Slideshow: Civil-war movie shoot in City Market
With his cast of mostly volunteer actors mingling behind him, Shane Seley had no delusions of normalcy. “We totally are weird,” the founder of Wide Awake Films said with a laugh.
| Carolyn Szczepanski |
| Actors hollered at soldiers to get lost during the film shoot for August Light |
On Saturday morning, Seley and his crew turned back time in two pockets of City Market, filming the final scenes of their movie August Light: The Civil War Begins in Missouri. Wrapping up two years of work, the crew used the backdrop of Kansas City to depict, among other scenes, the St. Louis Massacre — a bloody street skirmish during which Northern soldiers fired on more than 100 civilians.
“The massacre was Missouri’s Fort Sumter,” Seley said. “We’re not in St. Louis, but we’ll do it justice in Kansas City.”
He certainly didn’t have trouble recruiting people to travel. To take part in the movie, historical re-enactors and civil-war buffs came from as far as Keokuk, Iowa. Among the men and women wearing wool pants and petticoats were attorneys and CEOs. Aside from a short break for pizza — still sporting their 19th Century garb — they hollered and cheered and fired their muskets for hours.
Click here for a slideshow of the action.
