Hardwood

The genesis of “Hardwood” emerged from a nightmare where I was lost in a never-ending forest. The dream climaxed with the eerie discovery of a long thread of black hair protruding from my forearm. I woke up in a cold sweat and then several days later found those images were still with me. From that dream, new ideas and visuals began to fill my head, one building upon the next until finally, the script for ‘Hardwood” was complete.

The vision for “Hardwood” is akin to a classic” Twilight Zone” episode – from a seemingly normal narrative, emerges a creepy, morality tale that ends with an eerie punctuation or twist.

From the start our visual approach was always to shoot with a clean, traditional cinematic approach verses a hand-held, “run through the forest” look. Wide lenses were used illustrate the enormity of the forest and our main character’s relation to it, as he became consumed and ultimately a part of it. Due to the large element of nature in the film, we designed it to keep all tones “earthy” and muted with the accent being our felon’s prison-issue, rust orange, jumpsuit. This offered a great juxtaposition between the beauty of the forest and the ugliness of who our character was.

While “Hardwood” entertains with its narrative tale and cinematic structure, the film represents many themes, which rather than revealing, I’ll leave for the viewer to experience and interpret for themselves.