How did you go about casting the movie?
Adam: We had a casting call, and a lot of it I wrote with people in mind. I wrote Kenny, I knew I wanted to play the neighbor because I thought we would have good chemistry, and I also knew that I felt it was a very sensitive scene and we are not paying people so we need to get people we can trust in there to do those sensitive things. But, we had a casting call for a whole bunch of it in Shawnee and we had a tremendous turn out.
You didn’t find it difficult to find people willing to come and work for almost nothing on a feature length?
Adam: Now, that is part of the beauty of shooting here. Every one of these guys will tell you, you are going to find people that think it is kind of an oddity here, yeah whatever, but there are a lot of people who really support something different, really support art, really support and get behind it. I mean, I think we have gotten a really good response from our sort of base because we tell stories about here. I know a lot of people have made movies and it is like we are going to shoot it in Macomb and try to make it look like it is New York, and that doesn’t work. So acknowledging kind of where you are at, you know, it makes people feel close to it.
How did you afford this financially?
Adam: Well, we got on Kickstarter and we just wanted it to be as aboveboard with everything as possible once we started begging people for money – so that was a direct connection to Kickstarter.
Jason: Also, that protection from the company, us wanting to put a movie out there and actually want to maybe sell it and push it farther than it has gone, if something ever came back then it now falls on the LLC, not financially onto us personally. We had never thought about that before, if anything ever happened before that.
Chad: I think the LLC was trying to take that next step in professionalism. Shooting with insurance is probably the next thing that we need to tackle, although we are not doing action movies right now.
Kenny: The lucky thing with the fighting in Charlie, it was all between friends, like he said, people that we knew, people that I knew and people that just had fun.
How difficult was it to shoot the scene in the kitchen with the attack?
Adam: It was, well the actress, Julie Curry, she did a great job. I mean she is a professional and intelligent woman, and she knew what we were trying to do. She was all aboard on that, so having someone who was not timid in terms of this is what we are trying to do and having her say, OK you can go farther, do more, it was nice. I mean the main thing, I think with me, was trying to make sure we got to a point where it felt like it was exploiting the situation, and trying to make it violent enough to be painful to watch, but not so violent that it almost became some sort of joke or some sort of oversaturation. I don’t know, having Kenny there and having Kenny really stay in character, you know a lot and that makes it easier. That certainly wouldn’t be on my list of the most difficult shoots of the film, cause it was isolated and everybody was able to stay focused and go with it.
I am sure in Shawnee, you find a lot of the people there don’t have problems with you coming around and shooting in their places, cause I have noticed that in Norman too. I think in L.A. they want you to pay an arm and a leg, but it really helps to shoot it in Oklahoma, because we may not have the best film tax credits here, but we have people that are willing to help a lot.
Adam: Absolutely.
Chad: We had something like over 60 locations we shot in. We paid for like maybe one permit.
Kenny: Yeah, in McLoud.
Adam: None of us, we haven’t made a dime, I mean the process is really beautiful, and I like being involved in it, and then having the support and people that are interested and they care. I mean that’s really a rewarding, that makes it very rewarding. I mean as a storyteller, trying to tell a story, and having people care about the story, want to hear it, it’s nice.
