A short film made in Cayman, “The Devil You Know,” is slated to premiere Sept. 13 at Regal Cinemas in Camana Bay.
Moviegoers will only get one chance to see the film before it hits major international film festivals like Sundance and Toronto film festival.
“If people don’t see the movie, they won’t see it until 2016,” said director Badir Awe.
“We’re keen to get feedback from these film festivals and just see how we do with all the other films that are done throughout the rest of the world, especially the short indie-films. We’d like to see how our film compares,” said Mr. Awe.
The 30-minute thriller, directed by Trevor Murphy and Mr. Awe, follows the story of a hitman on Cayman shores.
“I think people are going to be surprised of the quality and somewhat impressed,” said Mr. Awe.
“It’s not a [Steven] Spielberg production, but I think we will set a standard of what could, or can be done in Cayman with the resources that we have here.”
Shooting for the film wrapped up in March and since then, the filmmakers have been immersed in the post-production stage.
“The editing was tough for me…I missed being on set and working with people in the fresh air, and sweating and moving around,” said Mr. Awe.
He said over the past two months, 10 Caymanian staff were hired to do the post production work.
“We’ve used local artists for this whole production, and that’s the most exciting thing…,” said Mr. Awe. Many of the crew members were passionate about the film, often working long hours for limited pay.
“They are people who have committed themselves to working more than we’re able to pay them to help make this movie better,” said Mr. Awe. “We are pleasantly surprised that they are talented capable professionals that we are using to making this film.”
Tough calls
The whole process has required perhaps tougher work than the filmmakers had originally thought.
“It’s been a lot of tweaking, a lot of hard decisions had to be made. We cut scenes, and we cut some minor characters out of the movie,” said Mr. Awe. “These were decisions we had to make, for the sake of the story. They were some tough decisions because we were organically evolving our movie, so it was changing from the script that we initially had.”
The post-production phase of creating a film is a longer process than the actual shooting of the film, he said.
“The movie you write is different than the movie you shoot, which is different than the movie you edit.”
The post production stage involves many different facets, including video editing, special effects, music, and the reproduction of everyday sound effects.
“Bradley Bernard has been great. He’s also been our Foley artist [producing realistic sounds]. He’s done all the footsteps, all the glasses that come down on the tables and the walking through the grass…We’ve even had to even puncture watermelons with a knife [to get the sound]…,” said Mr. Awe.
Audiences can also look forward to hearing tracks by local music artists, still to be finalized.
So far the film is still a work-in-progress. “We’re just tweaking now. We’re finessing. We’re at the final stages of finishing the movie,” Mr. Awe said.
“It’s our first film, and I think for our first film I think we have something that we are very proud of and we think people are going to enjoy it.”
The premiere
Miss Cayman contestants are set to have their first public appearance at the premiere, and one of the contestants is also the script supervisor, Tonie Chisholm.
Four showings of the film are scheduled to run at the premiere.
“It looks good. It sounds good,” said Mr. Awe. “I’m happy with our actors. I’m happy with our editors and our audio guys. I’m happy with the team and with what we did on a very limited budget,” he said.
Tickets are on sale at the Discovery Centre in Camana Bay for $25, which includes access to a behind the scenes video. There will also be an after-party.
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