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A DEEP DIVE INTO BEHIND THE SCENES

It took 4 days of shooting and 4 days of editing to complete this 90 second film on time for the deadline. We’ve had the concept for this film floating around in our heads for probably over a year but never took any action steps toward it. When Musicbed (our music license provider for nearly all of our projects) announced their 30-day film competition, we knew it was the perfect opportunity to bring this idea to life.

This film has a lot of layers that we wanted to subtly build upon for the ending. We needed to communicate the value between the character and his Jeep to show that it was something important to him, one of his most prized possessions.

In the opening scene as the man is leaving his job at the mechanic shop, we see him grab a set of keys from his work station with photos of the Jeep, affectionately named “Lucille” that RD scribbled on one photo seconds before shooting for that day. Ashley’s brother, William Thaxton, was the actor for us in this project, so their mom was actually able to find an old photo of him with the same Jeep - it’s belonged to their family for decades and has many great memories attached to it in real life. We snapped several different photos of our character with the Jeep (and a cool dog named Red who also belongs to the Thaxtons) and printed them out during production week specifically for this scene. There’s also a photo of their mom, Sandra, pictured in one that reads “love you, son.” written in silver by Ashley. In real life, the Jeep isn’t named Lucille but was added for another layer of connection. However, Lucille is the name of Ashley’s great-grandmother, Lucille Thaxton.

The shop shown in the first scene is the home of Crystal Club Racing, where Ashley’s dad, Clint, has built race car motors with his friends for decades. The continuous shot that follows the man working from one of the engine rooms to his tool station out in the main room was really important to us to get right, to draw the audience into this world and story. We did this same take 5 or 6 times in a row, and the last shot was ultimately the winner- largely due to the addition of Ashley & William’s dad, Clint, in the background “working” on a car on the lift (which was actually our personal car, our Jeep Patriot). Every piece of video and audio in our entire film was originally created by us during production week; meaning we used no stock sound effects or stock footage. In the mechanic shop, I think we had about ten or more tracks of individual audio clips including a welding machine, car engine, men talking and laughing, ratchets tightening, the character’s footsteps, air conditioning buzzing, and more. The actual in-camera audio of the scene was almost completely silent when we filmed it.

Transitioning from scene one to scene two, we had our character go from a colder, teal-toned indoor environment to a warm and golden, outdoor environment. The sequence of taking the cover off, cleaning, and admirably patting the hood was another way we tried to communicate the value this Jeep has to the character. To show he really strives to take good care of this vehicle. The constraints of the competition required this final film to be no longer than 90 seconds, but if we had built a longer film, I think it would have been impactful (in consideration of the ending) to add another sequence of the character washing and waxing the Jeep in this scene as well. As we mentioned, the sound design throughout the piece was equally important to us as the cinematography. As our character hops in the Jeep and drives away from work, you can hear music start to play from his stereo. Because the judges will be looking for how the song served the story, we wanted the music to be deliberately part of the sound design rather than just playing in the background. The song we chose from Musicbed’s playlist for the competition is called “Still Wandering” by Bronze Radio Return.

Scene two was largely filmed on back roads in Gallman, Mississippi where Ashley grew up. There’s a particular set of roads out there where the sunset is bright and beautiful every single day, and we wanted our character to be basking in that light as he enjoyed driving his Jeep and listening to music. The drone footage shot for this scene didn’t quite go as planned. Our thought was to get some beautiful golden hour drone footage the same evening of shooting inside the Jeep, but unfortunately, our drone had other plans to crash into a tree and get stuck. After several attempts to knock it down, RD climbed barefoot up a monster size tree in the middle of a hay field. A couple of scrapes and bruises later, the drone was recovered and came out with fewer battle scars than RD. So the drone shot you see in the first half of the film was part of the sequence we later filmed for scene one, which worked out perfectly. The sequence of filming was: scene two (driving the Jeep), scene three (the gas station), scene one (the shop), and scene four (the hole) - each having separate production days. We were blessed with 4 straight days of the exact same weather and lighting so our story looked cohesive like it took place all in one evening.

As the character pulls into the gas station in scene three, you’ll hear the music cut off with the engine (another way for us to use sound design to keep the audience engaged). By filling up his tank, we wanted to communicate again that this is a well working, valued vehicle. (And adding to the intentional mystery and confusion of scene four). This gas station is about a block away from our house, and every time we have passed it in the evening, Ashley has said we need to film something there. We really like when locations are raw and real, so to speak, rather than perfectly polished and staged. So thank you to the management at the Curb Store for allowing us to film during business hours. We especially loved the character that the flickering overhead light added to our shots- that’s perfection to us!

Scene four, our final scene, took the most planning and the most help for obvious reasons. Our idea was always to have a car being ‘buried’ or lowered into the ground. That was the only thing that was a non-negotiable in our minds for this film. Any other alternative ‘valuables’ we could think of that would be way easier to bury did not have the same shock value as a car. Many fellow filmmakers encouraged us to shoot the scene in miniature form using a model or toy car. But we just knew the only way for it to have the impact we were going for was to bury a full blown car. Pretty much everyone we told about our idea either told us it was impossible or that we were crazy (which we expected lol). It turns out, we were just the right amount of crazy to pull it off!

Before shooting, there were many logistical things to figure out that effected the entire storyline. Our original idea was to use either an expensive car or vintage muscle car and an older actor. We sent out casting calls. We researched for hours on the best way to bury a car or lower a car into the ground. We asked permission from our best friend’s parents to hire someone to dig a big hole on their property. We contacted several insurance companies to acquire specific coverage for this type of production. We were quoted a four-figure number to rent a crane and crane operator to lift a car and put it in a hole, which we were willing to pay due to the nature of this project. Most of these things ended up leading to dead ends for various logistical reasons that we were, around the clock, actively trying to navigate around. Some would say at that point, everything fell apart, but in reality it all fell together because our film was made better by the changes to the script these small set backs forced us to make. Everything changed after Sandra made a phone call to her cousins, Lori & Jason Davis. They saw the vision of our idea and ran with it. Jason used his tractor to dig out a “driveable” hole (roughly 12 feet long, 10 feet deep, and 8 feet wide in size) on his own property for us with just a few days notice. It rained the night before we filmed so he even went out there to dig all of the water out then used his lunch break to meet with RD to make sure it was all good to go. Huge, huge thank you to Jason!!

The last scene was exclusively filmed on the Davis’ land including the shots of the Jeep flying through the field (both from ground level and drone) which RD calls his ‘Jurassic Park’ shot. RD filmed most of the beginning of scene four out of the back of William’s truck while Ashley drove and Sandra got audio. Because of the angles we planned in pre-production, we knew we would have to do the burying scene in at least two takes but hopefully not more than that. And we met that goal. We were pretty sure that the Jeep would have to be pulled out by Jason’s tractor after the first take because the four-wheel drive doesn’t function anymore. But to our surprise (and Jason’s disappointment), it backed out both times just fine. RD filmed our ‘money shot’ of the Jeep driving into the hole from inside the bottom of the hole (which was highly debated by everyone else on set because we weren’t sure how well the Jeep would grip the mud initially). Thankfully everything went perfectly. RD always wanted to have the last shot be an angle of the camera from inside the hole ‘being buried.’ How we ended up pulling this off without damaging our lens was having RD lay back in the passenger seat with a piece of plexiglass held above the camera as William shoveled dirt onto the glass.

As for the very end of the film when the words are revealed, we wanted that to sort of hit the viewer unexpectedly but in a way that makes you put the pieces of all the scenes together. There are lots of parallels to organ donation throughout the film that we’ve left up to individual interpretation- probably many that we haven’t even thought about. Clear The List, the logo seen at the end, was designed by Ashley to add the dimension of marketing and advertising since we are in the Spec Ad category of the competition. While it’s not a ‘real’ non-profit organization (maybe someday!), #ClearTheList is the name of the movement RD created to accompany our upcoming kidney documentary and other future projects surrounding the topic of organ donation. (“The list” referring to the transplant patient wait “list” to receive a life-saving organ). In Mississippi, the average wait time is 5-7 years which many patients sadly never see. About every nine minutes, someone is added to the list. 17-22 people on average pass away each day waiting on an organ to become available. There are over 100,000 people on the US list currently. Our prayer is that our work will encourage more people to become organ donors and save lives. We are thankful that God created organs to be so valuable that they have the ability to outlive the very body that hosted them, and in the case of kidneys and sometimes liver, can be donated even while still living. As many of you know, Ashley received a life-saving kidney transplant in 2019 (donated by RD’s amazing dad!) so projects like this one will always mean more to us than any others we’ve worked on. This film is dedicated to Dorothy Thaxton, Robert Burt, John P. Perkins, and all other loved ones who were lost due to organ failure. Thank you again to our families and everyone who assisted in some way with this project!!!!

GEAR FOR THIS PROJECT

• Camera: Canon C70 (RAW)

• Audio: Rode NTG-3

• Drone: Mavic Pro 2

• Stabilizer: Ronin-S

• Editing & Color: Davinci Resolve

ABOUT THE COMPETITION

The 2022 Musicbed Challenge is being judged based on 4 criteria:

1. Craft. What level of production value did you reach?

2. Storytelling. Is there a clear compelling storyline?

3. Song. How did the music serve the story?

4. Creativity. How unique are the concepts and ideas in your film?

These questions definitely helped us stay on track during pre-production as we planned each scene. Musicbed curates a playlist of their songs to use with the requirement that at least ten seconds of a song must be featured in your submission. The competition offers three categories to choose from: Narrative, Spec Ad, & Documentary. There will be one winner per category as well as an additional People’s Choice winner. The judges for this year’s competition include a host of notable names in the film industry and winners from years past; from Sundance Film Festival Programmer Drea Clark to Netflix’s Concrete Cowboy Director Ricky Staub, to Kaki Orr who is a Creative Director for The North Face Clothing & Outdoors Brand. The 4 winners will share $50k in film grants and $50k in gear/subscriptions. Our film will be in the running for the Spec Ad category & the People’s Choice category. If we’re awarded a prize, the film grant will go toward our upcoming kidney transplant documentary which is set to begin production soon. Regardless of our outcome in this competition, we are really excited and proud to have produced a meaningful piece that will hopefully save lives by driving awareness for organ donation and be seen by a lot of talented creatives in our industry.

Voting for the public will run until May 27. Everyone can vote once per day for us at this link: https://challenge.musicbed.com/submissions/wzh1zt (verify email in in your email inbox on first vote)

Thank you to each and every one of our family members and supporters during every stage of this project!!!! We love y’all, and couldn’t have done it without you!!