When actor Craig Richards considered moving from Los Angeles to Bend several years ago, he asked himself, “Will they find me?”

By “they,” of course, he means the film industry at large.

He had landed small roles in such shows as “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman” and bit parts in films such as “The Majestic.” Judging from his profile on the Internet Movie Database, the beefy actor has a particular knack for playing security guards and cops.

“Down in L.A., I worked a lot,” he explains. “Moving up here, I thought, was kind of risky.”

Still, in 2002, he, his wife and their young family made the leap north.

“The way I looked at it, I was tired of playing tiny little roles that would end up get cut out of movies; big movies, anyway. I thought, maybe there’s more opportunity to work smaller films and play a more significant role and expand my range a little bit,” the 51-year-old says.

“So far, I haven’t been proven that it’s a bad idea.”

Here here: Not only can filmmakers find actors like Richards, they don’t have to travel far to work together: They’re all local.

Thanks in part to the affordable format of digital video and the rapid growth of national film festivals — including the BendFilm Festival — an increasing number of low-budget, homegrown film productions are giving actors like Richards more opportunities, he says.

Nationally, there’s been a commensurate rise in the festivals and filmmaking, according to Barbara Morgan, the founder and executive director of the Austin Film Festival.

“I think festivals in general have opened people’s eyes to the product they can see and helped indie filmmakers become more accessible to the public,” she says. “I think it’s made it more accessible for more people to get the equipment and actually go out there and make a film.”

Today, one can buy a digital camera for a fraction the cost of traditional film stock, which for a feature-length film could run into tens of thousands of dollars, a burdensome amount for a new director wading into unfamiliar waters.

With the rise in sheer volume of films being made and submitted, Morgan’s festival gets increasingly more submissions and has to turn down films of a quality they might have accepted when the festival started in 1994.

She adds with just a hint of cynicism that she’s not saying more good movies are being made.

“One could make an argument that truly great filmmaking is not easy to pull off,” says Morgan, “but, by the same token, there are some really great people making films that could not have done it had it not become more accessible.”

Since landing in Bend, Richards has appeared regularly on community theater stages and acted in several independent films, where he’s been allowed to wear many hats in the movie-making process.

When he was in Los Angeles, Richards would make a nuisance of himself on large Hollywood productions, he says, loitering behind the director and observing things from the other side of the lens.

“I’ve been doing that for 30 years. Behind the camera’s been very exciting for me, but I never had a chance to put my hands on anything. In a big feature film in L.A., you go sit in your trailer, and then you’re called (to) the set, and you mind your own business and don’t touch anything because that’s someone’s union job.”

On a hot, late July afternoon in the living room of a borrowed rental home across from Drake Park, Richards trained a hand-held camera on the set of “Wings of Faith,” capturing candid moments for the “making of” segment of the DVD.

The film is the brainchild of KTVZ (Z21) evening newscast director Gretchen Pitluk, 25. She wrote “Wings of Faith” in 2003 while in film school in Chicago.

Wanting to do something creative in her free time, she enlisted the help of one of her Z21 coworkers, Jory Hyman, who is director of photography and special effects for “Wings of Faith,” a short, dramatic film about a woman named Grace who loses her husband unexpectedly.

It stars local stage actor Patty Rosen as a widow dealing with grief after her husband’s sudden death. The evocative set captured the mood of an elderly widow’s home, with wooden furniture and numerous pictures and knick-knacks, coffee cups and general debris of grief.

“She didn’t get to say goodbye, and she’s feeling really guilty about what happened,” explains director Pitluk. “She’s trying to get over the grief and loss of losing a loved one, and on top of that, her friends convince her to go see a psychic” for a chance to say goodbye. The psychic, Madame Luna, is played by Mike Ficher who answered an ad for a June casting call.

Already, the film is in post-production and is being edited toward completion. The estimated cost is about $8,000, and the film should clock in at about 20 minutes, Pitluk says. Though she didn’t make the deadline for the 2007 BendFilm Festival, she hopes to submit it to Chicago International Film Festival and complete it in time for Sundance Film Festival’s September deadline.

She’s not the only Central Oregon trying to land a slot in the competitive film festival world.

What follows is a look at other recent independent films by local filmmakers. Some are set in Central Oregon, others connected only through the fact that the makers call Central Oregon home at the moment. In Tim Cash’s “Skipping Stones,” Central Oregon’s mountains stand-in for Nepal. La Pine newcomer Sandor Lau filmed his documentary, “Squeegee Bandit,” while living in New Zealand.

The filmmakers run the gamut from first-timers to film-school grads to the self-taught. Some of the below works have been submitted to BendFilm, Central Oregon’s annual celebration of independent cinema. This year’s event runs Oct. 11-14, and organizers will award thousands of dollars in prize money to independent films.

Taken as a whole, they suggest that, where film is concerned, Oregonians may be encroaching just a little on a slice of California’s claim.

‘Ready’

“Ready,” a documentary by Robert Tadjiki, Peter Fellmer, and Chris Hanson, is about Bend High student Sami Tulley, who has cerebral palsy, giving viewers an inside look at the triumphs and disappointments of her senior year of high school.

Tadjiki’s personal story may already by known to Bulletin readers. In addition to being a popular teacher at Bend High, where he teaches students with developmental disabilities — work that earned him a Teacher of the Year award from USA Today — the 36-year-old sells original artwork by Chinese orphans through the charitable Web site Scrolls from China (www.scrollsfromchina.com).

Somewhere amid all this, he found time to executive produce “Ready.”

“I am a busy guy,” Tadjike says with a laugh. “I’m good at multitasking.” “Ready” evolved from working with director Fellmer to develop “a good story” from among the many of Tadjiki’s Bend High pupils.

“We’ve got stories all the time with my students, and their lives are testaments to triumph and hope. We tried to put something together, and we didn’t know what we could get. When you make a documentary, you never know what’s going to transpire.”

Many of Tadjiki’s family, students and coworkers helped film “Ready,” which has been submitted to BendFilm for consideration.

“We’re just really pleased with Sammi’s desire for success and her finding her dream.” (See the trailer at www.readymovie.com)

‘Skipping Stones’

Before Tim Cash embarked on the making of “Skipping Stones,” a mind-bending odyssey set partly in Nepal, but filmed in the Cascades and locations in Bend, he thought he knew what he was getting himself into.

“What I knew then, compared to what I know now, is a whole different (thing),” says Cash, a self-taught filmmaker and music video director. “It was a total learning experience, and that was my goal: It was like, ‘I’m going to make a movie and I’m going to learn every aspect of filmmaking. And I did, and then some.”

The film cost about $800, and much of the filming was done at odd hours to accommodate the work schedules of his volunteer cast, which included his wife, Yuvia Singing-Storm. He says he also received help from community members and businesses. He shot the memorable diner scene at The Breakfast Club restaurant on Greenwood Avenue, and Rescue Consignment helped supply the wardrobe. (www.farfromearthfilms.com)

‘Smile’ and ‘Sour’

Their titles suggest companion pieces, and in some ways, Nathan Gray’s “Smile” and “Sour” are related, in that they’re both skateboard documentaries and that he traveled abroad in order to make each of them.

Gray, 27, a skateboarder and photographer, spent part of his childhood in Saudi Arabia, where his father worked for an oil company. He traveled to Bangalore, India, to make “Smile” and the Middle East for “Sour.”

Made with support from Element Skateboards, “Smile” chronicles Gray’s six-month visit to India, where he taught young children in the slums of Bangalore how to skateboard. Skating is completely new in India, he says, and while there’s plenty of concrete on which to ride, there’s also traffic and crowding for riders to contend with.

“From there, I went to the Middle East to make ‘Sour,’” he says. During the course of another eight months, “I made a skate film about skaters from Jordan and Israel getting together the first time, and making peace through skateboarding. Jews and Muslims hanging out, just skating the streets, doing their thing.”

Gray moved to Bend in 2003, and when not traveling abroad, he works at a wilderness therapy school for days at a time. He doesn’t have a preference between the two, but “Smile” is the more personal of the two projects, “Sour” the more collaborative.

He submitted both 50-minute documentaries to BendFilm.

“I submitted them both because I was like, ‘I got ’em, why not submit ’em?’ I’m more about sharing, and if people are curious, letting them view what I came up with.”

To that same end, an art show opening Sept. 29 at the Old Mill Martini Bar will feature Gray’s video, photographs, graffiti and skateboard art relating to his travels. (www.grayghostrider.com)

‘Squeegee Bandit’

Sándor Lau, 32, made “Squeegee Bandit” in New Zealand. It’s a 75-minute documentary about the life of a Maori man named Starfish, a street corner window washer in South Auckland.

“I met Starfish, who was just making money hand over fist because the other window washers were kind of ‘Oh, yeah, I’ll wash your window,’ but he understood it was more like street theater than customer service.”

To Lau’s thinking, Starfish was going to be a movie star. “The film follows him through nine months of life and struggles, two women, three cars, thirty places of residence and about a kilo of (marijuana). It’s about finding some kind of salvation and redemption.”

As the result of earning a Fulbright Scholarship in 2000, Lau spent a total of seven years in New Zealand, where he studied film at the University of Auckland, where he made another film, “Behaviors of the Backpacker.”

Lau, grew up in Colorado, and followed his parents and grandfather to La Pine about three months ago, with stops at various film festivals along the way.

He’s not sure if he’ll stay in Central Oregon, but he says he has “many ideas for new films in my head. More importantly, to support that film, I am looking for work. So if anyone wants to hire an experienced writer and director … ” (www.squeegeebandit.com)

‘Silent Message’

The White family — father Duke and sons Brandon and Garrett — are Central Oregon’s veteran independent filmmakers. Based in Madras, their Hudson Pro production company started off making twisted horror films and has since delved into other kinds of social horrors, such as crystal meth (“Downfall”) and, more recently, “Silent Message,” which, says Duke White, “is continuing to shatter the silence that often surrounds sex abuse, incest, date rape and suicide.”

Due to the 2006 film’s impact, White was the closing keynote speaker at the Violence Prevention Summer Institute held at Oregon State University in July.

Their days as low-budget indie filmmakers may be numbered. White and son Garrett recently visited a studio in Los Angeles for talks toward their next project, possibly a feature film that deals with the Bunker Hill Mine in Kellogg, Idaho, a Superfund site. (www.hudsonpro.com)