FADING OUT - KEEP YOUR FOOTAGE
Fading Out, my latest film, actually started life as a completely different film. Following the release of my last film, Called Shot, I wrote a script for what would become The Twelfth Day.
The Twelfth Day was a comedy slasher film set at Christmas. Retaining most of the cast that I had worked with up until that point, and adding the extremely talented Saffron Crowl, we started production on a cold morning in January of 2023.
Production Halts
We were around sixty percent completed on The Twelfth Day when, unfortunately, a cast member had to reluctantly step away from the production. This happens, particularly when you're working with zero budget and relying on people to kindly volunteer their time.
This was a setback, but not an insurmountable one. Time would be needed to rewrite portions of the script to account for the character's absence from later scenes, but with a little creative thought, this was a solvable problem.
Grief and Logistics
Shortly after I'd begun rewriting portions of The Twelfth Day, my beloved cat, Toady, passed away at the grand age of 26. He was my best friend, my constant companion, and he had been there for me in the darkest moments of my life. Losing Toady broke my heart and, I must confess, killed my creativity.
Shortly after Toady passed came the issue of logistics. We were informed, with little notice, that our landlord had decided to sell our flat. We were to move within a month, leaving behind both the place that myself and Toady had called home for a decade, and also the place where many unfinished scenes from The Twelfth Day had been shot.
With the loss of a cast member, my best friend, and a key location that we would never again have access to, The Twelfth Day was effectively dead in the water.
It Mocked Me
So, what do you do with an unfinished film? This question often occurred to me. From time to time I would find myself in the deep folder structure of my hard drive, only to find The Twelfth Day. The folder mocked me. It taunted me. It was the film that I never finished.
Saffron, now at university, was keen that something be done with the footage that we'd shot. She'd put in an incredible performance, and it would have truly been a shame to erase that as if it had never happened. So the folder and its contents remained.
From time to time, I would open The Twelfth Day project. I'd look through the film and consider what could be done with it, only to conclude that it was unfixable. There had been times over the years where I'd considered deleting the folder and just moving on from it. I'm now thankful that this never happened.
It was an episode of Red Cow Arcade, as I recall. EJ and Frankie were discussing one of their many projects. Their passion and love for filmmaking always rubbed off on me, but this time was different. This time I left the video determined. I had half of a film. I would make a whole film.
Old Footage, New Film
The problem still remained: The Twelfth Day was not salvageable. Key cast had moved on, and many of the shots were made in a key location that I no longer had access to. So what could be done?
This problem sat with me for around a week until, finally, three years after I'd started production on The Twelfth Day, the solution came to me: Don't make The Twelfth Day. Make something new. I found myself in a unique position. I had around fifty percent of a relatively polished film, and the circumstances that had led to that film being abandoned also had something to them.
Perhaps I could make a film about making a film. A film about grief. A film about creative escapes falling apart. These ideas would eventually form the script for my latest film, Fading Out. With the blessing of the Twelfth Day cast, I reused the footage, cast the superb Elizabeth Parkinson in the new lead role as Anna and Fading Out was born.
This film got finished. This film could not have been made if I'd deleted The Twelfth Day footage. Keep your footage.
Fading Out
"Anna, an independent filmmaker, uses her latest project as a desperate coping mechanism to escape the crushing grief of losing her husband. However, as the haunting fiction of her script begins to blur with reality, she spirals into paranoia, forcing her to question her own sanity."
Comments