If a movie were made about the making of director Dan Mirvish’s first film, it would probably be called omaha (the movie) (the documentary). An awkward title, but making a full-length feature on the budget for one day of filming on the average Paramount motion picture is no picnic either, Mirvish says.

The film is full of product placements, Mirvish said. During the opening credits we have a guy in a chicken costume deliver a package to an American Airlines shipping office it took care of two placements in one.

Omaha is Mirvish’s thesis project for his master’s degree at the University of Southern California. The title was originally intended to draw the interest of investors who wanted publicity for the city, he said. In the end, a fondness for the area that made the film possible and the relevance to the film’s content motivated Mirvish and the crew to keep the name.

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But making a movie on a shoestring budget, in a location hundreds of miles from production facilities, was a daunting task for all, Mirvish said.

We had less than $40,000 to get a full-length, 35 mm color film in the can, he said. But we had the world’s most dedicated cast, crew and the support of the entire state behind us. There was no way we were going to fail.

Mirvish said he believed a feature-length film, funded independently, would give him an edge when he entered the industry because most film students complete their graduate degrees with only a short film.

Although he was enrolled in USC, Mirvish decided he had a better chance of getting funding for his film in his hometown of Omaha, Neb. There he found a large faction of the community willing to invest in a film tentatively titled omaha (the movie), in hopes of promoting their Midwest city.

The local city/county film commission was a tremendous help, he said. They put me in touch with cast, crew and other interested people.

Omaha also happened to be the home of Dana Altman (the grandson of Robert Altman), who became Mirvish’s partner in producing the film. Mirvish said his friend’s grandfather gave the two quite a bit of over-the-phone advice.

The senior Altman also inadvertently helped publicize the finished product, when omaha was shown at Slamdance 95, an independent film festival in Utah. In the highly competitive festival, producers and directors went to great lengths to attract film professionals to their screenings, from passing out flyers to dressing up in costumes.

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At Slamdance,’ Robert Altman came to the omaha screening, and all the distributors and studio people followed him in, Mirvish said. That was our gimmick, and it packed the room.

Mirvish realized his true calling a little later than some he decided to make movies after following a political science career all the way to Washington, D.C. There, with a B.A. in political science and history, he wrote speeches and, directed video presentations for Senator Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.

Mirvish is now distributing omaha with Dana Altman, and has written a script for another comedy, also set in the Midwest a Western about postal workers.