The Making

"Backroad Blues" was shot on re-canned 16mm, with a 40-year-old CP-16, in seven straight days, in August, 2004. 

This film came as a result of four years spent on another film. In October, 2000 I began shooting what a film about Bigfoot hunters in the Pacific Northwest. Four years later, having spent two year's wages on frequent filming trips to Oregon, Washington and Northern California, I assembled a rough cut which only solidified myinitial gut feeling that further shooting was needed. Needing a break from the growing project, I drove home to Missouri and on the way (it's a three day drive) a story formed around the final act of what came to be "Backroad" (the ending, exactly as it wound up in the film, was the initial idea, something I'd thought up in the early years of the Sasquatch shoot).

I quickly wrote about 30 pages of material, some of it scripted, some in general outline form, and within six weeks we were shooting.

For the role of Chip I wanted to use Tyler Messner, a high school chum who had since moved to L.A. to follow an acting call.  Tyler, a notorious show off, was perfectly suited to play the blabber-mouthed sociopath.

To appear as Kent I'd talked to David Blair, who had played a supporting role in my first feature, "A Simple Midwest Story." But he had since moved to Texas, and two weeks before shooting called me stating that there was no way he'd be making it up for a week's shoot. With that, Alec Jennings, who was going to assist with me behind camera, took on the role. Alec, who has no intentions of becoming an actor, had also played a significant role in "ASMS."

We started shooting on a Saturday near the end of August. The temperatures were very hot and humidity near 100%.  For a film that required us to run all over the place (literally), shooting in many locations and with many speaking roles, we were usually worked near exhaustion by the end of each day. There was no money, no crew, and no tech support (like tripod, light kit, video tap, etc.) Off camera there was the camera, DAT recorder, and me. Occasionally, a curious farmer would be put to work rolling audio, but most of the time the sound was recorded from the ground or flat surface (like pick-up bed), a rock or beer can propped under the microphone which was pointed in the general direction of the actors, (who usually hit record just before action).

The film was shot on re-canned stock and the shooting ratio more or less 1 to 1. While I wish we could have shot more, there simply wasn't the time or stock available to do so.  Set ups were generally quick and easy due to most of the film taking place outside; gettingan exposure was never a problem. For interior scenes, work lights were used. These were very hard to control, (light simply blasted in all directions), but we were able to continue to move along pretty quickly.  In fact, the film was shot so quickly I literally don't think there was time for anyone to do anything except help get the job done. 
 
After one week of shooting the last of the film stock rolled through the camera and we had "a movie."  It would be six months before I could afford to have all the stock processed and transferred to video, and thus quite an unsettling time of expectation.  At first viewing, I thought the entire film was a wreck.  Most of the sound was drastically under recorded, the camera work, I thought, shoddy and rough, and lack of coverage put me into several tight spots in editing.  Eventually it all came out, thanks primarily to Ryan Harper Gray, who lent me his computer to edit the film on, and Carmine Cervi, who allowed me access to his post facilities at BulletProof Film in Chicago, for over a year.  Being removed from the picture now, I can say it probably came closer to being what I intended at the onset than the films I made immediately before and after.  A few consider it my best film.