What is the worth of a life after it has ended? That’s the question raised by this year’s Grand Valley State University Summer Film Project, “Horizontal Accidents,” which premiered to a sold out theater at Celebration Cinema North in Grand Rapids last Thursday.

“Horizontal Accidents” is a dramedy that tells the story of Brandon, a down-and-out employee at “the McDonald’s of funeral homes” with no life goals. He sleeps on the couch of funeral home director Boeve, a borderline sociopath who will do anything to fulfill his dream of moving to Figi (where he can take pictures of girls on the beach when they’re not looking) – even if it means robbing the graves of the recently deceased.

The film was directed by Tom Seidman, son of GVSU founder Lewis William Seidman, who works in the film industry in Los Angeles and has appeared as a guest actor on multiple television shows, including “Golden Girls” and “I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant”. It stars GVSU theater student Charles Beale as Brandon opposite professional actor Ralph Lister as Boeve, with 2009 GVSU film program graduate Melissa Bayer as Beale’s on-screen love interest.

“I saw a rough cut last November, and I thought it was pretty good then,” Bayer said after the premiere. “But I was so impressed at the premiere. I think it was the best summer film so far.”

Bayer, who was cinematographer on the set of last year’s summer film, noted that this is the first summer film project to make use of the Red 1 camera – the same camera used to shoot “The Social Network” – as opposed to the standard Panavision.

“It’s a night and day difference,” Bayer said. “It looks incredible. It’s a professional film. It doesn’t look like a student film at all.”

“Horizontal Accidents” was based on a short story of the same name by GVSU student Michael Salisbury. During a Q&A session after the screening, Seidman explained he and scriptwriter Tom Costillo made alterations to the tone of the story – making it less dark and more comedic – in order to make the film more friendly to the audience.

“When you’re adapting anything, you have to choose what to keep and what not to,” Seidman said. “The needs of a short story are entirely different from the needs of a film … I pushed the comedy with this.”

In addition to the Q&A session, Seidman allowed the audience to view an alternate ending to the film, along with a behind-the-scenes documentary. He said that during filming, there was a “war” among the cast and crew about which ending should be used. In the end, they stuck the unused ending in the DVD special features.

Seidman also said he believes “Horizontal Accidents” has a shot at moving beyond Grand Rapids.

“We’re going to push the festivals,” Seidman said. “We’ll definitely be gunning for Sundance.”

[email protected]