Armed with a creative writing degree from Western Michigan University, a lot of theater experience, and enough passion to set himself the task of making a movie in a year, Bannon Backhus is creating
Abduction Day.
It's the story of a man who has been abducted by aliens on the 15th of every month for his entire life and the way everything unravels when the secret he's been hiding is finally revealed. A science fiction, horror, comedy along the lines of
Shaun of the Dead.
"I wanted to do it. I had to do it," says Backhus, who turned 30 this year. "Creative projects like this are what I want to do with my life. At this point in my life I needed to do a project of this scale. Because of that, I wanted the project to succeed or fail in large part based on whether I was up to the task."
The self-taught director quickly points out he didn't do it all on his own, though. One of the enlightening aspects of the project has been connecting with other locals just as passionate about making movies as he is.
"There’s a bigger scene than I had thought," Backhus says. "The people in it are extremely talented and passionate about what they do. There's a lot of talent here both in front and behind the camera."
He started the screenplay in late 2011, finished in the spring of 2012, and moved right into filming. That was possible largely as a result of connections he made through another local film project
Bethany Witch, in which he had a small role. Dane Covey, their cinematographer hired on for the same role with
Abduction Day.
Finding talent was one of the easier aspects of filming. When Backhus announced auditions he had a good response and actors came from as far away as Detroit seeking spots in the film.
Like Backhus, many of the people in the local film scene come from live theater backgrounds.
Abduction Day lead John Kasdorf, who portrays repeat abductee Neil Crumpton, is known for his high energy performances as a member of the improv team Kind of Pretty Women and other local theatrical and musical productions.
The one and only employee of Crumpton Cutting, Neil's lawncare business, is Moulton Howe, played by Dann Systma. Offscreen, he leads Crawlspace Eviction, the annual Kalamazoo Improv Fest, and has acted locally in everything from Shakespeare to television commercials for Modernistic.
Bello Pizzimenti with a musical theater background from WMU portrays Lu Smith, the graduate student assistant to ufologist Dr. Gillian Carter. Dana Blackstone plays Dr. Gillian Carter. (Throughout, the film pays homage to many TV characters of the 1990s, an era when Backhus says it seems like everyone was slightly obsessed with extraterrestrials.)
Behind the scenes, Erin Fields proved invaluable as assistant director, line producer, makeup, wardrobe and holder of the boom mike.
Though Backhus found a large reserve of talent and crew members in and around Kalamazoo, some spots were hard to fill, such as sound mixer. The boom microphone needed was all but impossible to find.
Support came from Matthew Quemada, cinematographer of the local web series
Transitions, who had offered help if needed. When the sound equipment Backhus needed proved elusive he borrowed the expensive piece of equipment from the man he had met once before for the first weekend of shooting.
"The film community in and around Kalamazoo may be small but it's passionate and supportive. I was totally blown away," he says.
To finance the film, Backhus scrimped and saved for a year. What he didn't anticipate was the need to purchase all the film equipment required for the project. He decided it was better to have equipment of his own when others who had agreed to be part of the project backed out.
The most intense consequence came about when the sound mixer decided a week before filming was to begin that he was going on a cruise instead. The person who had agreed to be a back-up also became unavailable so Backhus borrowed sound equipment and taught himself how to be a sound engineer, wrapping it up at 4 a.m. the morning filming was to begin. Three hours later cameras were rolling.
When faced with such obstacles, why not just put it off for a week?
"Part of it was my own bullheadedness." Backhus says. "I absolutely wanted to have this film completed in by the end of 2012 and I wasn't willing to have it extend into 2013. Delays were not really an option."
There were other considerations. "We were already on a tight schedule because there were so many people involved. There are only so many hours in a day to get this done and it's like a house of cards. If we take out one the whole thing collapses." The filming schedule had to fit around the work weeks of the cast and crew, most of whom had 40 hour a week jobs. "We were limited to filming on weekends, so there were several days of filming till 4 a.m."
Backhus may have learned how to be a director from a book -- specifically,
Directing Actors: Creating Memorable Performances for Film and Television, by Judith Weston -- but some of what the film faced might have challenged even an experienced filmmaker. Triple-digit temperatures caused the camera to overheat, one of the main locations in a very rural location was so tick infested they had to stop regularly for tick checks
"There was always someone with a tick starting to crawl up their ankle," he says.
Backhus also learned a lot about the fickle nature of fog. "For a special effect I thought fog would be very easy to use. It is not. The slightest bit of wind and it moves. There were a lot of shots with fog and it got very aggravating for a lot of people in the cast and for me." Every day of shooting was filled with a lot of tiny problems that added up to a lot of stress.
But the first time he went to the cinematograher's house to see the footage the reality of what had been accomplished set in. "It was an amazing experience. As I was seeing that footage it hit me--we're making a film. Seeing it take shape--it was a really cool feeling."
A
Kickstarter campaign is under way to pay for post production costs, final editing, music rights, submission fees for various film festivals and some travel expenses for getting to those festivals. "Our tentative plan," Backhus says, "is to submit it to genre film festivals."
Update: The Kickstarter campaign for
Abduction Day was successful, bringing in $5,105 for post production for the film.
Kathy Jennings is the managing editor of Southwest Michigan's Second Wave. She is a freelance writer and editor.