Once you gain knowledge and experience from your first feature film, what should you do for your second one? The answer – go bigger!
I learned a great deal from making my first feature film and getting it out into the world.
Making your first feature film all by your lonesome is a lot like jumping into the deep end of the pool without knowing how to swim. You either work really hard and learn really fast or you drown.
Since I didn’t drown, I thought I’d do it again – only this time, I decided to go bigger. I knew I wanted a larger cast, more locations, and a bigger story. With “Darkness Hunting”, I feel I accomplished that.
But how did I get there? Well, one of the first things you need to figure out in pre-production is: where am I going to shoot this darn thing?
Secure the Locations
I shot “The Devil’s Instrument” in only one location, which happened to be the living room of the house I was living in at the time.
For “Darkness Hunting”, we had twice as many locations. That is to say, we had two.
I couldn’t use my new house for a location because it just didn’t have the right kind of layout I needed.
However, my parents house did, and so we shot some of the scenes there. Why? Because they said we could and it was free. This falls under lesson number 33: Always accept gifts that are offered to you.
I also needed a secluded house for the second location. Luckily, my wife’s uncle owned some land amidst a bunch of horse farms and was in the process of building a house there.
He graciously agreed to let us shoot at the location for free for the short amount of time that we needed. If you’re ever in need of a location but are completely stumped when it comes to finding one, just ask everybody you know, and if you’re lucky, someone will have something available that you can use.
One of the problems with this location was that the house wasn’t finished yet. I wanted to make this work because the location was great and the place looked like it could probably be haunted, if it wasn’t already.
But what I really needed was electricity. If there was no electricity then I was simply going to have to find another location. After talking with my wife’s uncle, however, I was relieved to find out that the house itself didn’t have electricity, but we could draw electricity from a nearby source. And that’s exactly what we did.
Basically, this meant I was going to need a lot of extension cords. I had quite the pile of extension cords and we ended up using every one of them.
So, another good piece of advice that I can offer for the beginning filmmaker is, make sure you have a lot of indoor and outdoor extension cords in your arsenal, because there will inevitably come a time when you will be extremely thankful that you have them.
As for lighting, I had the original three-piece lighting set with me that we used for “The Devil’s Instrument” shoot, but I also purchased an additional RGB LED three-piece set that I could control from my phone, if need be.
I wasn’t sure if I would need both, but, of course, it turned out that I did. The house had an upstairs and a downstairs, which the script called for. So, I ended up using one set of lights for downstairs and the other for upstairs.
If I didn’t have the two sets, I would have had to lug the lights up and down the stairs numerous times a day. I already had to do that for the two cameras and tripods that we had, so I was thankful that I didn’t have to do that for the lights.
All that was needed was an extension cord that I ran up the stairs, but whenever we filmed anything on or near the stairs, we had to move the extension cord.
Jordan Bryant, one of the stars of the film, and I got pretty good at tossing the extension cord up and down the stairs as the shoot progressed.
Needless to say, the location worked out great and I couldn’t be more thankful for that. After I secured the locations for the shoot, I was ready to cast the film.
Make Good on Your Promises and Good Things Will Come to You
One thing that people can’t take away from you in this world is your word. When I make a promise, I always make good on it, no matter what.
One of the promises I made to the cast of “The Devil’s Instrument” was that I would call each of them when I was ready to shoot my next feature and see if they were available because I really wanted to work with them again.
And that’s exactly what I did. The schedule and availability for three of them just wasn’t going to work, but two of the actors did come back and were able to be in “Darkness Hunting”.
For the remainder of the parts, I was able to work with Janie Olmstead again at Images Model & Talent Agency in Lexington, Kentucky.
I held auditions as before and found the right actors for each part with the help of Ashley Sergent. With the locations secured and the actors set, I ordered all of the equipment I would need for the shoot.
Another way we went bigger for this film was that we had two cameras instead of just the one we used for “The Devil’s Instrument”.
We also had two fluid head tripods for the cameras, which I didn’t have for “The Devil’s Instrument”. It’s impossible to pan professionally without a fluid head tripod, which is why I shot a lot of “The Devil’s Instrument” handheld.
We were able to shoot scenes from different angles simultaneously using the two different cameras. This allowed us to get a lot more footage in a short amount of time and get through scenes quickly so that we could move on to the next.
The fluid head tripods also allowed us to add more variation in our shot selections and I was really pleased with the quality of the shots we got.
So, how do you go bigger for your second film? By having nine actors instead of five, having two locations instead of one, having multiple cameras instead of one, and increasing the variation in the shots you get.
All of this will allow you to visually tell a much bigger story that audiences will enjoy. And I can’t wait for people to see “Darkness Hunting”.
