So there's a bit of a story on how Blackjack came to be. We first spent six months in pre-production on a short film called Scavenger Hunt. The film was supposed to be a fifteen-minute one-take film set in a library. When we nearly had a location locked, everything fell through. We were told it would be even more expensive to get the location than we had originally intended. We were left with a month until our target shoot date and without a location. We hadn't hired any crew or cast any other actors yet because we needed to know what city we were shooting in. Rather than push the shoot back and likely get turned away again by other libraries, we decided it would use the money we raised and make a new film entirely. We took the proactive approach and decided to make a much more manageable film. A smaller cast, a simpler location, and a script that isn't as ambitious as Scavenger Hunt. I was inspired to take this new route by Ryan Connolly from Film Riot. A few years ago his big-budget film fell through days before filming but instead of moping about it, he and his collaborators decided to make something new.
When it came to writing the script for Blackjack, it went through several variations before we decided on a concept. It was originally going to be another one-take film but it left a majority of the characters passive and uninteresting. We added some new backstories to the film to make the characters interesting. This film is going to be really fun to make and I can't wait to start editing it.
