GSA student interns with ghost story in Hancock County
Originally published in The Weekly Packet, August 16, 2018
Read the article on Castine Patriot’s site.
When Doug Bost decided to film a ghost story for the big screen, he knew two things: he wanted to use local people where possible, and it had to be filmed on the Maine coast.
Karen Carberry Warhola of the Maine Film Office helped him with that first part. The crew of The Bride in the Box was mainly from New York, but several Mainers—sound mixers Michael Hambrock and Harper Mattraw, grip Owen Freeman and designer Brent Hutchins—joined the team. Two local actors, Faith Erhardt and Stephanie Erb, were part of the cast. But it was a stroke of luck that brought Sean Schweizer, a 17-year-old student at George Stevens Academy in Blue Hill, on board as a production assistant intern.
Teke Wiggin, who manages the Blue Hill Conference Center, GSA’s new summertime venture that provided accommodations for the crew, knew Bost needed a production assistant. Head of School Tim Seeley announced the opportunity to the student body, and Schweizer was among those who expressed an interest, according to a press release.
After a flurry of emails, the deal was sealed. The filmmaker had his intern, and the intern had his big chance “to see how things really work on a professional level,” Schweizer said in an email.
“The experience was great for me,” he said. Because the production was on the smaller side, Schweizer did “a little bit of everything, from set dressing to slating, running waters upstairs” and helping “the grip guys.” He even had a chance to create a spooky effect in front of the camera.
Schweizer met “a slew of interesting characters” on the set, which made for an “unforgettable experience,” he said. “I mean, hey, it’s the first feature-length film I’ve worked on. There’s no way I’m forgetting that.”
The cast and crew of The Bride in the Box at Gull Rock Pottery in Hancock, one of several Hancock County locations where the feature-length ghost story was filmed. Photo courtesy of Bad Rep
So how impressed was Bost? Very. “Sean was game for anything,” said the writer-director, who was happy to have Schweizer on the team and to encourage the aspiring filmmaker, who is already 40 pages into a screenplay that he hopes to finish writing by the end of summer.
But Schweizer’s experience filming wouldn’t have been possible if Bost hadn’t insisted on filming along the Maine coast.
Most of the filming took place in Hancock in a house that the writer and director called “wonderful” because it had a real summer cottage feel, likely because it hadn’t been remodeled in decades. Filming also took place at 1A Relics in Ellsworth, in Winter Harbor, at Little Tunk Pond in Sullivan and at the Tidal Falls Preserve in Hancock.
In The Bride in the Box, a husband, wife and their daughter go on vacation, but the couple is so caught up in their own conflicts that they don’t realize their daughter has come under the influence of a ghost from a local legend.
The film should be ready by next summer, Bost said. They plan to enter it into film festivals, like Tribeca and Sundance, with the aim of attracting a distributor. They may even enter the film into the Maine International Film Festival, which would give audiences here a chance to see the film sooner.
When asked what he hopes audiences will take from the movie, he said he wants them to get a scare out of it. But this ghost story also raises questions about parenting and how much freedom to give children, about when we need to protect our children from the really scary things in life and when we need to give them the freedom to experience things for themselves.
