmaker makes this happen through stop- motion animation.

Sickels, 33, knew animation was for him after giving a live puppet performance while an art student in Cincinnati in the 1990s. "I started doing puppets as a way to try to make my paintings come to life," Sickels said. "This is better because it's removed from that aspect of the live audience. And I can still see the puppets move. That's fun."

This time-consuming process of photographing the puppets' movements -- frame by frame -- with a digital camera is truly a labor of love for Sickels. While some of his animations -- like a recent series for the National Newspaper Association -- are paid jobs, he said they don't really pay off.

"Money-wise, it's not worth it at all," said Sickels, who points to filmmakers Tim Burton, the Quay Brothers and Jan Svankmajer as influences. "This is something I do for my own pleasure."

The two-minute "Red Thread" animation -- about a curious puppet's adventures with human hands and a spool of thread -- took 80 hours to shoot.

"I tell people I think I'm always trying to find the hardest way to illustrate," he said.

And that's just the start. Besides building the characters and sets, the process also involves further steps, usually in collaboration with others on the music and sound design. Sickels enjoys that, too. "It's fun to give them the raw materials and see what they'll do with it," he said of regular collaborators around the country like Brian Krueger, Andras Wahorn and Aaron Arendt. "I'm always pleasantly surprised with what they send back."

Sickels grew up on a dairy farm in Winchester. He met his wife, Jennifer, when their cows were tied up across from each other at the county fair. After living in Cincinnati and Los Angeles, they came back to Indiana to raise their two young children.

"More and more, I realize what I do goes back to what I learned being on the farm -- making something out of nothing," he said.

His latest project recently moved from living only in his mind and sketch book to a rough animation of the drawings. That's the way Sickels tests his ideas and plans before the stop-motion work begins.

This new short is about a dancing water tower -- like the sky-blue ones that towns use for drinking water, but with eyes and a mouth -- and a "pie hole" character that is just an enormous mouth. He's featured in Sickels' new illustrated book called "The Look Book."

"Now I just need to figure out how to make a water tower move," he said.

Dan T. Hall
After making family-oriented feature films based on stories he shared with his kids, Dan T. Hall has moved on to telling tales from the crypt.

His movies "Central State: Asylum of the Insane" and "Ghost Stories: Walking With the Dead" are documentaries exploring haunted places in Indiana.

Released in 2006, "Central State" -- which drew sellout crows to the IMAX at the Indiana State Museum -- investigates paranormal possibilities at the former state mental hospital on the Near Westside.

Hall's latest effort, "Ghost Stories," visits the Rivoli Theatre and Tuckaway House in Indianapolis and the historic jail in Hartford City.

He first became intrigued by the subject of haunted places while shooting "The Little Treasure Hunters" on the grounds of the abandoned Central State Hospital.

"Odd things kept happening when we were there. It was creepy," Hall said. "I was fascinated by the resonance of the place, the vibrations. It just changed everybody when we were there."

Since then, "trying to discover what it is that makes things go bump in the night" has become Hall's passion as a filmmaker. "I want to answer the question 'Are these things real?' " he said. "But we're only opening up more questions. The onion is being peeled back and we're getting down to the core."

After getting his start in corporate video, Hall decided to leave that behind and pursue his dream of making feature films. "I took a look at my life and asked if I wanted to be making the best corporate videos I could or if I wanted to give it a shot making the movies I wanted to make," Hall said. "I decided to stop being sidetracked by life and settling for less than what I wanted."

So, using stories that came while playing with toy trains with his son, Hall made "587: The Great Train Robbery" on a tiny budget. After a nine-month delay when the train in the film broke down, his film was finally finished in 2000. This was soon followed by two more family features -- the latter being 2005's "EZ Money." All three have enjoyed international distribution, including airtime on cable stations, Hall said.

Now, he's in pre-production on a feature film about a serial killer with a rare condition that keeps him from feeling pain.

AnC Movies
Three isn't a crowd for the trio of filmmakers with AnC Movies.

From the house they share along U.S. 40 in Greenfield, married couple Trisha and Charles Borowicz and longtime friend Barnaby Aaron make offbeat films when time and money allow. The now 27-year-old filmmakers worked on their first films together while students at Mount Vernon High School in Fortville.

They continued to collaborate -- when they could -- while attending three different colleges. In 2000, AnC moved from VHS equipment to a digital camera and began getting more serious about their craft, making a 35-minute hit-man movie called "Him Her Roland."

"We did it so we could see if we could make a movie that we could finish," Charles Borowicz said. "We figured if we could do that, we could keep making movies."

They did and they have, learning more with each film they make.

They soon moved to shorter films, taking turns leading small projects.

Once those were finished in 2005, AnC screened its films in an event it created called "Movie Prom" at Birdy's Bar & Grill.

"If you didn't like the movies, at least you were at the prom," Aaron said.

In the past few years, AnC has been making a series of "M.D. Hearts" films that spoof soap operas. The casts come from people who win raffle drawings. So these movies -- featured on the group's Web site -- are made for fun and fundraising.

"We try to be as innovative in our promotions as we are in our movies," Aaron said. And that's not always easy.

"Most artists will tell you that putting yourself out there is actually a lot harder than the art you do," Trisha Borowicz said.

These days, the trio is focused on writing its first feature, a nonfiction "visual essay" about female sexuality and its myths and truths. While it is serious stuff, Trisha Borowicz said no stuffy talking heads will be found in this unusual approach to documentary.

"We always aim for entertainment in our movies," she said. "The same is true for this one."

Kate Chaplin
After finishing high school in Michigan, Kate Chaplin moved to Los Angeles to be the next Quentin Tarantino. "I thought it was easy," she said.

It wasn't.

Then, after only a few years at UCLA's film school, she decided to put her movie-making dreams on pause. With a young child to care for and her husband serving in Iraq, Chaplin, 30, focused on writing and saw three of her nonfiction books published.

"It was easier to stay home and write," she said. "You can't make movies that way."

In 2004, with her husband back from the Army, Chaplin and her family settled in Indianapolis. And she soon returned to filmmaking.

"I loved it in California, but creatively it kind of steals your soul," she said. "Being in Indiana helps you develop your voice, your own style. I wouldn't want it any other way."

Chaplin has made mostly short movies in the past few years -- four- five- and 12-minute ones. "Loss," a short about dealing with losing people you love, recently screened at the Indiana Film Society's INDY Awards.

While she's moving toward making longer films, Chaplin enjoys the challenge of making movies in the short form.

"It's hard because you don't have a chance to develop characters," she said. "They're just slices of life, just mirrors to who we are. That's what is nice about it."

Chaplin's next movie, which is now in pre-production, will be a five-minute short included in the worldwide Pangea Day film event in May, which is designed to help people consider the importance of compassion and tolerance.