A short film by Jud Dagnall

I spent several months in 2000 writing, directing and editing my first short film called The Road From Here. In the film, an attractive female hitchhiker named Alexia is picked up by a mysterious hustler (Val). As soon as she gets in the car, she discovers that she may have gotten more than she bargained for. As their journey progresses, Alexia must find a way to develop a bond with him before it is too late. Lauren Hylle plays the rebellious hitchhiker, and Cody Crossman is the mysterious driver.

The Road From Here was filmed entirely with two Canon DV cameras, the XL-1 and the Elura. I did almost all of the camera work, and edited the film on a PC workstation from DV Gear. I used a Canopus DVREX M-1 video capture card, Adobe Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator and AfterEffects. One of the more exciting challenges of the project was that Cody couldn't drive a stick-shift before we began filming. We filmed over a two-month period, primarily between Monterey and Highway 5, about an hour east of Watsonville. Total expenses for the project were under $1000 (meals, gas, and some equipment), one of the great advantages of using DV. The project was an exercise in dealing with limitations, and working around the things that we just couldn't do. For example, since Cody had some trouble driving, many of his driving scenes were shot on a small frontage road in an artichoke field in Salinas. Because we were going at about 10 MPH, but needed to maintain the illusion that we were driving on a remote highway, I had to film him by lying down in the passengers seat and filming upward, so that only the sky could be seen through the window next to him. Guerilla film-making at its best!

I learned a lot about the process of film-making during this project, and I am looking forward to making another short. I'd like to work on a music-video type film that made use of a lot of visual effects, but that's down the road from here!

Click on one of the Download links below to view the movie. Note that the files are quite large, and my server is pretty slow. You'll need to be very patient if you want to see the full movie. (Even with a fast conection, it will take at least an hour because MY server is slow.)

The movie requires divx ¹ to view. Unless you already have a divx player installed, will need to download and install one.

Download

Download the movie (and a player):

• The Road From Here (48 MB)
• The divx player

Click on the links below to see the front and back of the movie jacket.

• The front cover (33913 bytes)
• The back cover (41388 bytes)