Golden Mile Highway

In April of 2018, we had an assignment in my Video Production class at my High School. We had to make a final video that showed we learned something from our first video of the year to this one; to show our improvement. I got together with some friends in class and came up with an idea about a serial killer who murders people who ran out of gas in the woods. We all loved the idea and pitched it to our teacher. We were not allowed to make the movie and we had to come up with something else. I knew this wasn’t right and my group and I really loved this idea I came up with. I did not want to see this go to waste. So the next day I texted a few friends and my group that “if I can’t film it here, I’ll film it out there.” We decided to make a horror movie ourselves with no teacher approval, no interventions, and no rules. We then realized we just became renegade filmmakers. So we made a plan to film in the woods with 6 actors for about 5 hours. I called a few friends from class to play the parts of the characters and everyone agreed. The most difficult part of making this film was what went on behind the scenes. We had to change location three times, I lost half the cast and crew due to scheduling conflicts, and due to the loss of the cast, I had to change the script multiple times. We went to our filming location, which was the front yard of a friend of mine who lived in the woods, and knocked on his front door. Nobody was home so we texted him and he never responded. So I had to change the entire storyline in my head while driving back home to continue filming interior shots. When we got down there, the room must’ve been at least 90-100 degrees since the room was under a porch, no AC, and it was dirty with the only air we breathed in was filth. We filmed as much as we could until we needed an air break. Not a water break, an air break. It was so bad we needed to step out of the room every 10 minutes to breathe. I told them we needed to finish this so that we can just be done now. They all agreed and we got back to filming. We finally finished and we wiped ourselves down with water to get the fake blood off our clothes. We went back upstairs, had a few glasses of soda and water and hung out till everyone’s parents showed up to pick them up. About 10 minutes later, my dad comes home and his eyes open right up looking at my friends and I covered in fake blood. He had no words for what he saw but I could tell I accomplished what I wanted. Everyone left within 30 minutes, I thanked them for their help and dedication and I began editing within an hour. The editing process took about 12 hours since I already finished the intro and outdo before we started shooting to save some time. I watched as many 1970s films as I could to get the movie to feel like a 1970s Grindhouse film, and utilized to the best of my ability suspense and off-screen violence to make the kills more gruesome.