With only weeks remaining in 2023, the Cross Purposes team is winding down post-production on their fourth project, “Searching for the Elephant”. Their 2024 release is their most complex and ambitious production yet. Writer/Director, David Alford explains, “We went out on a number of limbs on this one giving ourselves creative freedom to write whatever story that came to mind. In the previous movies I was always rewriting the screenplay to make it fit in the locations and situations that I know I could get. This time around, we just wrote whatever the story needed and worried about how to produce it later. That freedom has made all the difference in the world to the final outcome.”
“Searching for the Elephant” follows Jason Bowden (Joseph Stam) a tortured young man struggling with addiction and repeatedly in trouble with the law. When he is arrested one too many times and imprisoned, his mother, Shelley (Sharonne Lanier) makes a deal with the judge to let Jason serve house arrest with an ankle tracker away from the city on his grandfather’s remote ranch. Griff Bowden (Rick McVey) is a solitary Vietnam Vet with a dark past and no interest in living with anyone much less his estranged mess of a grandson. The two men are forced together to face their demons and try to discover what family actually means. But they have to do so quickly before Jason’s dangerous street connections find him and take him back into their fold.
Shot mostly in and around Chilhowie and Saltville, Virginia, the film takes on a Neo-western style which means it is a contemporary story build with a heavy western movie flavor. To help achieve this style, returning Director of Photography, Dan Parsons, requested more lighting equipment and prep time than in previous CPP films. This shoot had more nighttime and outdoor shots than any other CPP film which meant lighting up large sections of a ranch and the surrounding hillsides. It is counterintuitive how much light it takes to shoot a nighttime shot. It can’t just be blackness, that would be incredibly dull to look at on screen. Instead, edges of buildings, road, and hills have to be hit with some sort of lighting in order for the audience to know it is even there and that meant some big rigging.
To bring a new look to this project, CPP went to Kevin Peeples for post-production supervision. Kevin, whose more recent project, the Kendrick Brothers’ film, “Lifemark”, is an accomplished editor and director in his own right. Once again Alford relays, “The years of experience and finesse Kevin brought to the project is invaluable. He has all the chops and skills you would hope a seasoned editor would have, but first and foremost, his priority is to tell the story and that trumps any razzle-dazzle an editor can bring to a film. With Kevin, you get both the storyteller’s spirit and the latest editing techniques which is the best of both worlds.”
January brings a new year and the process of releasing SFTE to audiences begins. There are stills some finishing touches to be made, contracts to be signed, and a thousand and one decisions to be finalized, but we are crossing the home stretch to completion. To follow our progress, check back here at our website or follow us on Facebook at “Searching for the Elephant” or on Instagram @searchingfortheelephantmovie.
