People began disappearing in the woods of Rocky Hills. Then rumors grew about strange experiments. And then Cutler wasn’t seen again.
That’s the legend at the heart of the second feature-length film by a group of young Oak Hill High School grads. “The Bridge” opens with present-day college kids sitting around the campfire in Rocky Hills swapping ghost stories.
The idea was born over their real-life winter break. Chris Jones, the 19-year-old director, cameraman, editor and co-writer, didn’t set out to make a horror movie.
“There are scary elements to it,” said Jones, a business management major at the Wentworth Institute of Technology. “We want people to think versus, ‘Oh, I was so scared the whole time.’ We hope to show people that we’ve grown from our first movie.”
Jones, his actors and crew — Cody DePuy, Elijah Washburn, Kenyon Fraser, Gwen Fraser, Caleb Meservey and Stephanie Paradis, all friends for years, all from Litchfield — filmed “The Admin Effect” last July and screened it at the Lewiston Auburn Film Festival this spring.
Jones co-wrote the new screenplay with the Frasers. Much of it has been filmed in the past month in his parents’ back woods with the real-life stone bridges of Vaughn Woods in Hallowell standing in for the title bridge.
The movie centers on the confident Alex, played by DePuy, and Simon, the socially awkward new kid, played by Washburn.
“(It’s), ‘Let’s go see if the myth is real, see if the legend is true,'” Jones said. “‘What was this guy (Cutler) doing once he got back?'”
Shooting wraps in the next 10 days, when one actor has to leave for college. There’s been lots of night shooting to work around schedules, and a tight budget of about $1,000.
He hopes to finish the edit by the end of September to give time for another Oak Hill grad, Colby Michaud, to compose the soundtrack.
There’s a premiere date already: Dec. 28 at Flagship Cinemas in Auburn.
Washburn, 19, a business management major at the University of Southern Maine, said shooting the film has been a great excuse to pull the friends together during summer break, much like a reunion.
An occasionally unsettling reunion.
“We want to try to creep the audience out, so a lot of times we get creeped out as well,” he said.
kskelton@sunjournal.com
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- The cast and crew of “The Bridge,” from left to right, Chris Jones, Caleb Meservey, Gwen Fraser, and her brother Kenyon Fraser run through lines as they wait for dusk to fall before filming in Litchfield recently.
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- The cast and crew of “The Bridge,” from left to right, Caleb Meservey, Kenyon Fraser, his sister Gwen Fraser, Elijah Washburn and Chris Jones set up and run through lines as they wait for dusk to fall before filming in Litchfield recently.
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- Chris Jones, center, discusses possible changes to a scene in “The Bridge” while doing a practice run with actors Gwen Fraser and Elijah Washburn, not pictured, and his production team Kenyon Fraser, left, and Caleb Meservey in Litchfield recently.
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- Chris Jones, right, speaks with amateur actors Gwen Fraser, left, and Elijah Washburn as they do a practice run of a scene in the woods behind his Litchfield home with his production team, Kenyon Fraser, second from left, and Caleb Meservey, not pictured, recently on their movie venture, “The Bridge.”
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- Elijah Washburn, 19, checks his lines as he practices a scene from “The Bridge” recently in Litchfield.
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- Chris Jones, second from left, speaks with actors Gwen Fraser, right, and Elijah Washburn as they do a practice run of a scene in the woods behind his Litchfield home for their newest movie, “The Bridge.” Kenyon Fraser is at left and Caleb Meservey is not pictured. The high school friends, all from Litchfield, decided to make a second movie after their first, “The Admin Effect,” made it into the Lewiston Auburn Film Festival.
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