The Opener

This film was actually born out of a feature length script I had been working on called “The Closers.” A local film festival segment came up called the “Hyperlocal Burien 4-7 minute Short Film Contest” and my crew and I were really wanting to get back to filmmaking after a long cold period due to COVID-19. A seven-page script seemed doable -- but I didn't want to limit myself in the creative process. I ended up writing twelve pages of script and creating over fifteen characters. We had no budget really, just a great crew, equipment, and an actual liquor store we could film in due to my employment there. We figured we could just cut the film down in post-production to get it to seven minutes (hah!) and began casting. The response to our casting call was more enthusiastic than we expected, and we got to read with some amazing talent. We followed strict COVID-19 protocols throughout the entire production and put together an in-person rehearsal at a park. As the film location was an actual business, we had to schedule our filming around the store’s operating hours in addition to the cast/crew's availability. We only filmed on the weekends, arriving before dawn and wrapping by 8 in the morning in time for the store to open. We wouldn't have been able to get all the filming done in a month-and-a-half of weekends if it weren't for the instrumental work of our cinematographer and producers in designing and scheduling the shots. It’s truly a miracle that we pulled it all off with such a large cast, no money, and with such a small production window. In the end, we got such great performances that it was essentially impossible to cut it all down to seven minutes (surprise, surprise). I don’t think a half-sized version would have done the cast and crew justice for their amazing work, and I’m more than satisfied with the result. Maybe some other year we’ll do the Burien Hyperlocal segment.