The lights came up, the projector faded, and Renny and I stood next to our composer Mike Bishop, and our producers, Charan and Gordon, in front of an Italian audience after our successful Trieste Science and Fiction Festival screening. As we waited for the translator to introduce us, the entire experience felt alien—but in a totally different way. Here we were, on foreign soil, surrounded by fans speaking a foreign language, and I was curious to hear the first question they’d ask about the film.

“Please explain what the heck was going on in that car-smashing sport thing you Yankees do.”

That’s not a direct translation, but it captured the spirit of the first question.

I grew up on the East Coast and had never seen a demolition derby in person. I’d only ever heard of them—a motorsport that probably sprang out of a testosterone-fueled fever dream where someone said, “What if bumper cars... but dangerous?”

It wasn’t just the Italians who asked about the derby—audiences everywhere were curious. And honestly, I remember the first time I ever saw one in person, in Spanish Fork, Utah. It was probably a decade before we filmed our own real demolition derby scene for Alien Country. The whole experience blew my mind. The scoring system was confusing, but the energy was unreal. My main takeaway? I wanted to be the first person to put a demolition derby in a major motion picture. In my mind, nothing was gonna capture the heart of the modern American West better than the bizarre motor bloodsport of destroying old steel against steel in a rodeo "Battle Arena."

Growing up, my dad shared with me a unique definition of "LUCK." Hanging—somewhat ironically—from the ceiling rafters of his high school wrestling room were the words: "Luck is when preparation meets opportunity." That idea has always stuck with me. Sometimes you're lucky, and sometimes things seem like a miracle. Whether it was luck or a miracle, how we managed to pull off the demolition derby scene that opens the film is perhaps the craziest story of our entire journey.

In 2015, we were still trying to raise money for Alien Country, so we coordinated with the Manti Demolition Derby to shoot promo footage for a teaser. We hired a drone team, mounted cameras inside cars, and filmed from the sidelines. But power lines interfered with the drone, the in-car camera was smashed mid-heat, and our sideline cam had a recording error that lost half its footage.

It was a mess—and it left me discouraged for a long time... years, actually.

But between 2015 and 2019, we kept sharpening our skills through YouTube and other projects. Then one summer, I reopened that footage—and realized we had captured some absolute gold.

I cut together a short video and posted it to the Manti Demolition Derby’s Facebook page. That same day, they sold over a thousand tickets. The organizers messaged us: “If you want to come back this year and film, you’re welcome to.”

We returned with the same spirit, more experience, and a shiny new arena.

I’d always pictured Jimmy in a blue truck and a red derby car. While scouting the gravel fairgrounds lot with my friend Skyler Brunner, he pointed out a bright blue car with the number 8 painted on the side. That’s when we met Brian Andersen, who became our demo-derby driving team lead for the next four years.

And the real magic—the kind you can’t plan for—happened at sunset, as that blue number 8 rolled into the arena…

A few days before the derby, I sketched out storyboards of the sequence I hoped to capture—knowing they were very specific to what was written in the script. But my thought was, we could always come back another day, or even a year later during full production, and re-stage the shots properly. So, what I told Brian was simple: Jimmy would go out into the arena, get a few good hits in, and then start getting absolutely pummeled—especially by Officer Kirk. Eventually, Jimmy gets pinned against the wall, and his car catches fire. He has to escape.

That was the vision, the dream. But I kid you not— pound for pound, that’s exactly what happened that day.

Brian started strong, landing a bunch of clean hits—one of which we caught in a spectacular drone shot. This time, we were operating with two drones: a traditional cinema drone and an FPV drone. (At the time, FPVs weren’t being used much in cinematic contexts—but again, preparation met opportunity.)

Then, right on cue, Brian was pinned against the wall and slammed by two cars. The only thing that didn’t match the script exactly? His car didn’t catch fire.

The other car did.

The one that crashed into him from behind burst into flames.

It was unreal.

I’ve included in this book the storyboards I drew before that day, alongside the real footage we captured—and it’s astonishing how closely they match.

We always considered the possibility that whatever we captured during the 2019 Manti Demolition Derby might make it into the final cut of the film. So, we shot it with that in mind. But we also assumed we’d come back the following year during production and properly stage the scene, shot for shot.

Then COVID hit.

All demolition derbies in 2020 were canceled. Which meant—like it or not—the footage we captured in 2019 was the only demolition derby footage we’d ever have with a live audience.

In 2020 and 2021, we returned to the fairgrounds two more times to fill in the gaps. We shot our actors performing behind the wheel, and reaction shots from the stands. In the end, what looks like a million-dollar sequence was created for closer to ten or twenty thousand—spread out over three years.

In indie film, if you want quality and don't have the money... you can always spend more "time." I guess you could say that's exactly what we did.

The original inspiration for the fictional town of Blue River came from the small, rugged towns of Green River and Hanksville, Utah. Renny and I spent a long time driving around the state, especially trying to find great locations closer to home in Salt Lake or Utah Valley. We were searching for something that captured the spirit of those desert towns—particularly a place that could serve as Nana’s farmhouse. When we found a picturesque home belonging to a family who’d been cattle ranching in Utah Valley for over 100 years—we knew we’d found our place. That’s when we officially settled on Spanish Fork as our central filming location.

There are a lot of practical considerations when choosing a location—one of the biggest being where your base camp will be. Ideally, you want a place you can stick with for at least a week. We had one main trailer that served as our wardrobe and makeup hub. As we quickly learned as first-time feature filmmakers, it’s way easier to move trailers over the weekend than overnight during the week.

Luckily, just down the road from the Nana’s home location, we found the perfect secondary location: a bar that had actually been featured in an episode of Yellowstone. Due to COVID restrictions, they were only open four days a week, which meant we were able to book out the Maple Mountain Bar & Grill for three and a half of our biggest production days during week one.

The bar’s manager, Jace, quickly became one of our earliest and easiest friendships during production. He even makes a cameo in the bar scene itself. A couple years later, I returned after post-production had wrapped, only to find the bar was no longer there. It was a bit of a bummer, but maybe not entirely surprising—the building had changed owners and permits more than once.

The evolution of that building went something like this: it started as a bar called The Tipsy Cow, became the Maple Mountain Bar & Grill, and now—believe it or not—it’s a kindergarten.

Which, in a weird way, kind of makes sense.

First, people get a little tipsy. That can lead to starting a family. And once the kids are big enough... well, they need somewhere to go to school.

Am I right? If we ever were to make a sequel to Alien Country it would be great to have Jimmy and Everly pick up their kid from school at that same location.

As an artist, I’ve filled sketchbooks, written down thousands of ideas, and started countless projects that never made it past the concept phase. That’s just part of the process. But for a film to get made, it needs that tipping point—that moment when enough people are invested in making it happen.

With Alien Country, that tipping point began when Charan joined us. He wasn’t just another collaborator—he was a catalyst. He brought fresh energy, ideas, and enthusiasm, and suddenly, the project felt real in a way it hadn’t before. It wasn’t just my film or Renny’s film anymore. It was our film. And when you reach that point—when your creative project has people behind it who need to see it happen—things start to move.

So, we dusted off the script, spent a couple of months rewriting it, and got a bunch of friends and family together for a table read.

We gathered a group of actors, found a cool barn venue, set up some moody lighting, and read through the first draft of Alien Country out loud.

I’d love to tell you it was a knockout success, that we knew right then and there we had a masterpiece on our hands. But the truth? Hearing the script out loud made us realize just how much work still needed to be done.

So we buckled down and got to work.

Originally, we envisioned Jimmy working at a mechanic shop attached to a gas station. But there wasn’t anything quite right near our base camp, so we improvised. One of the neighbors down the street let us use their home garage, and it ended up working great for what we needed.

Then we started looking for a barn where we could shoot the scene where Jimmy, Everly, and Sheriff Rogers go hunting for Kogg monsters. Again, luck struck. Just down the street from the garage location, we found a barn that already had about 70% of the set dressing we envisioned—old farm equipment, worn wood, and even a semi-circular church pew (okay... we didn't envision that specifically, but it was creepy and weird and therefore perfect). We tossed in a few hay bales and a meat hook, but for the most part, it was a found-location jackpot.

The barn day was wild. We shot on what's called a “split”—starting in the afternoon and going into the night. Inside, it was dusty, cramped, and probably full of rodent poop. After a few hours, everyone was coughing, which, in the middle of COVID, gave us all a little extra fear and trepidation. But hopefully, it all added to the mood of the scene.

The cornfield scene was one of the most challenging days of the entire production.

As a live-action filmmaker, you end up learning a lot of random stuff. So... first, a quick lesson in corn: there are a few types grown in the U.S.—sweet corn, which we eat on the cob; grain corn, which gets made into cornmeal; and cattle corn, which is grown on a schedule and harvested early to be fed to livestock. When we first scouted the Nana’s house, the owners had a huge cattle cornfield in their backyard. If we’d been filming just a few weeks earlier, we could’ve shot the scene right there.

But by the time cameras rolled, the entire field had been cut down.

So, the week before production, I drove around Spanish Fork trying to find a new cornfield that would still be standing during our shoot. The problem was weather. Grain corn is harvested right after the first frost. As soon as temperatures drop below freezing, the whole field can get cut the next morning. I’d ask farmers if we could film in their cornfields, and the answer was usually something like: “Sure… unless we cut it down before you get here.” Which was, of course, NOT super reassuring.

Eventually, we found a great field just down the road from the rest of our filming locations. We even had a couple of corn mazes on standby in case winter showed up early.

But the shoot day itself? Um… yeeeeah…

In a typical production, you try to cover about three to four minutes of screen time per day. Roughly one page of screenplay equals one minute of screen time, so a producer will say something like we are trying to shoot 3-4 pages today. Well-funded films will shoot less, and indie films on a shoestring budget will try to cover more. How much you can actually get done depends on how complex the shots and sequences are—if you’ve got more than three or four characters, stunts, visual effects, or tricky lighting setups, things can slow down fast.

So what did we do?

We tried to shoot nine pages—at night, in a cornfield—with fog, drones, a crane, stunts, creatures, eight actors, and dozens of visual effects shots. Because, of course we did.

I spent the morning rewriting and rewriting my shot list, trying to make the day achievable. But we knew going in it was going to be tight. From sunset on, we were racing the clock.

We pumped fog into the field to create that surreal horror vibe, but with the wind constantly shifting, our special effects team had to keep moving back and forth all night long, dragging huge tubing through rows of corn to keep the fog looking consistent.

About two-thirds of the way through the night, I started to realize we might not get everything we needed.

But then came the moment.

SPOILER ALERT: When Sheriff Rogers is attacked and has his death scene—whether it was the stress, the exhaustion, or just the sheer brilliance of the cast—it completely took my breath away. KC, Sila, and Trey absolutely nailed it. The emotion, the tension... I even got a little misty-eyed. That scene is still one of the most memorable directing experiences of the entire production.

While we managed to capture some great material during the original cornfield shoot, it became clear in post-production that we were still missing a few key shots. So, one year later in 2021, we returned to Spanish Fork—this time to a nearby corn maze.

We used the opportunity to get extra coverage of Renny’s character, including a little homage to Alien 3, some insert shots like the flashlight getting crushed by the creature’s leg, and a few more action beats with Sheriff Rogers running through the stalks.

During principal photography, I even got to make a brief cameo. In the overhead crane shot of Sheriff Rogers being chased, the “creature” was really just a glowing tube of light held by Max Turek from our G&E team—while I ran ahead with a flashlight, trying not to trip over myself in the dark. Which as luck would have it, we totally did.

THE FROSTOP

The Frostop was both a cultural and personal part of the story for Renny and me. Renny’s great-grandparents owned and operated a Frostop in Southern Utah back in the 1950s and ’60s.

While we were writing Alien Country, we found some old photographs taken with a stereoscopic camera—vintage images of root beer floats and towering ice cream sundaes. Those snapshots of classic Americana became a touchstone for us, an iconic piece of small-town Western life that we knew we wanted to capture on screen.

Those vintage photographs echoed another memory for me. While I was in film school, I worked as a gaffer on one of my first student productions. The shoot took place at a little ice cream stand called Ripples. That was back in 2008. Twelve years later, that same small-town treasure—Ripples—became one of the shooting locations for our very first feature film.

We always aimed to make Blue River feel "timeless"—at least from my perspective. Showcasing Americana frozen in time (and/or custard) just felt right.

Renny and I have now visited Goblin Valley more times than I can probably even count. It’s about three and a half hours from our house in the Salt Lake Valley, but over the years we’ve gone there on vacation or as part of various film productions.

For our YouTube channel, we shot a funny Halo parody short, which was basically just Renny, myself, and a friend dressed up like a Halo Spartan running around in Goblin Valley.

While we were writing the script, another fantastic suggestion from Sergio Paez was to have our characters cross over into Alien Country through a surreal desert landscape—and we knew we had to utilize one of the spectacular, otherworldly places in our backyard.

With some brilliant production design by Ralph Wulfsohn, including battery-powered glowing green rocks, we transformed the already bizarre landscape of Goblin Valley into a truly extraterrestrial world.

We shot there for one day during principal photography, then came back a year later with a body double for KC Clyde and filmed a number of aerial shots to fill out the sequence. With a little creature VFX magic, we built out a fantastic alien world.

Within a couple days of filming with our cast and crew among the Goblins, I cracked open the edit timeline and threw together the quick scene where Jimmy and Everly leave the fairgrounds, step through the portal, and we cut to "Alien Country". We hadn’t even added visual effects yet, but we showed it to a few members of our crew—and in that moment, we all knew we had something.

CANYON COUNTRY

Early in 2010, I was introduced to a wild and wonderful sport called canyoneering—a kind of technical mountaineering in reverse. It involves navigating sandstone slot canyons throughout Utah and the Southwest that have been carved out over millions of years by wind and water.

The towering orange and red walls, sometimes hundreds of feet high and sometimes only inches apart, create otherworldly corridors and formations. It doesn’t take much to feel like you’ve stepped onto another planet.

From the very first time I stepped into the slot, I knew I wanted to capture that experience and put it on the big screen. My roommate Josh invited me on that first canyoneering trip, and not long after, it became one of Renny and my go-to weekend getaways.

We fell in love in the desert. One of our first trips as a couple was canyoneering in a canyon we would eventually film part of Alien Country in. We camped, hiked, and drove endless miles of dusty desert roads, daydreaming about our future movie. We’d pass by old gas stations or rundown towns and say, “This would be perfect for that one scene...” Some of those casual observations turned out to be spot on.

In fact, we once stayed in a hotel in Southern Utah that was literally down the road from BLM land with an abandoned mining site. That same stretch of land ended up being a key filming location, and just a short drive away was "the slot canyon"—the place where we’d shoot one of our most epic chase scenes.

Filming in that canyon ended up being a bit of a miracle. During preproduction, we had settled on filming a chase sequence in a different canyon accessible by ATV—which would have made crew and gear transport a lot easier. I remember telling our 1st AD, Aspen Andrews, that my dream was to show the team the canyon that inspired the film.

I described my first rappel and scuttle through it, and how much it would mean to let everyone experience the setting firsthand. Renny and Aspen looked at me and said, “You want us to go hiking... and then go shoot a movie?”

“Well, when you put it that way...”

But as luck would have it, we wrapped our second week of shooting with a night in Goblin Valley and had two days off in Southern Utah. Midday, Renny and I took a few cast members on a hike—and by pure chance, we passed Wes Johnson, our cinematographer, already on the road. We told him where we were headed, and the next the we knew the cast and crew spent the day hiking through the canyon!

Later that evening, we brought Wes to the other film location where we had planned to shoot. After walking through it, he turned to us and said, “If you want to capture something sacred, something cinematic—you’re not going to find anything more special than that slot canyon.”

Several phone calls and some last-minute permits later, we made the switch. We shot both the alien canyon chase and Jimmy’s astral projection sequence in that magic canyon.

Sometimes, if you make space... the universe really does unlock the path.