It took another couple months before I made it all the way out of this period of total confusion (which I discuss in my piece about my short film Trapped). It was after this time, into the late fall of 2012, that I started reflecting back on that past relationship and discovered that it was one of the greatest mistakes of my life. I still look at it that way and wish I could go back and change the past. But as well all know, this cannot happen. Only a few days before the start of 2013 I made an effort to try and, if nothing else, to see if we could start again, only more slowly and see if we could find our way back to what we once were. But it didn’t happen. She was seeing somebody else and said that she was happy. I was hurt so badly by this, because I knew then I had to try and let it go. I wasn’t going to be that creepy home wrecker. We have managed to go back to being very close friends, which is incredibly rare for those who were once in relationships. We’re still close, but there has always been that longing I’ve felt to try again and see if we could make it work again. Even now I still feel this way. But back then, when my efforts fell through at the end of 2012 I spent two months in a funk. It was really hard to get out of that because I was the one that pushed for the break up so I couldn’t even blame her for not giving me a second chance when I was the one that screwed everything up.
I remember feeling this sense that during that time our love was dead and gone, you know how we behave when we’re having to climb out of that hole of feeling rejected. I remember feeling like I would never have a chance to be with her again and so what we had was, more or less, dead. Somewhere during that time I was pondering potentially sad story lines either for a short story or possibly a film. While pondering this there was an event that had occurred locally that I think was slipping into my mind and pushed forward the idea for The Runner. On December 12, 2012 a young man walked into the Clackamas Town Center shopping mall, only about eight miles from where I live, and opened fire with a Bushmaster assault rifle. He only managed to kill two people when his gun jammed. That shooting really hit at home to me, and I’m assuming a good many people around the Portland area. Portland, Oregon has seldom ever been that city known for having a major tragedy occur. We knew about 9/11, but that happened 3,000 miles away. We saw the bombing of the Arthur Murrah Federal Building, but that was in Oklahoma City. Hurricane Katrina happened in the states along the Gulf of Mexico. So many major tragedies have occurred in America, but they often occur a good distance from the Great Northwest. Now a shooting was happening right in the middle of the Portland Metropolitan Area.
I think this shooting started making me think about what I often think of when I hear about a large tragedies where people’s lives are taken. I started thinking about all the people who’s lives were effected in this shooting. One can say well, we should be happy that only two people died. That is easy to say when nobody you or I know gets killed, but what if one is connected to someone who is killed? It effects us in various ways. Somewhere along that line I connected that feeling of lost love with the idea of a random shooting, where someone who is loved is suddenly gone in the blink of an eye. I developed the lead character, Cal, who had experienced losing the love of his life in a mall shooting. Hence, the lost love aspect. Like what I was feeling about my past relationship, Cal realized and felt there was nothing he could do to get the love of his life back. The focus of the film then is about how this one man’s life changes as the result of this loss, and how far his sense of loss could go.
From this I knew I had to give Cal something that he needs to do in order to cope with this loss (much like what I was doing in preparing this screenplay). I chose to give him a running compulsion. This allowed me to use something I actually had experience with and apply it to this character. I had started doing track and field my freshman year in high school and by my sophomore year had added cross country to my list of extra-curricular activities. After graduating high school I had maintained exercise and found myself to be as healthy as I ever had been. However, there was a negative side to that. During 2005 my uncle had moved in with my family, opening up old wounds from his childhood relationship with my mother, who was depressed and drinking. Life at home became unbearable at times and I would frequently go out on runs, one, to just get away from home, and two, it was a form of release. This same thing came up in 2008 when my parents first discussed separating from each other, leading to their ultimate divorce in 2009. I found myself unable to deal with it at times and once again did my best to get away from home as much as I could, which included going and working out everyday. I had a lot of anger and hostility that grew during this time both towards my parents and about feeling lost in my life in general. I would release that anger and frustration through going out and running. From that I developed this character Cal who after losing the love of his life began running because it was one of the only ways he can find release to deal with his sadness and loss.
In these two regards you could say this film has more of myself in it than any other film I have produced to this time. But I wanted this film to be about more than just a man dealing with the pain of losing someone he loves. I wanted there to be something deeper about and, obviously, I needed to find a resolution to the story. I knew right away this was not going to be a film where everything could be wrapped up with a bow when all was said and done. No matter what happened this loss was always going to be with him. So what I felt would be the best resolution was that there was going to need to be a support system of some kind for this man, who upon the opening of the film has disassociated himself with practically everyone he knows. He needed some support and he needed to at least begin to make peace with what happened to his girlfriend. I wanted there to be a mystery to this film as far as what happened to Cal’s girlfriend in this mall shooting. I did not want the viewer to know how she happened because that was necessary for Cal’s character, who refused to hear any details about the shooting for fear that he would not be able to handle them. However, it was still necessary for me to decide what really did happen to his deceased girlfriend so that revelation could be made in the end of the film. On top of that, the way she died had to be something then that he could handle. That was a key issue I needed to address in structuring this film.
In close proximity to the shooting at Clackamas Town Center and even the theatre shooting that happened in Aurora, Colorado during the summer of 2012 a robbery occurred at the theatre I worked at. I was not at work that day but again, the potential for violence had literally moved into my place of work. Right after that occurred and around the time I was first putting together The Runner I had an incredibly vivid dream wherein a man broke into the theatre where I worked with a large firearm. As the chaos was beginning I took notice of a young blond-haired girl, probably around four years of age, just standing by herself on the edge of the lobby. I looked up at the man with the gun who turned and his eyes locked on that girl. By impulse, I took off running towards this little girl and dived right in front of her, shielding her from any gunfire that might occur. Right after that occurred the dream seemed to fade off and I don’t know if any gunfire occurred or what happened from there, but I do remember the feeling that struck me as I was running towards this girl. I thought to myself, “I’m 27-years old. I’m still young and I hope to live much longer.” But then there was this small child there who hadn’t had the chance to experience what I had. This little girl hadn’t experienced getting her driver’s license, going to prom, making it to college, finding a career and so on. With that thought in mind I felt required to step in front of this girl and take whatever bullets were fired.
In thinking about that feeling and that whole idea of taking a bullet for someone else I started to think that would be such a wonderful thing to apply to Cal’s dead girlfriend. In taking my experience and applying it to Karen (the name of Cal’s girlfriend) suddenly there’s a change in the whole mood of the film. In discovering at the films conclusion that Karen’s mysterious death was not a random chance shooting of a stranger but rather the actions of a heroic woman shielding a child from premature death there would be such a catharsis in that experience. But more than anything else, in this film where we experience Cal, a likable young man who we feel great sympathy for because of his loss, and we see him lost in pain throughout the film we discover that his greatest fear, as is often the case in real life, is not the reality of what happened.
During this period of creative flow, a beginning, a middle and an end coming together I discovered the final piece of the puzzle. I knew I did not want this to be a one-person film even though the focus of the piece was on this one man. There had to be others there. In addition to adding the small role of a counselor, who Cal sees so that he has someone to talk to who is not emotionally involved like his family and friends would be, I added the role of a young woman named Maggie. I did not merely add her so as to stick another character in the film, but I had come up with another twist to include to the story, which would also add to the overall catharsis of the film’s conclusion. If I was to make the death of Karen come as the result of shielding a little girl from being shot, what if the mother of that little girl were to become part of the story. So in entered Maggie, a girl with a troubled, imperfect past who also took to daily runs like Cal so as to release and feel better about her life. Again, with this knowledge as to how Karen died not being revealed until the conclusion of the film we experience the connection between Cal and Maggie begin from a chance encounter and then we see it develop into a close friendship, and through all of it he has no clue of this connection he has to her and her daughter.
The focus of the film begins on Cal and the isolated life in which he lives and then, through meeting Maggie, who is a spritely, outgoing young woman, he finds a position where he can open up to someone who doesn’t know him and is not going to force himself to talk about anything he doesn’t want to talk about. As their bond grows he opens up more and more. Having been there with her daughter when the shooting occurred and then learning that Cal’s girlfriend had died in the shooting, Maggie becomes intrigued, especially in knowing a woman was killed shielding her daughter. Researching the case she discovers that Karen and the woman who protected her daughter were one and the same. Therefore, going into the films final climactic moments not only are we driven by the emotions of Cal, but we find our focus swayed in part to Maggie. We see her become more and more emotionally overcome, knowing the truth and not knowing how to get Cal to talk about it, which he is completely unwilling to discuss the case. Then ultimately discovers a solution: have her daughter tell Cal. It’s easy to push off an adult who wants to discuss something but when a small child wants to discuss something with you, you are more apt to listen whether you want to or not.
This requires us to meet Maggie’s daughter, Emily, at the conclusion of the film. This made for the first time ever in which I had to find a child actor for my film. Such was an interesting experience and, being novice to the whole idea, filled me with lots of concerns out of the gate. First off, I knew finding a child actor for a small independent film would obviously require me to work through the parent of that actress and I had heard so many stories about crazy parents trying to push their kids into success in show business. On top of that I knew I had to be as honest and legitimate as I could in posting an add for an independent film looking for a child actress, especially considering the fact that I was posting through Craigslist, and you never know what kind of nutcases are going to stumble onto there. But when all is said and done it was a remarkably simple process. I found a 10-year old girl named Lana to play the character of Emily and was able to work with and chat with her mother, who was very positive about the idea of her daughter being in a film but, in obviously being a moderately professional woman, was able to cary on a coherent conversation with me about how much time it would take, scheduling, when the shooting would occur and so on. Lana ended up being a joy to work with. She was full of positive energy and she performed the character even better than I expected when I first started looking for a child actress. One can see both the concern, energy and lack of understanding for what really happened in her portrayal. I was incredibly happy with the way things had turned out.
This concluding scene was shot in just a little over an hour as scheduling was incredibly tight with my performers and after that day, which was a Sunday evening, I was going to lose the girl I had in the role of Maggie for at least three weeks, and likely more. We managed to just barely get it done while there was still enough light. It was a wild weekend in mid-September. I had first decided to actually shoot The Runner near the end of July and spend much of August organizing the film and trying to get it prepared to shoot. I had wanted my friend Jeffrey to play the lead of Cal, who had played the lead in another film I had shot several months before (in The Way We Are). However, when we met up to discuss the film, after he had expressed strong interest, he was already prepped to go to the east coast on other work for a short period of time. He was initially going to come home around the start of September, but his stay was elongated and I knew I was going to have to find another actor. Weather in Oregon often takes a quick turn once September turns over to October and Jeffrey wasn’t going to be home until the end of September. With all of the exteriors to be shot I knew I couldn’t wait and then risk having the rainy weather role in. The actor I did find, Bjorn, was actually someone I had responded to when I initially posted looking for an actor for the role, but never heard back from him. After I found that Jeffrey was not going to be available I reposted looking for an actor and Bjorn responded again. This time my response to him made it through and we met. After meeting up I found that he was friends and had studied acting with several others I knew. We spoke for almost two hours and when all was said and done I knew I’d found a good fit for the role.
I had cast the role of Maggie over a month before, while I was still in the workings to get Jeffrey in the film. And in between I cast the roles of Emily and the role of the Counselor, which was another small but highly important role in the film. It was nearly the end of August when I finally had my casting complete and then I found another problem arose. Nicole, who was playing the role of Maggie was, again, going to have several weeks where she was not going to be available. Sunday, September 8th, was the last day she was going to be available probably until October, when again the rainy weather was likely going to begin. With September already beginning and having to work with the availabilities of my two actors as well as my child actor, who had very tight availability, we got our first day scheduled for Thursday, September 5th. The initial schedule had us getting a few scenes done that day and then having a long shooting day on Friday. Saturday was up in the air so I did not schedule anything. And then there was Sunday wherein Nicole and I would meet up early to shoot any parts of the film with just her and then meet up with Bjorn and Lana to shoot that concluding scene. It looked like we were going to cram over half the shoot into these three days but after squeezing our Thursday shoot in through a few sprinkles it began to pour, and it poured the rest of the day.
Knowing Friday the 6th was going to be our busiest day of filming I must have woke up fifteen or twenty times in the middle of the night, every time listening for the sounds of rain hitting my window. Even waking up early the rain had been going on all night and hadn’t stopped for over fifteen hours. It was 8 a.m. and we were scheduled to start shooting at 10 a.m. Logic said we needed to postpone and I had to hope for the best on Saturday. Fortunately this worked out and we were able to reschedule for that day. What was most annoying was within five minutes after we canceled on Friday the rain stopped and it was cloudy but dry the rest of the day. Nevertheless we held off and Saturday ended up being a peasant and sunny day. We fought through an 8-hour shooting day in which we mostly shot down by Oaks Bottom before finishing off shooting a significant sequence in the film at Tryon Creek State Park in northern Lake Oswego.
Every day magically fit within our restrictions of shooting. On Thursday we had two major scenes and a short one set to shoot in Sellwood. We had until 3 p.m. before Nicole had to leave and we finished at 2:45. On Saturday she was only available until 4 p.m. and we finished around 4:10, still leaving her time to get to her later appointments that day. And finally, on Sunday, I met up with Nicole around 1:30 knowing we had to meet again in Sellwood to shoot the Emily scene by 5 p.m. to get that done before the sun went down and conditions got too dark. Nicole and I managed to get all of her shots finished and we arrived in Sellwood at 5:15, just barely able to shoot the Emily sequence before the sun disappeared behind the west hills. Despite all of the restrictions and difficulty in scheduling, we got everything we needed to shoot with the Maggie character finished and all we had left were two more days to shoot the remaining scenes and sequences with just Cal’s character. After this busy weekend Cal and I met up on Tuesday the 10th. Despite meeting up early at 8 a.m. it was one of those hot September days where we were pushing 90 degrees before noontime. Such was fine for me, but the whole focus of the day was shooting scenes where the Cal character was running. Therefore, for over six hours that day I had Bjorn running all over Oaks Bottom and a little at Mary S. Young State Park in West Linn during that time. But he kept going and I think he enjoyed the energy and the action of the shoot.
The following we we had a short shoot in which we shot the four scenes that included the Counselor character. That shoot was incredibly simple and fluent. It only was four pages of script or so and we shot through it in about two and a half hours. The last day of shooting, which ended up being postponed for almost a month after all these other shooting days due to scheduling conflicts, took place at the home of a co-worker of mine who was kind enough to open up his home to shoot the sequences of Cal while he was at home. This shoot was again only a few pages and was fairly fluent, being taken care of in about three hours. And with that, being late October, the shooting of The Runner had finally been completed.
All that was really left for me to take care of was some foley audio. I had to record a collection of running sounds to fit into certain moments of the film wherein matching audio had not been captured. To my surprise, because I simply went out alone with my sound mixer and recorded what I thought would match with those moments that needed ADR audio, the audio I captured was fairly easy to cut in with the footage used. This was also the first film I shot in which I hired someone to compose a soundtrack for the film. To this point I had just been using royalty free music. But this was one of the largest film projects I had ever produced and I knew I wanted an original score for it. I was pleased to see that in the first two days after posting an add I received fifteen responses. But I quickly decided where I wanted to go, going with a composer named Trevor Smith. My greatest concern was hiring on a composer who would provide me with what I would call a “droning soundtrack”. By this description I am referencing those who produce music that is the same bland overtones over and over again without any highs or lows or any real melody. Lots of people think they’re composers but make music with no feel. When I checked Trevor’s link to his website one of the first things I noticed was that he had a mix of different types of music. He had upbeat, electric music on there, guitar tracks, piano tracks, driven percussion tracks. Just seeing that he had a diverse collection of music up there made me feel that if I posed to him the style of music I was going for he would be able to put it together and put it together in a way that would work well for me.
When we met Trevor had already done a practice track that he allowed me to listen to and, while I ultimately did not use it in the film, it was a strong track and I could already see the vision of a man running on a trail with it. I could tell that Trevor and I were not going to have any problems communicating and understanding what type of music would work best for various sequences in the film. I provided him with a copy of the full script with notations at different moments and scenes and the types of music that I wanted for those various sequences. The communication between us was crystal clear and his music was a fantastic addition to the film. And when all is said and done it was a great feeling to watch this film and know that the music that accompanied it was not just some conglomerate of tracks that I had downloaded from various places, music that was never done specifically to go with what I had created. In this case, the tracks had been done specifically for the film and I feel that connection is clear with the way the music accompanies the emotion and the actions that took place. I have brought Trevor back on to produce the soundtrack for my upcoming film My Inspiration. This upcoming film production will be an incredibly important one for me in terms of how important and unique the story is for me and in moving forward in my film career. I have already been spending in excess of two months working on and preparing the film for beginning production around the start of May and in controlling a film of this magnitude I know that I am going to need reliable people assisting me. I already h ave that with my lead actors and knowing that I could have a rather smooth working process with my soundtrack composer I am more than happy to have Trevor on working with me again.
Editing the film, that final piece of the piece, was a stressful journey and there are still various little things in the final cut that I have produced which, in watching over it again, I will probably make even further adjustments on. The only real issue is a few color problems. Some shots were just captured in a certain light wherein the saturation of one color was slightly too strong and thus something very difficult to adjust and make look right. But in the process of editing, cutting together the sound was stressful in some places, but getting that color to work out was the largest pain of all. Before producing a current final cut I had produced four cuts before it with the sole purpose of using them to go back through and fix every little problem I could find. I found the little edit problems and the sound problems, but color correction was the greatest pain. I would correct something just a little too far in the other direction or oversaturate one clip just a little bit. Color correction is a disciplined and time consuming practice and sometimes you just have to go back over and over to make sure it’s right. I know such with be the case for My Inspiration when I begin cutting that piece together. When all was said and done I had my longest legitimate film to date, running just a few seconds shy of forty-five minutes (qualifying it as a “feature length” film even though I still consider it to be more of a long short film).
Working around other projects, the holidays and so on it was a long time in cutting this film together. I was into February of this year before I finally got a final cut done and was able to start sending it out to those who had helped me work on it. While I think it was successful and achieved what I was going for, I still watch it and know I can do better, which is a good sensation to have without saying that this film was a waste of time or anything like that. But I don’t think I could say it’s quite my best work. I say this because those who have seen it and gotten back in touch with me have said just the opposite. Trevor was the first to contact me and he told me the film was beautiful and he has used the film to help promote his soundtrack for it, which I think is great. Kellie, who played the Counselor in the film, also said the film was great and that she loved the beautiful way in which I chose to cut everything together. She told me it was absolutely something I should put into film festivals and I am still considering it, but for right now my focus is 100% on getting My Inspiration off the ground. Perhaps I will do more with The Runner in the near future, but for now I will let it lie for a little while until I can honestly devote the time and energy to get it more attention. It was a fun, fulfilling and uplifting experience and I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. I’m glad I finally found the push to shoot it after writing it and letting it sit on a shelf for several months.
In one of the largest film productions I have put together, as of now, The Runner actually has a much deeper personal connection for me. I started writing the script in January, 2013 and completed it rather quickly. While many ideas just suddenly come to me in a spark and I expand from there, this piece really began as a coping mechanism, if I can put it that way. It was really a painful experience. To understand that we need to track back to the early morning hours of December 20, 2011. There was a girl who I had befriended at the work place in the spring of 2011 and we had begun talking on the phone a lot with each other in early December and it was on this night of the 20th that we both expressed that we had deep feelings for each other. What ensued were the greatest four months of my life, being madly in love with someone who appreciated me more than I could ever imagine. However, in the spring of 2012 I hit that wall where suddenly I got lost in life. I was disenchanted with my job, I wasn’t sure how serious I was about making films anymore. Everything outside of the girl I was with was coming apart and I slipped into a terrible depression for about four weeks, during which I convinced myself that these feelings were nerves about my relationship and we broke up while I was in the midst of this depression.
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