Shot hand-held in first-person POV style, Eyes in the Dark is an independent film that follows a group of college co-eds on a weekend cabin getaway in the Washington State Cascade foothills. Brought to you by the film making team behind Warrior's End, Eyes in the Dark combines the characters' compulsive self-documentation and laid-back humor with the raw terror they uncover after crossing paths with an ancient evil. The filmmakers blended improvisational talents of the actors with the beautiful but brooding locations to create a vision that plays on the fear of the unknown. Set in a fictionalized area of the Cascade Range with a long history of legends and mysterious disappearances, the film transports the audience to a place of excitement and terror.
Shooting
commenced in June 2008 with principle photography of the college
student storyline lasting two months. The search and rescue sequence,
and the naturalist researchers sequence were filmed in the summer of
2009.
The film was shot on location in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains,
at a large recreation lodge and the surrounding area. Sixty minutes
east of Seattle on Interstate-90, the location provided the perfect
combination of forested remoteness and accessibility to facilitate the
making of the film.
Weather during the shoot was mostly warm and dry, though a heavy
mosquito infestation caused the some lasting discomfort for cast and
crew. The cave that appears in the film had to be composed of a few
different locations as there are no naturally occurring caves in the
North Cascades. Cast and crew hiked gear, costumes, and effects
elements into two different disused railroad tunnels, and dressed the
cave entrance with a rock formation at Mt. Si, notable as one of the
"Twin Peaks" from the David Lynch series.
Due to the POV nature of the scenerio, the cast had to work very closely
with the cinematographer and camera people, treating them as surrogate
characters in the story and interacting with them as diegetic elements
of the plot. On other occasions the cinematographer and actors would
move in a choreographed pattern as a team, with a hand on the shoulder
maintaining sync.