[Editor's Note: The following is the first in a series of on-set reports by producer Jeremiah Kipp on God's Land, a feature film written and directed by Preston Miller, whose previous feature, Jones, was covered by The House Next Door here (review), here (interview), and here (podcast).]

[Photo Credits: Shing Ka (all, except logo); Leif Fortlouis (logo).]

Day One

The 8-year-old boy, Matthew, is clutching his mother's sleeve tight and holding her hand. He looks very pale. As the director of photography, Arsenio Assin, sits on a nearby couch inspecting the Hi-Def camera, which is state of the art and still has that "new car smell," and the filmmaker, Preston, assembles the costumes, which are, to say the least, quite bizarre (a white cowboy hat, white zip-up hoodies, white sweatpants and Texarcana cowboy boots), the boy seems to wonder just what he got himself into here. We load up the passenger van and drive out to the shopping mall, where we will proceed to shoot these actors in these strange costumes moving through this consumer-driven space. Matthew barely says a word to us; he is going through something completely interior—and completely personal. Continue Reading »