What fear — whether it’s personal, or one related to the development, financing, production or distribution of your film — did you have to confront and conquer in the making of your movie?

I have a fear of Long Hours. The crew gets angry, bored, sick and tired. They don’t see any friends, lovers, families, or pets. People feel ground down and taken advantage of. The set becomes isolated from life. And the film suffers for it. To overcome this on Hellions we did all we could to prevent Long Hours from occurring. We prepped like motherfuckers. Sharpened the script. Pushed for more shooting days in exchange for less gear and less crew. Tried to plan and design our shots instead of shooting like a TV show with all kinds of coverage. We accepted the restrictions of 10 hours shooting time as opposed to 12 or longer.

What we got from this was a fresh, happy crew who came ready to work. We had evening dinners together to discuss upcoming challenges, rushes sessions that allowed us to watch back the day’s work with key cast and crew and a shooting schedule that allowed everyone to be working when we were working and engaging in outside film activities (movies, dinner, books, friends, theatre, art, drugs etc.) when we weren’t. By avoiding Long Hours, I believe that we brought life, energy and excitement to the set and hopefully created a lively, energetic and exciting film because of it.

[PREMIERE SCREENING: Sunday January 25 at 11:45 pm — Library Center Theatre]

Sundance 2015 Responses