The Paso Robles Film Collective started, like most creative ventures on the Central Coast, at a bar. Specifically, at the bar inside Tin City, where screenwriter Elena Vasquez-Price was complaining to a stranger about how hard it was to shoot an indie feature without moving to LA.

The stranger was sound designer James Okoro, who had moved to Paso from Burbank specifically to get away from LA. "Every conversation in LA is about the industry," he says. "I wanted to make films in a place where nobody talks about making films." Within a month they had a collective. Within six months they had a cinematographer, an editor, a composer, and three features in various stages of production — all set on the Central Coast, all shot on weekends, all funded by people who own wineries.