The Promise

A little while ago my friends and I decided to try a little experiment in our film making.  We attempted to shoot two separate short films in one day.  We managed to survive and in the end we had two shorts to send out to film festivals.

The first one went out and didn't make the cut for the fest it was made for.  It was the comedy short from that day and we all thought it came out pretty good.  It was created for a specific fest and it really doesn't fit anywhere else.  So it's journey is over for now.  I'm ok with that.

The other film was called The Promise.  It was dark and dramatic and dealt with the eventual zombie apocalypse.  I wanted to do something with zombies in it but I didn't want the creatures to be the focus of the story.  I wanted to take a look into the lives of folks who had to live in this horrible reality where the dead walked and how they dealt with survival.  It was a short so I had to contain the story to a single question.  What does this group do when one of their own is bitten and infected?

I liked how the story played out and I thought that the filming was done really well for the time constraints we had placed on ourselves.  We shot this film over the course of a few hours on a Saturday morning.  Waking up early on that day we all met up and had a small breakfast together and then jumped right into it.

I was one of the actors as well as the director which is something I don't care for.  I'm a behind the scenes kind of guy.  I'm my worst critic so it's very hard for me to edit my on performances.  But I made it through it and I think the rest of the cast did a good job as well.

In the end we finished the flick and it also got sent out to a few festivals to be judged and deemed worthy of competing with other films made by filmmakers much like myself.  After a few months of submitting and waiting it seems that the journey for The Promise is reaching it's end.  No festivals wanted it and I'm ok with it.  It's not the best thing in the world but I had a lot of fun making it.  Eventually it will get it's time in the sun.  I'm planning a premier night for a few of my shorts so it will get to be seen.

It's a lesson every filmmaker has to learn.  Not everything you do is going to be great or liked.  The trick is to learn from each experience and use those lessons for the next shoot.  I learned a lot on that shoot and that means it was worth the time and effort that was put into it.

You can check out the trailer for The Promise at the bottom of this page.