Six Days In Roswell - roswell6.com

Making Of

Roger Nygard worked with Tim Johnson on TREKKIES, a documentary about the fans of "Star Trek." Nygard was directing TREKKIES in 1996 and needed somebody to shoot simultaneously at a convention he could not attend. Although Johnson had been shooting and producing industrial videos for ten years at Lifetouch Video Creations in Minneapolis, he had never picked up a film camera. Taking a chance, Tim bought a cheap, wind-up, Russian 16mm camera (a Krasnogorsk, costing about $350 new) and shot several rolls. The footage was terrific, and Nygard sent Johnson to cover other "Star Trek" events.

In January of 1997 as Nygard was nearing completion on TREKKIES, Johnson suggested they film the Roswell UFO Encounter, a celebration planned for the 50th Anniversary of the alleged crash of an alien space ship in 1947. Tim discovered the existence of the event through Richard Kronfeld, one of the featured interviewees in TREKKIES, whom Tim had filmed. In addition to being a Trek fan, Kronfeld is an avid UFO enthusiast, and he was planning to make the pilgrimage to Roswell, to the largest UFO convention in history.

Nygard's response to the idea was, "I'm sure there will be a lot of Trekkies in Roswell, but I'll bet that subject could be a whole film in itself." Johnson agreed, and set out to raise the money to finance the shoot. Johnson called all the rich people he knew (a total of three), pitched the idea, and raised just enough of a budget to cover the trip. With seed money in place, Nygard raised enough additional funding to complete the film.

Every film needs a story, and the filmmakers hit on the idea of focusing the documentary on Richard Kronfeld and his trip to Roswell. "We created a back-story for Rich and his character, a character that is just a subdued exaggeration of who Rich really is," says Nygard. "You can turn on the Discovery Channel and see three documentaries in the same month about Roswell. And they're all so dull and serious. We wanted to take a lighter look at the subject."

The filmmakers began by interviewing Kronfeld. Then they drove to New Mexico. From arrival to departure, the week in Roswell provided an amazing odyssey for Richard Kronfeld, and the documentary cameras.

After the shoot, Nygard began assembling the footage, The story began to take shape in the form of chapters separated chronologically and thematically. To tie it all together, the filmmakers asked Kronfeld to narrate the film with journal passages. The result is the record of one man's hilarious journey in search of the unknown, and a journey in search of himself.