We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Marlon Servellon. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Marlon below.

Alright, Marlon thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

The most meaningful project I’ve worked on was the one that took me almost 7 years to finish. We just had a premier event for it in Jan of this year at the Logan Theater, it was for an fan film based on the comic book CHEW. The film is called BEET COP and there were times I thought it would never be finished or seen by the public. This is a project that conception wise began around 2015 or 2016, I was looking to future projects to work on and looked at fan films as a way to attract larger audiences. I looked online for the best comics that had yet to be adapted to live action and CHEW was at the top of the list. I bought the first issue and was hooked, I loved it and had the type of tone and style I wanted to produce. I wrote up an outline for a short and had a friend write the first draft. He also became a big fan of the comic and I was really impressed with his take. I shared the script with my production partner and he was also impressed. We still had a few other projects to finish but decided we would work on this script when the time was right. Spring of 2019 we had just finished a short we were working on and made the decision to move forward with BEET COP. We held auditions for all of the main characters and had a good turn out. The actor we wanted to cast as the lead turned out to be a union actor, we didn’t plan on this being a SAG project but he too was also a fan of the source material and did a great job at auditions. I decided to fill out the paperwork and make it a SAG project. Shooting began late summer 2019 and things were going smoothly, we filmed until Nov of that year and decided to halt production as it was getting too cold outside and we still had outdoor shoots to complete. So we planned on resuming filming late spring 2020. Jan of 2020 we released a short teaser with the footage we shot onto youtube, to my surprise the co-creator of the comic CHEW saw it and reached out to me. He said he loved what he saw and looked forward to seeing more, I shared the news with the others and they were all excited. I was even in talks with a couple of investors who were interested in acquiring the rights for the live action for CHEW, things seemed to be heading in a great direction. Then March of 2020 happened, COVID took over and shut everything down. 2 of the main actors had to fly back to their home states because they lost their jobs as actors in the city. Despite this I did not want to give up on this project, Aug of 2020 we shot some additional scenes that did not require the main actors just so we could stay busy. Sep of 2020 I was able to schedule all of the main actors and crew to return to finish the film, all except one, the lead actor decided not to return, he was still too uncomfortable with the COVID situation. So I had to cancel the shoot for the rest of the year, it was not until Aug of 2021 that he agreed to return, the pandemic had calmed down by then, I was able to once again schedule and plan the whole cast and crew to return to finish filming. The last shooting was done on a weekend in Oct 2021, it was 2 grueling back to back 12 hr shoots but it was done. Then came the post production nightmare, the project was handed off to one editor after another, every time some personal problem would arise and work could not continue on the project. Finally in the fall of 2025 the film was mostly finished and I had begun to plan for the screening event to showcase it alongside a handful of other Chicago filmmaker’s shorts. There is a whole lot of drama that went on behind the scenes of this film, it is meaningful to me because I never gave up and I did not want to disappoint all of the people who worked hard on this film. It is something I will always look back on and say “yeah, I did not give up and I got it done”.

Marlon, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Well, first and foremost I am a huge fan of films, of all kind. For years I’ve always wanted to get into the world of filmmaking. It started with acting, I tried acting when I was in college and loved it, afterwards I continued with auditions and was not getting casted as often as I liked which is when I decided I should write and film things on my own. Finding the right collaborators is not easy, they have to have a passion to achieving the same goal as you, I met many people who were potential collaborators but things would fall apart when talk turned to action. It seemed some people would rather just fantasize and come up with ideas rather than actually try to make them reality. I met my first real collaborator in 2014 Brian Streiff, we shared a genuine interest in films and creating, I decided to buy a camera and run with it. We had no idea what we were doing but slowly we figured it out. We began to include other collaborators, it felt like forming a band in some ways, one would direct, one would write, one would do the camera work, and one would do sound, lighting was a shared job. We called our production group RAVEN ROULETTE. We started off with a comedy web series which we filmed 2 seasons of, then we switched to short original narrative work, I can now say 3 of our projects have screened at a movie theater, I never thought I would ever see something I worked on on the big screen being enjoyed by a group of people. Over the years we’ve helped other creatives with their projects as well, be it editing, writing, casting, and even location scouting.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

For me, it’s giving a outlet not just for myself but for others to express themselves creatively/artistically. It’s a great joy to see the comradery of creatives all working as one to create the same thing. If anything I like making people feel they are special and appreciated and that the skills/talents they posses deserve to be seen by others.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

Yes, it is not an easy gig lol. People who have never participated do not understand the struggle and hard work it is to make anything. First is the conception, the idea, then the writing, it has to be to your liking and have others go over it for additional feedback. Once you feel your material is ready then there’s the casting, the crew, the locations, the props, etc… As a producer my job was to organize the cast and crew to be at the same place on the same day at the same time. Any cancellations could affect the whole shoot, and if it is an outdoor shoot you have to think about the weather. A 10 min scene on screen could take a whole day to shoot with many moving pieces. Then there’s is post production where unfortunately many projects go to die. Editing is a whole different world and it involves a lot of patience and hard work, so that 10 min scene could take weeks or even months to complete. So I wish people would be more aware that what they are seeing on screen involved a lot of dedication and work of many individuals.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raven.roulette1
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marlon.servellon.3
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ravenroulette5559