Q&A with the director of Deadfall Trail, Roze

Q: What was your process when writing the script for Deadfall Trail?

A: At this point Candace Rose, my writing partner, and I had written a number of feature length scripts, none of which were produced at the time. So, we changed our game plan and started working with ideas and writing a short synopsis for each one. After pitching the ideas to some distributors, investors and the guys over at True Story Films, Deadfall Trail was the idea everyone responded to. From there it was easy. One night Josh Staman and I pulled together some friends for beer. (Everyone thinks they are a writer with some beer in their belly.) I threw out different scenarios and let everyone argue and debate while I just listened. Then I would throw out another scenario, each time giving the story some shape. They would argue again and I slowly built the general structure to the screenplay. After the dust settled, Josh and I went to work on the first draft of the script. With Josh in Los Angeles and me in Phoenix we had to come up with a unique system to work over the Internet. With this complicated system of highlighting and bolding, I wrote the first 30 pages and Josh would re-write them while I was working on the next 30. The script went through this process for a few months before we had a strong first draft. At that point I handed it over to Candace. She gave the script a great re-write then she and I went to work on character development. The story is really made for men but we developed the complexity of the characters and it became something more than a testosterone driven genre movie. The whole process was very collaborative.

Q: I heard you came up with the idea in February of 2008 and you were shooting by October. That’s 8 months. How did you turn it around so fast?

A: (Laughs) Yeah, that’s a good question. I had a great team. We were working on a deadline. The winter was going to hit and until the last minute we had been planning on camping the whole time.

Q: In tents?

A: Yes, in tents. It was amazing what we pulled off in such a short amount of time. I had been scouting Parks, Arizona for months prior. In fact I wrote quite a bit of the script in my father in-law’s cabin up there. So, I knew the location like the back of my hand. I did three trips up there with the cast and crew prior to shooting as well. One was a location scout with my cinematographer, Tari Segal. I went again with all the department heads and once with the three cast members. Once production started everyone knew what he or she were in for.

Q: How long did you shoot for up there?

A: We shot for 16 days. The cast and crew of about 30 all stayed in these three cabins in Parks, Arizona.

Q: What was that like?

A: It was important to me that the crew was happy. I had worked with this crew since 2002, not as a director but as a PA. We all have been through hell and back together on other productions and I wanted to treat them right. We ate three meals a day together and drank beer almost every night. We didn’t become a family on set; we already were when the production started. That felt good.

Q: What was the average day like on this set?

A: After breakfast in the mess hall we drove out to set in the middle of the woods. I drove a quad to set by myself everyday. It was a great way to clear my mind before the day began. Once on set everybody would be warming themselves by the fire and Tari and I would go over the shot list. Then we would get on it. We shot with two RED cameras and it was not unusual to get over a hundred shots in a day. We never felt rushed and we always ended early. I think there was only one day during production we didn’t make our day.

Q: What was it like working with your cinematographer, Tari Segal?

A: She is an amazing artist and her work speaks for itself. We knew we didn’t have the luxury of time so we did not always have the option to shoot basic coverage and figure it out in the edit. We created a cinematic language that changed the forest we were shooting in, from a character in the film to a trap that our characters were caught in. This was all done in the camera. Another thing we did was to allow the cameras to be more flexible for the actors. I wanted the camera to discover the performance, which in turn allowed the actors to be free to listen and react to each other rather than worry about hitting their marks. All of the camera operators were apart of the performance.

Q: What was your creative process with the actors like?

A: First off I want to say that it was an honor to work with, Shane Dean, Slade Hall and Cavin Schneider Gray. They all came to the project with so much dedication. After 10 to 12 hours of shooting we would meet for dinner and directly after we would rehearse for another 3 to 4 hours. I remember one night we just finished rehearsals and the grips were outside drinking. They were amazed, because they never saw someone work longer hours than a grip, especially an actor. But, besides their dedication to the project, they each have a dedication to their art. They did not come out into the woods to be the best actor. They came out there to be someone else and live their story.

Q: Do you have a favorite or memorable moment?

A: One day we had to shoot a scene where Cavin has to try and catch a lizard. Well, we didn’t have a lizard. We figured we would just go to the set and see what kind of wild life we could have Cavin chase. On our way over my Key Grip, Felipe Pena tells me he had seen a lizard earlier and he took us to were he had found it and sure as shit it was there. So, we decided to take the shot there rather than try to move the lizard to the log we wanted to shoot the scene at. We get the cameras rolling and to our surprise Cavin catches the lizard. So, at this that point we decided to shoot the scene at the log we had originally intended. On the way over Cavin had befriended the lizard and the two of them did the shot multiple times. Cavin would chase the lizard, the lizard would run away, we would cut the scene and Cavin easily picked the lizard up and placed him on the log over and over again. We got our shot and we put the lizard back were we found him and moved on with our day. The whole shoot was like that. The world just kept turning our way..