Justin Boswick on The Ogre, Brotherhood, and the Spirit of the DIY Scene

In the noisy basements and small venues of Portland’s underground music scene, a band called Ogre has built a reputation for turning every show into something closer to a communal ritual than a concert. When the band performs, audiences aren’t just spectators—they become part of the experience. Filmmaker Justin Boswick wanted to capture that energy on film.

His short documentary The Ogre follows the three-member band—Ace, Grace, and Nils—as they prepare for their biggest show yet at Portland’s Mission Theater in 2024. What begins as an observational portrait of musicians preparing for a performance gradually morphs into something stranger: a blend of documentary realism and Lynchian absurdity, complete with a mysterious outsider named Rusty whose silent presence disrupts the band’s fragile dynamics. Beneath the humor and chaos, the film reveals something deeper—the sense of purpose and brotherhood that keeps working-class artists creating despite the grind of everyday life.

Shot largely by Boswick himself with minimal gear and almost no crew, the film embodies the DIY ethos it portrays. The project has already found its way onto the festival circuit, with selections at the Eastern Oregon Film Festival, Start Fresh PDX Festival, and the Brussels Independent Film Festival.

For Final Cut Magazine, Boswick spoke about capturing the feeling of a live show, making a film with almost no resources, and why the DIY scene might be the purest form of filmmaking left.

Justin, The Ogre feels both like a classic concert documentary and something far stranger. How did the idea for the film first come about?

The original idea for the film came after I had Ace Jennings and some friends over for a screening of Dont Look Back. After the screening, we joked about doing a very serious black-and-white concert film, but with some kind of twist.

Later on, I met with the whole band and we pitched ideas around this until we decided on using that format, with the twist being the Rusty character added to the mix. After that we were off to the races.

My goal for the film was to give the audience the impression of attending one of their live shows, and while I feel like I succeeded in that regard, the real heart of the film is in the passion of young working-class artists who were lucky enough to find others operating on the same wavelength. Ace, Grace, and Nils care about each other just as much as they care about the art they make, and I’ve just felt lucky getting to collaborate with them.

So much of art—especially filmmaking—is gatekept by access to money or connections and often created primarily for profit. But the DIY scene is just a bunch of people who really love making their art for the sake of creating something with people they love and care about. Grace says it best toward the end of the film when she talks about how being in Ogre gives her life purpose through all the meaningless jobs she has to work just to get by.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQLJYVD_IqE

The film has a strong visual identity despite its tiny budget. How did you approach the production practically?

I own a Canon C200 because it’s a workhorse of a camera for documentary cinematography, and I had the budget to rent a single zoom lens off ShareGrid for one day, so that basically decided my gear setup.

I ran handheld for versatility and to keep the visual energy high while focusing on finding frames and reaction shots that I could cut to in the edit.

I think production design has the biggest impact on a film’s color and look, so without having any control over that, the contrasting images I shot worked well in the black-and-white format in post. But I still wanted the final performance to feel cinematically different, so I kept those red tones in.

For the dream sequence, I locked the camera off on sticks to give it a more classic look. With the snow-covered mountains at the location, I leaned into a Ingmar Bergman-esque visual style that we refined during post-production.

You essentially shot the entire film alone. What were the biggest challenges during production?

For a film made with no budget, no crew outside myself, and an extremely improvised approach, there actually weren’t too many major challenges outside of keeping the energy up throughout the day.

By the time we got to Ogre performing, they had spent the entire day not only getting ready but also incorporating the film’s narrative beats, so we were all exhausted by the time they got on stage. But we didn’t let it show.

The dream sequence shoot had its own complications. We were filming along the Columbia River during a day when there was an atmospheric river overhead, so we got completely drenched. Whoever wasn’t on screen stepped up to help protect my camera and gear from getting wrecked.

When you watch the finished film now, what moment or element are you most proud of?

I’m really proud of how we were able to adapt to our circumstances and constraints yet still deliver an exciting and funny film.

It was shot entirely on the day of the show, with the dream sequence being a half-day pickup shoot months later. With no budget, no crew, and serious time constraints, we had to constantly adapt as we went.

Seeing the film play at festivals alongside projects that had budgets of tens of thousands of dollars was incredibly rewarding.

Your path into filmmaking seems to have taken several unexpected turns. How did it all begin?

I actually started out as an actor performing in musicals with a local community theater group. But I always had an interest in movies and writing.

In high school I learned how to film and edit through a TV broadcasting program, which eventually led me toward documentary work and making narrative shorts for fun.

I later went to film school in North Carolina for directing and screenwriting, but I dropped out after two years. I saved money working on farms back in New Jersey and then drove across the country to Los Angeles.

There I found work in location management at Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures, while producing independent projects on weekends. After producing my first feature film, I moved to Portland and started a production company where I now work on a wide range of projects.

What projects are you currently developing?

For a few years I tried to make my feature directorial debut—a sci-fi horror musical—but I couldn’t assemble a cast big enough to help with financing. So now I’m halfway through turning the screenplay into a novel.

Beyond that, I’m hoping to expand The Ogre into a feature-length documentary that follows the band on tour.

I’m also writing an absurdist comedy set in the world of trade show conventions. It’s sort of a mix between The Odyssey and No Exit.

You’ve already taken The Ogre to several festivals. What role do festivals play for filmmakers today?

Film festivals are a great place to network with other like-minded filmmakers and see projects you might not have stumbled across otherwise.

At the same time, it does feel like many of the larger festivals have become very corporate and are less focused on championing new voices than they are on securing sponsorships.

Art is subjective though, and programming a festival involves a lot of moving parts. I don’t blame festival organizers for wanting to build connections or keep their organizations sustainable.

Still, I think many indie filmmakers will probably have better luck getting eyes on their projects online than relying solely on festivals.

What advice would you give filmmakers navigating the festival circuit today?

I don’t think building your entire distribution plan around getting into festivals is the best strategy—especially for feature films.

Instead, treat each festival as an opportunity to meet people and find your audience. Have fun, watch a lot of films, connect with filmmakers whose work you admire, and show appreciation for the programmers who selected your film.

I’m still very new to the festival circuit myself, so I’m learning as I go, but it’s been a blast so far.

Looking ahead, how do you see the future of cinema evolving?

I hope the future of film is filled with more unique stories told by filmmakers with specific perspectives—people who aren’t trying to please everyone.

With the consolidation of legacy film studios and the influence of private equity, I worry that audiences might end up with endless AI-driven sequels and remakes instead of ambitious spectacle films that take risks.

But if that happens, independent filmmakers will still find ways to make great movies and get them into the world.

We might even see a resurgence of independent films touring with road-show style releases after the success of projects like Hundreds of Beavers or the self-distribution approach used by Iron Lung.

Are there filmmakers whose work you particularly admire?

In documentary filmmaking I’m a big fan of D. A. Pennebaker and Allan King.

But I also really admire Andrea Arnold. Fish Tank is one of my favorite films. I love how grounded her work feels—both visually and emotionally—and how close she lets the audience get to her protagonists.

She finds poetry in things that most people might walk past and see as mundane, and that’s something I hope I’m able to achieve one day.

Finally, is there a recent film that impressed you?

I really admired Rap World by Conner O’Malley and Danny Scharar. It’s a special film that pulls on your heartstrings and makes you feel like you’re truly living in those characters’ world. I highly recommend checking it out.

Final Cut: Why The Ogre Matters

Watching The Ogre, I kept thinking about the strange parallel between the band it portrays and the way the film itself was made. Both operate within the same fragile ecosystem of passion, exhaustion, and stubborn belief. Nobody involved seems to be doing this for comfort, stability, or financial security. They do it because they have to.

Boswick’s film captures something that is increasingly rare in contemporary cinema: creative life at ground level. Not the myth of the artist, but the daily grind of making art between shifts, between rent payments, between moments of doubt. In that sense, the film becomes more than a portrait of a band—it becomes a portrait of the entire DIY culture that keeps independent cinema alive.

What resonates most is the sense that the film, much like an Ogre show, invites the viewer to participate rather than observe from a distance. You feel the cramped rooms, the awkward friendships, the strange humor, the collective exhaustion that somehow transforms into joy the moment the music starts.

In a time when so much cinema is engineered to feel frictionless and market-tested, The Ogre reminds me why independent filmmaking matters. It’s messy, unpredictable, occasionally absurd—but it’s alive. And sometimes, that’s exactly what cinema needs.