It was the middle of summer, in 2001, when a rag-tag group calling themselves "Twilightshow" wandered into the Arizona desert for their first day of shooting. We were armed with a Sony DCR-TRV103 digital camera and a lavaliere microphone. What was originally going to take six weeks to shoot, stretched into a grueling schedule through the four hottest months of the year. If you've never been to Phoenix, Arizona in the dead of summer, don't even believe you understand.

I (Ben) had spent the last few months hammering out a screenplay entitled The Dead Link. The story of two brothers who receive from their estranged Grandmother a map that will supposedly lead them to the legendary Lost Dutchman's Gold. Along with their female companions, they stumble across a strange dead body that doesn't appear to be human. They decide to abandon their treasure hunt and haul the creature back to their Grandmothers house where one by one they are lured into killing each other by the creature's undead spirit.

I planned on doing all of the filming myself. We started with a small budget. I had a decent job as an interior demolition foreman, and I figured I'd pay-as-I-go. The movie would have eerie sets, gruesome makeup, wild stunts and special effects. The problem was there were no stunt doubles, no set builders, no makeup artists and no computer generated anything. Still, I was determined to have it "not look cheesy."

The actors agreed to differ payment and with that we were off and running. Oh, except for one thing, at the last minute the lead actor had girlfriend problems and dropped out, yea a little problem. We'd been rehearsing for five weeks and the cast was getting restless. They didn't want to wait until I found someone else, so they voted for me to play the lead. O.K., so who's going to film the damn thing? The torch was passed to our casting director/ associate producer/ now cameraperson, Terry Valenzuela. She'd been into photography for years but movies were something new. I gave her a quick course on dynamic composition and instructions on camera operation. Actually it was more like, "Just do what I tell you and make sure the camera's focused" but you get the picture. Things were off to a great start.

I decided that careful planning was the key to making this baby roll. Almost nothing was filmed in sequence. It was basically scenes driving, scenes in the trailer, scenes outside the trailer, scenes in the barn, scenes on the trail...etc. We filmed in chunks.

The Desert Scenes
The whole damn thing takes place in the desert.

Most of the desert scenes where filmed on my parents property. They built their home on a pretty good-sized piece of land at the base of the Superstition foothills. My parents reluctantly agreed to let us use their property, under the condition that we would leave the area just as it was. There's cactus everywhere, and I mean everywhere. This means you got your ass stuck by cactus at least once during the shoot.

The Trailer Scenes
A good portion of the movie takes place in and out of a trailer (mobile home) where Lillian's character lives. It's supposed to look like she lives in the middle of nowhere.

The scenes in the trailer were the worst. This was a small mobile home that my parents had for sale by the side of their house. The housing commission in their area informed them that they could have the trailer on their property as long as nobody lived in it. I had to build this thing into a set by clearing away brush and moving it to another area of their property. The next step was to make it look like someone lived in it. We set up a small windmill, a walkway, some plants and some gardening tools. A sunburn later, it looked like a regular residence inside and out. Sure enough, the housing commission kept coming out and harassing my parents. It couldn't even "look like" anyone was living in it without a permit, so we had to work fast. We ran electricity from my parent's house for lights and a fan. By this time it was 110 degrees outside the trailer, and around 130 degrees inside. The microphone was picking up the fan so we couldn't run it while filming. The scenes were supposed to be taking place at night, so we couldn't open any doors or windows. I had the bright idea of burning a gas lantern for ambiance. The heat, along with the gas fumes, gave everyone a pounding headache. It was hell for all of us, especially Connie who was 61 and looked like she was going to pass out at any minute. On the bright side, everyone got their performances down as well as they could, as fast as they could, and the sweaty scenes have a good gritty feel. After all it does takes place in the desert.

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