A new thriller by Cameron Francis

​Movies are not magic. At least, not in the literal sense of the word. They are simply pieces of film (or video) stitched together to create a story. Stitch eight minutes together and you get a short film. Stitch sixty minutes or more together, you get a feature. That singular idea is what convinced me in early 2023 that I could make a full length film.  Thinking about it like that made it seem doable. Just shoot a little, edit the footage, shoot a little more, edit the footage, etc. Sure, it might take a while, but I knew that as long as my enthusiasm for the project didn't flag, I could do it. 

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The real sticking point for me is that in every book on independent filmmaking, they say before you start filming, you need to figure out the budget. The problem is that things like budget planning send me into a tailspin. I have no idea how to do that. And even if I did, the idea of raising money just sounds impossible. How do you convince people to hand over money so you can go off and shoot your little dream project that most likely will never turn a profit? I still have no idea. Oh, I guess I could have made a "pitch deck" and shown that to people. But that requires putting a ton of time, energy and resources (that could be used to make the actual movie) into short videos, story board panels, costume sketches, and funny split screen videos of me talking to me about the movie. It also makes me downright apoplectic. 

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So I wanted to make a feature, but I didn't want to make a budget or ask strangers for help. So how would I do it, then? That's when I had an epiphany: what if I DON'T make a budget or ask people for money? Surely I'd be thrown into movie jail, right? Second epiphany: No! Because movie jail doesn't really exist. Not literally, anyway. Huge relief. So I could make my movie anyway! Yay! But... how?

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The solution was I would do everything myself. Write, act, direct, shoot, edit, craft services, costumes. All of it. The only thing that would cost any real money would be actors.  Everything else... well, I would spend what I need to spend and just keep track of it. My budget was fluid. And to save money, I would mostly shoot in free locations. 

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If you've ever been on a real movie set or seen pictures of them, you know that there's a ton of gear,  cables,  lights, trucks, RVs, and all kinds of other equipment to make a movie tick. But here's the thing, you don't really need any of it. Not if you want to tell a small story.  You just need actors, the camera, a light source, and a decent mic. That's it. So the trick became figuring out a story I could shoot in locations that would cost either nothing or next to nothing. Well, I owned a car. So what if the movie were a road picture? Great idea. With that in mind, I set out to write the script.

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By May of 2023, I had hammered out a first draft of "Cover".  The cast would be small. The main character, Trevor, would be played by me. I would rather have played a smaller role so I could concentrate more on the directing side of things. But I knew if I took on the main role, it would be one less actor I'd have to pay and plan around. I could shoot all of my solo stuff whenever I saw fit. Dale and Vic were written for my two friends Garin Jones and Christopher Schmidt. While writing, I didn't have anyone specific in mind to play the female lead in the film, but it soon became apparent that one of my fellow performers at Universal would be perfect for the part, so Katherine Lozon was cast as Athena. 

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Over the summer of 2023, I made a lot of lists. Prop lists, set lists, location lists, costume lists... you name it, I listed it. It was a bit tedious but I knew that if I was going to make a feature film for next to nothing, I had to have all of my ducks in a row. 

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Because fall was quickly approaching and my actors had a lot of obligations till the end of the year, I decided that I would shoot most of my solo Trevor scenes first. On October 6th, 2023, with the help of my producing partner (and life partner), Molly Magill, and a dashboard camera mount I bought on Amazon for $7, I shot the scenes near the beginning of the film where Trevor is driving and talking on the phone. I acted as my own DP, sound person, and camera operator. I continued shooting solo for the rest of the month. And got a lot done.

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On November 14th,  we checked into a hotel for one night and shot like crazy, filming the opening scene and the scene with Gregg Baker, Jr. as Will. Soon the Holiday season was over and, Katherine's schedule was open again, so she joined the production on January 18th, 2024.

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Because of scheduling conflicts, it took five more months to finish shooting the movie, finally wrapping  on June 20th, 2024. It was a learning experience like no other. I discovered a resourcefulness within me that I never knew existed. While most of my locations were secured well before filming, sometimes I would set a date to shoot a scene that we hadn't found a location for yet. I did this on purpose, knowing that if I gave myself a hard deadline, I would be forced to figure out a way to do it. And, thankfully, it worked out every single time. 

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Let's talk locations for a minute. I only paid for three locations: the hotel room, a motel room, and a campsite. They cost me $150 total. A local bar allowed me to shoot for free during the day and a coffee shop that operated later in the afternoon allowed me to shoot at no cost for a couple of hours before opening. I wrote a lot of scenes in big public parking lots because I figured it would be easy to covertly shoot in the parking lot of a grocery store or gas station. And I was right. Because I was using a small camera, no extraneous equipment, and next to no crew, no one ever questioned what we were doing when we shot in public. 

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Directing is tough. Directing and acting at the same time is really tough. Acting and directing under super tight time restrictions is nearly impossible. While I would have loved to have pulled a Stanley Kubrick and done 8,000 takes per set up, my philosophy had to be, "We get what we get." Fortunately we got a lot of good stuff fairly quickly. Part of the fun of editing for me is transforming something that isn't quite what I wanted it to be into something amazing. I feel like that happened a few times during the shooting and editing process. We had lots of happy accidents. Having said that, there are still loads of shots in the movie that I wish I could do again. A few more takes and they would have been perfect. Or so I have deluded myself into thinking.

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"Cover" was truly a labor of love. But all of the work that went into it means nothing if the end result isn't entertaining and thought provoking. I think it is. But I'll leave that for you to decide. ​​

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