BEHIND THE SCENES

Cabins at the Caverns

HHaving been raised by a cinematographer father and a mother who helped run a photography studio, it should be no surprise that Morgan County native Brandon McLemore went on to be interested in film.

“There was always something related to film around,” McLemore says, “and around the age of seven I got involved in community theater. Around 2009, when I was thirteen, I got the idea that I wanted to start making movies.” With that initial spark of an idea, McLemore and some friends made a small home movie that was a spoof of The Wizard of Oz. While many did not see that first effort, McLemore said it did inspire him to begin working on a script of his own for a short suspense film.

After the script was complete, McLemore decided it was worth attempting to actually do something with his newest creative endeavor.

“We approached the acting studio in Huntsville to get the actors for it and we filmed it over the course of that year and premiered it at the Princess Theater in Decatur in the spring of 2010.”

Over the course of the next few years, McLemore and his father did several short films, one of which was shown on a local North Alabama television station. He also reinterpreted Edgar Allan Poe’s Tell Tale Heart, which came in second place in the student film category of the River City Film Festival.

After a short detour into theater in high school, McLemore then went to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he studied broadcasting. He credits his time at UAB for teaching him the necessary technical aspects of filmmaking that have been invaluable to him.

Also while in college, McLemore came up with an idea for a film about a ghost being unleashed from a box and the impact that event would have on the characters within the story.

“I never fully went after that idea but it was always kind of sitting in the back of my mind. I knew that if I ever wanted to sit down and write another script, I already had an idea to work with.” Around 2015, not knowing if it would ever actually get filmed, he decided to get to work on the script that would one day become his first feature film, Dark Entities

In early 2020 McLemore decided to pursue filming Dark Entities, with no way of knowing the roadblock that the Covid-19 pandemic would present. Deciding it would still be possible to complete the project with a limited cast and crew, McLemore and his friends went forward cautiously.

“We filmed most of it on a farm way out in Somerville. We also went to downtown Hartselle and filmed in what was then the Hartselle Antique Mall. Everyone involved was great and excited to have us there.”

After filming was complete in the fall of 2020, McLemore began the arduous job of editing the three-hour rough cut down the just shy of two hours, as well as adding color grading to emphasize specific hues, fixing audio issues and adding a score provided by renowned musician David Vest.