EYES IN THE DARK

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 filmmaking 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 the improvisational talents of the actors with 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 quickly transports the audience to a place of excitement and terror.

On Location

Shooting commenced in June of 2008 with principal 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 called Trollhaugen 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 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 in to 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 scenario, 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 a choreographed pattern as a team, with a hand on the shoulder maintaining sync.