White Flag is complete, festival submissions have been sent, and now it's playing the waiting game to hear whether we got into any or not. In the meantime, we decided to move forward and start putting together publicity material.

First off, we made a trailer: I'm labeling this as a teaser because it was somewhat more experimental on my part. While Mia is the central character to the story, her brother Caleb plays an integral part to her character (as well as co-lead in the short itself). So I thought it would be cool to make a trailer that's comprised of Mia talking about Caleb, but never actually showing him until the very last shot, which even then it's an extreme wide shot.

What do you think, does this work with making you intrigued about the film?

Teaser Trailer:

Also, as we make the DVDs for cast/crew/anyone that wants one, we decided to make it a little special and grab as many crew members as we could to make some behind the scenes featurettes. We can also double this by putting the featurettes online as webisodes and allow anyone interested to get a glimpse into our working process and let them get to know us a little better.

Plus, it's fun! I like editing together things like this!

So here's how we ended breaking up all the interviews:

1) What is White Flag About?

A natural starting point of a series of behind the scenes films would be for us to talk about the project we're working on. So when I interviewed them, I let them all talk about what they feel the film is about and what White Flag means to them.

2) Our Cast

We had a fantastic and dedicated cast for the short. So we went through and talked about all of our interactions with the actors, from the very first moment we met them in the audition room until the final voiceovers were recorded.

3) The Makeup Truck

One of the struggles of a low/no budget independent film is that you have to make due with that resources you have at hand. One of our scenes with the most cast and crew took place in a junkyard, and we ended up have quite a unique makeup truck. I thought that would be a fun thing for everyone to remember.

4) Squibs

Squibs are what's used to simulate blood squirts when someone is shot. Usually it's done with explosives and blood packets, however, with low budget we're forced to figure out inexpensive (and more importantly NON EXPLOSIVE) ways we can simulate an actor being shot.

We talk about the process we went through experimenting with it and how it turned out on set!

5) Storage Facility Interior Set

In hindsight, one of the things I'm most proud of was this set. Again, for our budget and experience level, I think this was incredibly ambitious. In one of the scenes, the two lead characters find an old storage facility to rest in for a while. While they were there, they see writing all over the wall from people that have been there before.

As I mentioned in the video, this was one of the things that intrigued me most about the script from the very beginning. In a short film it's very difficult to provide adequate back story while telling the main story, so in a great example of "show, don't tell" this set provided the backstory of the war and the struggles people have been going through for a while before the film takes place.

Obviously, we couldn't write all over someone's wall, so while the exteriors were shot at a storage facility in Lockport, Illinois, we built a set of identical dimensions and filmed the interiors in a garage in Plainfield, Illinois.

That's half way through the behind the scenes videos, I'll post the remaining of them next week!

Update: Check out the post for Part 2 of White Flag Behind the Scenes Videos

Update Update: You can see the full short film at the White Flag Blog Post!