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Cold Dead Hand

Two bounty hunters battle to get ahead of a unique bounty.

  • Dylan Trail
    Director
  • Dylan Trail
    Writer
  • Carter Schaeffer
    Writer
  • Chloe Shelton
    Producer
  • Kenny Brown
    Key Cast
    "Hunter"
  • Gabrielle Shelton
    Key Cast
    "Steam"
  • Elijah Manuel
    Key Cast
    "Dr. Thomas Smith PhD."
  • Dylan Trail
    Cinematographer
  • Dylan Trail
    Editor
  • Project Type:
    Short
  • Genres:
    Western, Action, Horror, Comedy
  • Runtime:
    4 minutes 23 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    December 1, 2024
  • Country of Origin:
    United States, United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States, United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    2:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Indie Shorts Film Festival
    Charlottesville, Virginia
    United States
    March 22, 2025
    Festival Premiere
Director Biography - Dylan Trail

Dylan Trail is a filmmaker born in Salem, VA. He started as an after school film studnet in a program run by his local independent theatre. Shortly after graduating high school, he found a passion for not just filmmaking, but specifically what can be done without a large scale cast and crew. All thanks to advancements in prosumer technology. Finding charm in what can be achieved not only with accessible equipment but hard work, simple trial and error to learn and improve from each project, creative story telling, and help from friends and colleagues driven by willpower and passion alone for the sake of expression.

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Director Statement

For me there are two types of movies. Many movies are intended to engage the viewer with a debate or conflict of philosophy, existentialism, or crisis. Other movies are made to engage the viewer with the debate of who can throw a punch harder. "Cold Dead Hand" is the latter.

That's not to say "Cold Dead Hand" is only intended to be a mindless popcorn movie. Just because something can be mindless for a viewer, doesn't mean it can only be mindless. I wanted to pit two characters together who couldn't be any more different. One tall and expereinced but behind the times figure against a younger, shorter, character with more wit and tech, but less real world experience. I then wanted to take these two characters and film them tearing each other apart as both director and cinematographer.

I wanted the movie to have a very specific look. I also didn't want to ask a DP to rack focus exclusively at the lowest aperature possible. That lead me deciding to shoot this project myself like my previous work. Being a western with a hint of horror, I wanted the film to be shot with the sun being the only source of light, mostly a backlight, but bounced back and highlighted by fog in the interior, visually separating the two silhouetted leads. To add to the extremely harsh contrast and shadows, I then graded the entire film to emuate bleach bypass, a look I've always found to be creative to use and fun to look at.

But overall, I just wanted to make something straight forward, quick, and most of all entertaining.