At the beginning of summer 2008 Luke Ensign (It's Mine!, Alternatives, Detective Sinclair) was preparing to leave home to go on a 2-year church mission to Nicaragua.  Before he had to leave he and Brad Olsen wanted to make one last short film together and push their production values as far as they could go.  The western genre seemed to be the right way to go.

    They tossed around ideas until they came up with something they both liked.  Brad wrote the script and contacted Derek Clair to get underway on producing it.  Locations had to be found as well as costumes and horses.  Nathan White and Hailey Isaacson joined the cast in addition to Luke (who was playing the lead) and Sherrie Stringer (who agreed to not only provide horses but be in the film as well).

    Sherrie Stringer, Derek's friend's mom, was kind enough to humor Derek by providing horses.  But Luke would need riding lessons.  He practiced riding his horse until he was sore and then practiced some more.

    On Wednesday, August 13th Derek and Brad were joined by friend CJ Crane to hunt down locations in small towns and the desert.  Locations in Eureka, Mammoth, and the Little Sahara Desert, Utah were chosen.  As well as a location Sherrie and her husband Rod knew about in American Fork Canyon.

    Derek carefully planned and scheduled everything with consultation from Brad.  On Tuesday, August 19th with just over 3 days until production was scheduled to begin the cast and crew met at the office in Orem, Utah to go over the schedule and to try on costumes.

DAY 1 - Friday, August 22nd would be the first day of production and the cast and crew drove through American Fork Canyon to get on location.  Shooting the last sequence of the film was underway in at 6pm.  The beautiful location combined with the time of day created an amazing look for the film.  And the last shot of day 1 was of the amazing sunset.

DAY 2 - The very next morning everyone had to wake up at the early hour of 5 am to drive clear out to Mammoth, Utah for the first scenes of the day.  No permission was obtained to shoot there but luckily the few residents (30 tops) didn't mind the production team.  Everything went smoothly and the first location was wrapped an hour ahead of schedule.  CJ was there making sandwiches for eveybody.  After lunch Hailey and Nate were done for the day and able to head back home.

    Moving onto Eureka, Utah the exciting opening shots of Luke galloping past a mine on his horse were captured.  Everything up until then was relatively pleasant, aside from Nate forgetting to wear socks causing a blister on his foot.  Then the team found themselves at the sand dunes.  The sun beat down onto white sand reflecting light everywhere.  Plus sand just gets EVERYWHERE!  The shots look amazing showing a hostel environment.  Despite the discomfort of the place it still was a lot of fun.

    Luke galloping across the landscape came up next and while the rest of us had fun riding in a truck or watching from a distance Luke was not having as much fun trying to get the horse to go the way he wanted it to and dealing with the pain of bouncing on and off his sadel.  In the end the desired shot was captured and looks spectacular.

Scene 4, Luke at Campfire (After)

Scene 5, Homestead Flashback (Before)

Scene 5, Homestead Flashback (After)

Scene 10, Final Sequence (Before)

Scene 10, Final Sequence (After)

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