Michael Noens witnessed a murder: Sitting idly by, he watched as a girl smothered her boyfriend to death. The first time Michelle Higgins kissed Nick Harden, five men looked on and offered tips on style and technique.

So it goes at CNGM Pictures. A non-profit production company based in Palatine, Ill., CNGM Pictures was founded by four friends who played with plastic guns.

“The first time we actually made something was in seventh grade. We made a movie about FBI agents and it was called Perfect Crime,” Noens said. “Actually, I think it’s a fairly decent script. It needs to be revised, but one day hopefully we’ll be able to do it when we have money because it’s a big budget movie. Plastic guns looked very fake.”

The young dogs learn new tricks

The name CNGM comes from the last names of the four founders: Steve Coulter, Michael Noens, Derek Greene and Nick Mikula. With the exception of Greene, they’re all still actively involved in the company. After years of thinking about film on the playground and making short films and mock movie posters, they began work on their first full-length film, The Leslie Situation. The boys were still in high school.

Those involved in CNGM Pictures have since worked to put out quality films while continuing to learn new techniques and more about the business of filmmaking. CNGM Pictures also has the potential to be an interactive classroom for people wanting to learn more about filmmaking.

“It’s one of those opportunities where you are only hampered by yourself. If you want to learn everything, you can learn everything,” said Higgins,the casting department director. “We have people who will be an extra in one movie and then in the next they’re the assistant director. We’re constantly trying to groom people for higher positions.”

Higgins, 22, said she wants to make CNGM Pictures into a film school in the future. The “show up and experiment until you get it right” system, as Higgins described it, allows people who aren’t familiar with film to learn new skills, such as lighting and camera work, from people who have years of experience.

Striving to make audiences “remember it”

Newcomers to the field aren’t the only ones learning to improve their techniques.

“In several areas, they’re teaching me. Technically about the camera, they know way more about cinematography than I do, so it’s a give and take on both ends,” said J. Spencer Greene, who has advised the CNGM founders since high school, where he was their theater director and designer. “It’s really rewarding to see this group of people grow from when I first started working with them…They keep learning every time they do a shoot.”

As CNGM Pictures members work hard to learn about every aspect of film in order to turn their childhood hobby into a business driven by passion, they continue to challenge themselves and their audience.

“I’m actually a firm believer that there are still original ideas out there. The first thing they tell you in film school is that there’s no such thing as an original idea anymore, so basically everybody is remaking some other idea or improving on another idea and I completely disagree with that,” Noens said.

To combat this misconception, Noens and colleagues aim to bring original and stimulating ideas to the screen. CNGM Pictures will premiere their latest project, “Irving Renquist, Ghost Hunter,” a TV/web series that follows a duo desperate to find a ghost in order to save their TV segment, at the Hotel Indigo on October 28. Tickets are available online or by phone. Viewers who can’t make the premiere, which begins at 3:30 p.m. and will include a buffet dinner and prizes, can catch the show online beginning October 31.

“I try not to make my ideas so abstract that they’re bizarre. I try to find ways to entertain people,” Noens said. “I constantly think, will this film affect someone to the point that they remember it?”