The creation of this short film took place over the course of a couple of nights of writing, a weekend of filming, as well as 3 days of subsequent editing. From the beginning I wanted the short film to be something much more substantial than just an interesting way of showing off clothing. The Lord deserves so much more than that. I felt called to create something truly meaningful, not only to me but to those around me. From the beginning I worked closely with Josh to create the concept and overall narrative of the piece. Taking inspiration from our own experiences, and stories I've heard from close friends, we landed on a concept fairly quickly. From there it was only a matter of finding the right words for the script.
I relied heavily on Josh for this. His writing is some of the best I've read, he has an ability to create something that is incredibly relatable while being beautifully worded. The script went through only a few versions, really trying to nail that last line, before we finalized it.
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The filming process went really smoothly all things considered. We had planned for around 3 or 4 locations per day, (apart from the first day of shooting), which was shot before the script was even finalized. We were able to knockout the locations ahead of schedule, which left room for improvisation and new ideas that ended up being some of the best stuff we got from the shoot.
For the first day of shooting we tried to find the dingiest and lowest rated motel in northern San Diego. And while I think we still could've gone grimier, it did the trick. We had shot this part on a Sony a7RV with Sirui 1.33x anamorphic lenses, and the rest of the footage on an FX6 with some cinema Blazar 1.5x lenses. Initially I had worried about matching the footage but once it was brought into the editing software it was actually fairly easy to get them to sync up.
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The farm we ended up at for the last day of shooting was everything we could've asked for. Twin Creeks Farm was incredibly generous and let us shoot everything we needed and fair bit more. The livestock they had was allowed to roam around during shooting, which added so much to the final film. It really brought the idea of heaven and paradise all together very well.
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