From building a life-size Millennium Falcon to working with Academy Award
winner Mickey Rooney…We are Mental Ward Films!

Mental Ward Film Productions was formed in the spring of 1999 by Director Dennis Ward. At the time, Dennis was in his senior year at the University of Kansas and attempting to come up with a cool sounding name for his production company. He was currently operating under the banner of Raging River Productions, but he wanted something that would make it more personal and allow him to put his own personal quarky stamp on it. Thus, the birth of Mental Ward Films.

The early days of the production company were extremely rocky and it did not look as if the production company would survive. Dennis was attempting to film his first feature film, Strike It Up, and was plagued by the common mistakes first time directors make, production problems, and financial setbacks. Sadly, Strike It Up was never finished and Dennis was forced to sell all the film equipment and close up shop, but not before doing one final thing with the camera.

ABC’s television show Good Morning America was sponsoring an “I See Scary Movies” contest where viewers were encouraged to send in a homemade three minute scary movie. The winning videos would be shown Halloween week, with the winners would get a chance to meet M. Night Shyamalan. Using the camera he had just sold on EBAY, Dennis quickly filmed a three minute horror film before shipping the camera off to the winning bidder. He edited the film on a friends editing station and submitted it. When the finalists were announced, Dennis was not one of them, but they did include a clip of his short to show viewers some of the videos that were submitted. That one little three second clip on Good Morning America turned Dennis’s entire film career around.

With a new taste of success in his mouth, Dennis was able to secure enough financing to allow him to make the multi-award winning short, Stuck on Star Wars. This hilarious comedy was about several college dropouts who decide to build a life-size Millennium Falcon in their backyard. To pull off the film, Dennis was going to have actually build a life-size Millennium Falcon in somebody’s backyard. For the stunt, he talked his good friend Jeff McNally into it. It was this stunt that caught the media’s attention and made national news. Over a two week period, Dennis conducted over 40 radio station interviews, numerous television interviews, was featured on Comedy Central’s the Daily Show, and had a blurb written about him in the USA Today Paper. The short then went on the film festival circuit and won numerous awards, including first place at the Dead Center Film Festival.

Feeling confident, Dennis decided to make another attempt at filming a feature film. For the project, he chose a comedy/drama named Grassfire. The story was about a group of slackers who were creating a video game, and of course they were doing everything but working on the game. Production wrapped in 2003 and the film was released in 2004 with limited distribution in the Kansas City market. The film then went on to win several film festivals, including second place at the Kan Film Festival.

Currently Dennis has teamed up with producer Brad Perkins to create the hilarious comedy Bamboo Shark. The movie, expected out Fall 2008, stars Academy Award winner Mickey Rooney and features over 50 celebrity impersonators. Dennis is also working on his the script for his next project which he hopes to start production in early 2009.