"Cool and Dark" was the first picture I worked on professionally outside of school, so it will always be memorable to me. Physically, this was a very difficult shoot because we shot it entirely on location in the Olympic National Park, near Forks, Washington – later, the site of sparkley vampires (I bear no responsibility for that). That meant we had to haul in much of the equipment on our backs through thick forest terrain. I was Property Master on this shoot, and I'm particularly proud of the work I did on a critical scene which depicted a logging accident. I had to rig a stretcher to be flown out by a medical helicopter with a fake body onboard that had to, of course, look real. It worked out quite well.
Our crew was made up of a fantastically committed group of people. We all endured 60mph winds and rain on a helicopter landing, mud up to our knees, not to mention virtually no sleep, in classic independent filmmaking no-frills style. Most people wouldn't have the shear endurance to handle it, but filmmakers are a funny breed. Get them around a camera, and they'll do the impossible.
