Shooting Relentless

James shooting Deb from 3 degree water

Well folks, I decided to spare you the pain of reading my previous unpublished post. Needless to say, it was rather extensive, and of those that suffered through the twenty or so minutes to read it, would surely curse me.
Instead of continuing along my (well overdue) weekly reports on shooting Relentless, I decided to just do a recap, a summary, but more importantly, a view taken after the fact of completing shooting.To bring you up to speed, Relentless is a truly independent horror feature shot over the course of 5 weeks, two days a week, to allow all those involved to continue making regular money and going about their regular lives. By the end of shooting, its total production cost was about $7,000.

The Crew: Irene, Wayne and James

For the most part, we were a crew of three, with a few helping hands here and there. Unlike a previous experience of mine, the cast also did help us out when it came to lugging gear in and out of some harsh locations. The production was plagued by all those dramas you could imagine like cast and crew no shows, shitty weather conditions, equipment issues, and a whole bunch of things you couldn't foresee. Well, that I couldn't foresee anyway.There were a lot of compromises to the script as well. During week 3, I was trying to hurry everyone up to get cracking on a scene, saying we only had two weeks left to shoot. The reply was, basically, 'Not a chance, we'll need an extra week'. We didn't go for an extra week, we got it all in the five, but there were a lot of script changes to get that done, often on the fly and on location, but still keeping to the themes and beats of the screenplay.

Michael's last time in Irene's make up chair

In fact, some of the rewriting came from being in the moment, seeing what is happening right before your eyes, not coming out as words on screen. Another big influence to some of the changes was the marketing currently being used for Relentless. Mainly, that the lead Ashley wasn't going to do all those stupid things everyone else does in horror movies. I also found that by removing some of those attributes from Ashley, it only seemed fitting to pile them onto our villain. Instead of our heroine running along and tripping over, it is far more entertaining to see the tough guy stacking it, or screaming in pain.

Last Day: Irene catching up on some shut eye

The other thing that caused rewrites, or just rethinks really, was the weather. We had two days forecast to rain, and with both days meant to be shot outside, we decided to write it into the script. Likewise, to make our lives easier, we killed all the exterior night shots, bringing them all forward and doing them all in daylight. While one reason was due to lack of portable lights, the other important reason is so people can see what is going on. I'm so sick of this trend of having everything pitch black where you can't even tell what's going on.

One of the toughest things about the whole shoot was the behind the scenes stuff. Like getting everyone's costumes washed, changing their sheets throughout the week, grocery shopping, cleaning the (production, quarters and set) house as well as organizing food for everyone, including coming up with menu plans to suit whoever was working that week and then cook such items. Granted, Irene did a top job looking after all this, especially on the shooting days, but it still took its toll and its time. Next film, hotels and caterers, all the way, baby!!!

The other tough thing is still bothering me. And that's returning to day jobs. Week in, week out, we'd return to five days of working in hospitality. For me, Wednesday's were so surreal. Knowing all the great stuff we'd shot over the past two days, knowing all the work I still had to do for the next weeks shoot and in post production, yet there I was cutting mushrooms. Making a vegetarian lasagne. Carrying food out to customers. Washing dishes. Yes, I may be a qualified chef but now I'm a fucking film maker why am I still doing this shit?!

And the simple answer to that is, because I'm not done yet. You may write the greatest novel of all time, but if no one has read it, it really doesn't matter. Having wrapped filming Relentless may mean a lot to all the cast and crew, but to you horror fans, it's still just a few pictures on facebook, a blog about its creation, a teaser trailer. Until it's released, a chef I will remain.

Needless to say, the release date is in the very near future.

It's A Wrap!!!