I Be a Witch
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This is our first feature. It started as a one-woman show, written and performed by Lori Prescott Hansen. Cherie and Matthew traveled to Idaho and saw a performance of it at the Romance Theater in Rexburg, and Matthew suggested that it might make a good short film.
A few months later, and production was under way. We shot the entire film in a 19×29-foot, non-climate-controlled garage in Orem, Utah. We built a number of sets, some of which were only one wall that had to be moved from one side to the other when we changed angles. The building of the Salem Jail took months as we hand carved the stones out of rigid insulation foam. The jail cell scenes were therefore shot in the hottest part of the summer.
The film was completed by the autumn and screened for the first time back at the Romance. The screenplay was originally around 30 to 35 pages long, so we expected it to be a fairly long short. But our first cut of the film was over 50 minutes long. We put our heads together and decided that given that it was already officially feature length, we should add a few more scenes.
We wrote new scenes and shot them at the end of the following winter. At least Lori no longer had to pretend to be cold. In the spring, we traveled to Massachusetts and visited Salem and Andover. We shot a few clips of locations there, and used those clips in the end credits of the film: the only ones not shot in the garage.
The experience overall has been wonderful for us. We were delighted with many powerful and insightful performances from our actors. The relationships that came from this film will last us a lifetime.
