Here is the Part 2 of a two-part interview I recently conducted with Zac Heath, director of "The River Within," which is now available in DVD. Zax candidly opened up about the difficult process of making films independently, his influences, and some of the lessons learned along the way.

At the conclusion of our interview, Zac graciously offered to give three DVD copies of his film to the ConversantLife audience. Here's how the DVD giveaway is going to work. I will choose three of the most insightful comments posted at the conclusion of either Part 1 or Part 2 of my Zac Heath interview.

Now, here's Part 2 of my interview with Zac:

CF: So, no film school experience.

ZH: Nope.

Is this your first time you’ve written a script?

I’ve written some scripts, but not a lot.  I’ve written plays, I’ve done a lot of theater, and I’ve written some short film scripts.  But, yeah this is my first feature film.

What kind of challenges did you face as an independent filmmaker, but also one who is making a film that has these faith roots?

One of the biggest challenges was lack of experience.  Everybody that was on board doing this, we were doing this so that we could learn as we went along.  I learned a lot of lessons and the film itself doesn’t look like it was shot for as low of a budget as we shot for.

No, and the cinematography is great

Yeah, Derrick Simms who did that, he did a fantastic job – he doesn’t have film school experience either.  He kind of grew up with a film camera in his hand.  For the budget, it looks like it was shot for more than what it was.  But at the same time, there’s still a lot of aspects where the finances and lack of experience really hurt us.  Some of that was in the organization of the shoot – a lot of things we learned along the way.  A lot of it was in knowing how to deal with different people, hiring people, things like that.   I’d never really hired that many people to work on any project before.  So, knowing what questions to ask and what to look for and those kinds of things (were a challenge).

For me the biggest lesson I learned throughout is to not make decisions based in fear.  A lot of times I’d have obstacles that I faced, and out of fear of what could possibly go wrong, I would take the quickest solution sometimes instead of waiting and figuring out the best solution.  I would say there’s 3 major events that happened during the course of the movie – which I’m not going to go into because I don’t want to bring in the people that it involved – but because of those decisions I made out of fear, it really hurt the production overall.  It was a good lesson to learn – to not decide things out of fear.

In looking back on making the movie, are there things that you feel most proud of about it?

Oh yeah, even though when I watch it now there are a million things I would like to have done differently with it.   But that’s the process of learning as you go, instead of going to film school, trying to make a movie as a way of doing it.

When I look at the performances we have, the storyline – I feel like it’s a nice story, it’s a heartwarming story, it’s a good story that builds on itself like once you start to get to know the characters.  In that way it was well developed.  When you get into the first 25 minutes, you’re rolling with it at that point.  There’s a lot of things that I look back at and am proud of.  I’m proud of the way the whole community came together, the crew came together, we were sleeping on cots…it wasn’t necessarily the best conditions.

You didn’t get to go to The Four Seasons in Arkansas?

No, no Four Seasons.  We though about it, but no…there’s no Four Seasons in Paragould, Arkansas (laughs).  It was the local motels.  Everybody was staying at my parent’s house in guest rooms and my brother’s house in guest rooms.

It really was.  Somebody donated an empty apartment, so we put air mattresses all over the floor and housed 4 or 5 guys in there.

What filmmakers influence you the most, either with this movie or just general filmmaking?

It’s hard to say who influences me the most, especially from that time.  At that time it was different then what I’ve already experienced since then as my knowledge of movies expands.  I can say the people who I admire most as filmmakers would be people like Ingmar Bergman.  So many of his films deal with issues of faith, but they’re not “religious” films.  They pose some very thought provoking questions and they don’t give you answers either, and I really like that aspect of it.  He sends you on this journey and you watch his movies and you leave you with something to think about.  Sometimes it’s depressing and sometimes it’s uplifting, but it’s always something to think about it.  I appreciate that about him.

Federico Fellini because of his way to incorporate both art and entertainment into the same package.  Oh, and the Coen’s are great and PT Anderson, someone I really like who is more recent.

Do you have any other script ideas in mind right now?

I’m actually putting the finishing touches on a script right now.  It’s on the 6^th draft.  From a technical standpoint it’s a much better script than what “The River Within” was when we shot it.  It’s in the same way faith based, it deals with issues of faith but there is no conversion moment in the movie.  It’s about a guy who is learning to deal with loss of love, innocence, life, and of his faith in the course of 40 days.  It’s his journey to finding truth again and wholeness.

As kind of a fun question, I know from your posting on the internet that you’ve been watching through “The Criterion Collection.” Do you have 3 or 4 films that have stuck out to you the most?

There’s so many that are so good.  Out of the one’s I’ve watched recently, one would be Ingmar Bergman’s film “Wild Strawberries” – I think that film affected me more deeply than any movie I’ve seen (maybe) ever, just in the way it dealt with issues of purpose of life and what everything means, and what we do with our time we have.

“8½” is possibly my favorite film ever because it’s dealing with a director who is struggling between trying to have integrity artistically but be commercially successful and popular.

“Solaris” by Andrei Tarkovsky was fantastic.  I thought it was going to be a sci-fi movie and it turned out be this great philosophical question movie.  More recently two films I really liked were “Revanche” by Gotz Spielman, which was really good, really good pacing and “In the Mood For Love” by Wong Kar Wai – really good storytelling, great cinematography, and everything.

People can pick up “The River Within” where?

It’s available online, from pretty much any retailer that sells dvd’s, Netflix, or you can go to www.theriverwithinmovie.com and Family Christian bookstores. Of course, if three people make great comments to either part of our interview, they will receive a free DVD copy of my film. What a deal!