Bring the Gun

This film is different from what I normally direct. I wanted to work on a film that was grounded in a natural world. I’ve done mainly Sci-Fi and Horror films before “Bring the Gun.” I wanted a challenge in making something fully believable and not having the same crutches that come along with the Sci-Fi and Horror genre. The mechanics and stereotypes of those genres allow for more forgiveness from the audience.

While watching this film, I want the audience to feel tension and panic. The idea, when initially writing the script, was the feeling of an inflating balloon about to pop. Brandon and I wanted to create tension, that doesn’t necessarily get released but keeps building and deflating a bit, until a final release of tension at the very end. When filming on day 1, we literally had someone inflate a ballon until it popped to trigger our reaction to draw our guns at the car wash scene. Day one was in early June of 2019.

We had some delays creating this film, because of scheduling, but also because of challenges with securing locations. Our first day of filming was a big day. It was the car wash scene with the cop car and the 1991 Lincoln car. We were on location and renting cars with a timeline to shoot the cars out as quickly as possible. That morning I drove and picked up the cop car with a trailer to pull behind my truck, then I ran and got coffee and crafty for my crew. It’s hard; producing, directing, and acting at the same time. Going into day one we thought it would just be the car wash scene and we could forgo filming the rest of the script. We thought the carwash scene could stand alone. Also I couldn’t find a bank location and I knew the driving shots would be a process.

We shot the first day, then started editing. I saw the edit and thought, “This is different. This could be really good…I think it deserves to be fully realized”. So we continued the next five months trying to fit in 4 more days of filming while searching for a bank location. I found one through my old college roommate. He now manages a bank and hooked us up with a location that they were about to remodel!

This has been the longest short film I have done from a production standpoint. I loved working on this film, because each day we would find things to make it a little better. It felt more natural in the process and felt more-so like working on a feature set. We had storyboards and shot design planned, but we’d get there and be like, “Eh, I think just handheld…Oh and look at this, there’s a peep hole in the wall at this car wash for them to see the cop! Woah!”.

Sound in post production took up a lot of time as well. The only sound from on the day of filming is the bank door slamming open. I estimate that I spent 100 hours just on sound design (Foley, Sound effects, ADR, roomtones).

I learned how to work with the police department in telling them that we’d have a fake gun on set. I learned a lot of technical producing things like insurance and how to rent picture cars. This film took a lot to get fully realized and I’m proud of it. I don’t know when I will next do all three jobs at the same time though! I hope you enjoy our 9 minute Thriller/Modern Western that took WAY too long to make!