Over the last few months Josh has been working as Director of Photography on the short film “Mind Glow.” A project directed by “Goodnight Harvey” lead actor Sam Wohl and his creative cohort Eric Svedas. The film centers around two friends that go on a wild mind-bending adventure after a burrito dealing trash troll impregnates one of them with an alien. A finished clip of the alien abortion is available here.

Principle photography just wrapped and it was a lot fun to shoot these guys go on this journey. We shot the entire thing in eleven days, or something like that, which were all pretty packed considering how ambitious the film is and the minimal crew we had. It spanned nine sets and around six locations within San Francisco. We went everywhere from on the Bay to the deepest dungeons of the Mission creating submarines, dentist offices, rat lairs, and an Extra-terrestrial rights protest.

The most fun (besides the car chase scenes) was being able to light all these dark, subterranean, lairs where these really interesting characters lived. The Trash Troll is a man that lives in a cavern under a garbage can that’s located right on the bay.

It was great to experiment with the minimalist approach the script called for while still trying to pull off something very colorful and comic book like.

Another fun set was the rat house. There’s a point in the story where we leave our protagonists for a moment and peak in on the day-to-day of these two rat roommates.

Again it was a challenge to light a space that needs to feel dark. We gain access to the rat house only after traveling through some boulders and a tunnel so the only light that could exist at that depth would be anything that managed to peak through the ground or anything that they have in the house. 

Contrasted with the video above you get an idea of the full range of looks, scenes, and characters that went into this film. It was a great experience and I can’t wait to apply the lessons and experimentations to some future IFYW work.