An ex-con and his ex-girlfriend who set out to reclaim the loot they buried ten years earlier, but as one of them is about to find out, karma sure is one Helluva b**ch!
The title explains a lot, Blood, Dust and Banjos is a dusty southern blood quencher with a rather simple storyline that holds quite a punch. The film holds reminisces of films like ‘From Dusk Till Dawn‘ where the contained content leaves room for blatant dialogues, and a clear road for actors to embellish their roles. Retrained to a small budget and small crew, director Al Lougher managed to keep the production at the highest standard.
Shot over 2 days, with a $1000 budget and a skeleton crew, this film came about after we failed to raise funds for another project. Rather than sit around, and let the summer days fly by, we decided to just go out and shoot something for fun. We had the gear, and the actors are all friends who had been in my previous two films, so I wrote the script with them in mind while on vacation and we shot it a few weeks later.
Al also got his hands full assuming several roles during the production, something ill-advised but often seen in smaller budget films.
This was also my first time writing, DP’ing and directing combined, something that I wouldn’t recommend but when you have no budget you have to sometimes wear all the hats! We are considering writing a new script based on this short which we would aim to turn into a feature sometime in 2015.
The actors just had fun with Blood, Dust and Banjos, and the outcome is clear of it. You might recognize actor Todd Bruno, who’s starred in Ryan Connolly‘s and Film Riot‘s acclaimed shorts ‘Tell‘ and ‘Proximity‘.