10/17/2025
So it all started over a beer at Universal Studios where I came up with the bright idea of making a horror themed short for Halloween.
After some back and forth and the creation of a rough script, my good friend Kyle agreed that the idea might not be terrible.
We needed a story, a location and someone to feature in it. So basically we needed everything.
I knew immediately who I wanted to play the role we were writing and that was the fantastic and thankfully she kindly agreed to be a part of it.
Next up, Kyle and I took a day to drive around looking for locations and found ourselves up in Ocala. We found a beautiful little spot called Indian Lake which is a small body of water surrounded by wonderful woodland and this was to be our first shooting location.
Next up, we needed a cabin for the evening portion of the shoot, and we landed upon the perfect location and booked it as soon as I saw it was available. So a pretty successful scouting day, marred ever so slightly by some awful bbq. I don’t think Ocala is known for its bbq scene.
Fast forward a couple of weeks and we were set. We started shooting at 4pm and at that time it was overcast and raining, but by the time sunset rolled around, the light was perfect. Were we losing light a little quicker than we would have liked, yes.
We wrapped the shoot around 1:30am, so it was a long day. In reality we could have used 2 days to shoot, but that was more money, so we packed it in a single day.
The initial idea was to shoehorn in some HHN footage, why?, so I could tag universal and hope they saw it, but Alanys did such a great job in such a short time, it felt like the wrong thing to do. The story is better not being touched by a HHN commercial.
If I were more social media savvy I would probably have done it and gotten more views etc, but I’m not and whilst I want people to see it. I think it’s better this way.
Here are some incredible bts shots taken by the always great
It’s a pleasure to work creatively with one of my best friends
‘Is Anyone There?’ will be on YouTube this Sunday.