Ryan Bennett (right) works with actors in a movie scene.

PITTSFIELD, Maine — Ryan Bennett has just about everything he needs to take his film idea all the way to the silver screen.

He has a script, a list of shooting locations, the names of actors he would like, video and audio production studios at the ready, and even a projected budget. The film, which he calls “Ramblin’ Round,” already exists as a 22-minute short, which Bennett figures will be crucial to selling the idea to investors.

All he needs now are investors.

“We know what we want to go make,” Bennett, 23, said recently at Nick’s Whistle Stop Cafe in Pittsfield, a location he knows well from shooting scenes there as a Maine Central Institute student. “We think we know what we’re doing. [The short version of] ‘Ramblin’ Round’ looks like a movie.”

The “we” Bennett refers to is himself and a small group of friends he has made during his short but carefully executed career in the industry. After graduating from MCI in 2004, Bennett spent a year at Vancouver Film School in British Columbia. After about eight months working various studio jobs in Los Angeles, Bennett moved to New York City to work for a firm called Company 3, which specializes in enhancing the visual quality of television shows, commercials and, most interesting to Bennett, feature films. Before long, he found himself in a room with director Tim Burton working on the 2007 film “Sweeney Todd.”

Coincidentally, it was Burton who sparked Bennett’s love of filmmaking back in 1992 with “Batman Returns.” Bennett, who at the time was about 8 years old, remembers watching a television special about production of the movie.

He and friends began making movies with the family camcorder, and Bennett’s enthusiasm for writing, directing and producing has grown ever since. As a high school senior — while he was also making a name for himself as the MCI football team’s starting quarterback — he led the production of the 82-minute-long “Detective Story,” which premiered at the Pittsfield Community Theatre.

“It’s always been filmmaking for me,” said Bennett. “It was the first thing I ever really wanted to do.”

In the short version of “Ramblin’ Round,” a young inner-city man and woman struggle to find common romantic ground in both reality and a fantasy world they concoct in their shared imaginations. Connected by nothing but the string between tin-can phones they use to communicate across a dingy alleyway, the question be-comes whether their differences can be overcome.

Bennett is in the final phases of writing the full-length script. He insists he’s not just another starry-eyed, would-be movie director with a one-in-a-million chance of success. The key, he said, is his dual focus on the art and business sides of the enterprise.

“Growing up, I learned that no one will ever give you anything you don’t work for,” he said. “One of the major obstacles in this business is money. You whittle away a lot of [aspiring fimmakers] right there. Even though this is an art field, you have to have a business acumen.”

Accolades don’t hurt, either. Last month, Bennett was one of four Mainers who received an Artists’ Fellowship Award from the Maine Arts Commission. Bennett said he’s “incredibly honored” and that the award is a reaffirmation that his efforts have mass appeal. The $13,000 grant that comes with the award will help, too. Bennett has given up his full-time job to focus on “Ramblin’ Round,” which he said will require a six-figure budget. More than half of that budget is already covered by post-production services that have been promised to Bennett from friends or people he has done favors for in the past.

“My biggest goal is for the film to make some money and for the investors to get their money back,” said Bennett, who heard this week that the short “Ramblin’ Round” will be shown at the Myrtle Beach (S.C.) International Film Festival on Dec. 3. Other film festivals will announce their participants in a few weeks.

With the economy the way it is, Bennett hopes funding his movie looks like a good bet.

“It’s the Wild West out there,” he said. “This could be a relatively safe investment if you think about it.”