Making: Chapter 03

I wrote out the final version of the script in mid 2019.  I went to Goodwill and bought a spare pair of pants to rip when Hunter smashes his knee, a button up shirt, and the red blanket.  That same day I bought other items to potentially make a stuffed dummy that we could put in garbage bags and have a ‘body’ to drag around in chapter 5, but that did not end up working out.

We filmed most of the short in one day, which would be a running theme.  It was myself, Carter, and Francisco.  I had a cell-phone for a camera, attached to a broken tripod.  Carter had work that morning, so we opted to shoot his parts first, and the talking parts.  When Francisco was talking, Carter held the audio recorder, and vice-versa.  We modified or edited a lot of script ideas while on set.  In the script, the walking stick Hunter finds had fishing hooks attached, like a flail.  We tried attaching the lines on set, but decided it both wouldn’t read well on camera and wasn’t going to be easy enough to use to guarantee safety.

I also had a different area in mind that was more like a wash, but there were too many people there.  Carter had made a different short film with his brother Max and our friend Nathan(the shot titled "Coven"), and they filmed in a location along the same highway.  Carter led the way, Francisco and I followed along in my car.  It was a nice location, and the valley gave us good isolation from the freeway noise.  A family of people still showed up, but they saw us recording in the valley so they went somewhere else.

One of the little things that changed from script-to-screen was the stick figure.  I thought Sandman would draw it in some fine sand and then put a barefoot print over it.  However, the ground was too rough so Carter grabbed a stick, and suggested he put a handprint beside the drawing.  I thought the stick figure would read well enough on camera, but I was mistaken.  This is why the animated shadow-lines were added, which also prompted the detailed handprint, which would become a very interesting image.

While filming the fight scene, the loud “knock” you hear is the walking stick hitting Francisco’s head.  The audio is straight from my phone’s camera.  I had planned for two days to shoot and they were both on board, but after the knock on the head nobody was really feeling like getting up early again to come out here.  Luckily, we were making good time, so I figured we could get everything done that day.

Carter had the idea to have the final kill obscured by a large bush.  The shot where he knocks Hunter over the head was recorded backwards, starting with the stick on his head then quickly pulling it away.  Then we had a separate shot of Carter hitting the ground, obscured by the foliage.  However, in editing it felt better to have a hard cut to black after the impact.

After that was Carter talking to the desert Devil, while Fancisco recorded audio.  Then Carter had to leave, and Francisco and I filmed the rest of the short.  It was mostly a lot of walking, and then a little bit of running.  He was gracious enough to allow a hole to be torn in his pant leg.  We filmed the knee-injury shot backwards, starting with his knee on the rock and then quickly standing up and away.

One shot we forgot to get on the day was going to be a bloody handprint on Francisco’s face.  I didn’t realize until the editing phase, but we’ll get to that in due time.

After a rough edit was in place, I went out to record some audio of footsteps.  There was a patch of desert next to a park by my house, so I went there with my Tascam and recorded lots of ground sounds.  It was here that I came across an anthill, and recorded it on my phone.  I was lucky enough that they were hauling away an exoskeleton, which is such a unique thing to see.  The hand that touches the ground is actually my own, added via greenscreen.

The music is a mix of acoustic guitar, didgeridoo, and harmonica, all played by myself.  The harmonica and didgeridoo were recorded in sound bites, then edited and pitch-shifted for different effects.  I also used Film-Riots royalty free music pack for the chase sequence, because I needed something high-energy and I was not skilled with making that kind of music.

Finally, the voice of the Desert devil is Steven Curtis, my brother-in-law who plays Wilbur in Chapter 2.  We recorded that much later, after the rest of the short had been put together.