More Orlando Posters Youth Culture Rooms Trends / Lifestyles College Favorites	Chapter 1 - Writing From Experience
	When you know your material as intimately as 24-year old Frank E. Flowers, passion sets the pace, so it’s no surprise that the young writer/director was able to shoot his first feature film in 29 days. Born and raised in the Cayman Islands, Flower’s says he doesn’t consider himself a historian or a sociologist, but he does know his way around the islands and a great deal about the rich texture of its culture. “There are just over 40,000 people on my island,” says Flowers, “and according to the most recent census, only 53% of them are technically locals or Caymanians. Also, there are 93 different countries represented in our population, and a large imported workforce of ex-patriot labor, consisting mostly of other West Indians, Americans and Brits. With such a diverse population there isn’t a paradigm for what a person from the Cayman Islands looks or speaks like. We’re human chameleons.” With a cultural groundwork as fertile as that, Flowers had no trouble developing the diverse characters that cross paths in Haven. “Since the Caymans are only 480 miles south of Miami -- about an hour by commercial flight away -- it’s no wonder that a number of corrupt individuals look for sanctuary here,” says Flowers. “They’re the perfect catalyst for telling a story about the fall of paradise.” Not leaving this “paradise” until he was 17 years old, when he headed for film school at USC, Flowers says that he wishes he could say he spent his formative years watching movies and studying directors, but that wasn’t the case. “We had only one movie theater on the island, and it played the same Hollywood blockbusters over and over again. Sometimes films wouldn’t change for months. So when I went to the theater, it was the stories that took place in the seats around me that proved most interesting. Even today, going to the movies here is an interactive experience,” laughs Flowers. “Patrons will often field phone calls, shout at the screen and carry on their lives with the movie playing in the background.” Being that the island wasn’t overly saturated with produced entertainment, Flowers says that he and his friends found ways to entertain themselves. “That’s how I became a storyteller, hanging out with everybody and talking about our adventures both present and past. The truth is, we had all lived and heard the same stories time and again, so we’d find different methods of retelling them to keep them interesting.” In Haven, Flowers does much the same thing to keep his audience on the edge of their seats. By overlapping storylines, using different camera angles, playing with focus and speed, and making fascinating use of time shifts, he grabs viewers and doesn’t let go until the last frame of the film. But action and suspense are not the only techniques Flowers uses to intrigue his audience. By adding layers of diversity and by infusing depth into his characters, he lets them tell the story. “Growing up in a community so small, I met all kinds of people,” says Flowers. “I wasn’t aware of any racial tension, segregated class systems or gated communities. People left their doors open at night, the police never carried guns, and guys like my dad, who never went to college, were able to make a good life for themselves and their families.” But the Caymans changed over the years, and Flowers watched the transition. It is the story of that rising and falling evolution that the young writer/director tells in Haven. “I learned about the business undercurrent running through the island through my father. He was a local businessman, and through his eyes I met the world of entrepreneurs, policymakers and lawyers. Some were from the islands like him, and they lived through the transition years when Cayman changed from a sleepy little fishing town into a financial powerhouse.” To be sure, the Cayman Islands with its unique tax-incentives and laissez-faire attitude became a Mecca for emerging businesses. It led to a new generation of working class and it enticed hotshots from the US and the UK to join local Caymanians in the banking/financial sector. With the influx of people, the island began to transform and lose much of its innocence. “It was the perfect model of a melting pot -- a society with so many different perspectives, from the ambitious high school graduate who would grow up to manage a bank, to the guy in the same class who would grow up to rob it. I know these people -- they are my people, and they’ve got quite a story to tell.” 4 Next Page: From Script to Screen
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