BadFritter Films

... of styrene caves and carcasses


"AWESOME!" I yelled after ending the phone call informing me that I had been hired as Production Designer for Paper Dolls.
There wasn't much offered salary wise nor would the budget allow me to hire any art department crew but I was so excited by the script I would have agreed to do it for Craft Service alone. It was one of the best I had read in LA, certainly the best one I had ever been considered for. What it called for in creativity would give me the chance to further spread my wings as a production designer on film. Moreover we were to shoot in Montana, which was a chance to go somewhere I had never been nor knew anything about yet again, and since travel is my favourite form of education it was all too good to be true.
It proved to be all that and more...

I knew no one on the crew except for one person I had shot a short with years before and who had gotten me my interview. Other than him, all were strangers and there we all were in the wilderness in the northern Montana Mountains to make art - incredible!

Needless to say - but I will anyway - the challenges that arise on every film shoot were coupled with others they paled in comparison to and took us from inspired ingenuity to downright vandalism. In addition they took me from buying nightstands and fluffing flowers one day to stabbing a chainsaw into huge blocks of styrene the next as I careened scene to scene as I was called to stage a suburban kitchen one moment to the bone filled den of a Sasquatch at another; from making caves in a garage to being elbow deep in cow carcasses on the side of the highway at midnight.

Without an assistant full time I was kept jumping. Remembering it now, including the all day drive for what felt like a clandestine meeting at some gas station in a town of two buildings to pick up a small stash of weapons from our explosives engineer, it seems as though I was on some deranged steeple chase/scavenger hunt/decathlon.

It was all a total blast that I remember with more than fondness and a lot of laughter. Still one of the best work experiences of my life that yielded a film of which I am extremely proud and feel lucky to have been a part of creating.