Dead Awake

About Dead Awake

Dead Awake began more as a story Dan Mayer's head and then was written into a fairly informal script as filming began in the summer of 2002. During the filming, the script became more finalized and all of the dialog was finally written. The script originally only laid out all of the shots and ideas with out having any dialog. The dialog was written to be a series of voiceovers and not to be spoken in any particular scenes.

This was Dan Mayer's first attempt at writing, directing, and filming a real movie. Ben Brinckerhoff, the star of Dead Awake, had one previous experience with acting in a play, Stage 23. This movie became more collaborative as Dan played most of his ideas and thoughts off Ben during the filming, writing, and initial editing during the summer of 2002.

The final film was edited down to 23 minutes during the summer of 2003. The movie sat mostly untouched between the summer of 2002 and 2003 due to school and a broken digital camera which halted the editing process. The film was edited in Adobe Premiere 6.

The film was originally intended to show the power and beauty of dreams. Dreams were used in the movie to show one of the many escapes people use in life. The movie ended up being a little darker than originally intended and focused more on the escapism of dreams rather than their raw beauty. The character isn't intended to be highly depressed, just choosing a different way of life.