That is when the idea for The Buildout was born. A pseudo-found footage, Terrence Malick-inspired, cross-genre film that follows two women on their motorcycles deep into the desert towards something both unnatural and unknowable.
Cue Trevor.
Fast-forward a few years and we are sitting at a Lazy Dog detailing all of the insane variables that need to align for The Buildout to come to life. Talent, weather, stunts, budget, permits, vehicles, cameras, bathrooms, everything. Even though it was all overwhelming and somehow already exhausting, we eventually came to a collective understanding: “We can do this.”
Piece by piece we cultivated a trusted and dedicated team that saw our greatest challenges as points of excitement. Making your first feature film? Sick. Entirely exterior shoot? Woah. Almost 100% natural light? Wild. Dirt bikes? Sure, why not? You have how much money? None? Ok, let’s do it.
Our cast and crew, by far, were our greatest assets, and on our hardest days, we’d find strength in them. A large majority of our budget was placed in fair rate structures, housing, and above-average catering.
We would eventually spend ten days in the Anza-Borrego State Park with seven of them actively on set (an insane amount of time to attempt a feature). Even with such a small production window, it is nearly impossible to recap what happened during our time out there. We can say that day one was a consecration ritual underneath a blood moon eclipse and that day nine had Anne Hathaway’s stunt double from The Dark Knight Rises doing donuts on a motorcycle Zeshaan purchased impulsively during the height of the pandemic.
