Ryan Erlandsen didn’t have to go far to become a filmmaker.
The Vancouver 43-year-old practically stumbled onto it, just by looking through his camera.
“I’m a (professional) photographer normally, and they put a video feature on cameras a few years back,” Erlandsen said. “And so I decided I wanted to explore that.”
It took him three years to learn the ropes, but he just finished his first 30-minute short film and is releasing it through his company, Marble Mountain Films.
It’s an eerie suspense story called “Unmarked,” shot entirely in Clark County. It will premiere at 7 p.m. June 26 at Kiggins Theatre in Vancouver.
Erlandsen worked with Amanda Goff, managing director of Magenta Theater Company, and other actors from Magenta on the project.
“We’re really big on filming in the county,” Erlandsen said. “A lot of it was filmed in my backyard in Hazel Dell, and a lot was filmed off local trails in Brush Prairie and the Glenwood area.”
He also learned a bit of set building in the process.
In his backyard he hammered together a creepy-looking cabin and a coffin, which he placed in a shallow grave.
“It’s still back there,” Erlandsen said. “My wife isn’t too happy about that.”
The film tells the tale of a teenage couple who disappear while walking in the woods. The girl’s older sister goes looking for them and finds the cabin … and a mystery.
“It’s based on the poor farm cemetery,” Erlandsen said. “That’s actually the inspiration for the film. There’s one marked grave and several unmarked ones there.”
The poor farm cemetery, part of the 78th Street Heritage Farm, was built in 1913. It holds the remains of about 200 people who lived at the farm, as well as transients and others who couldn’t afford burial sites between 1913 and 1937.
Erlandsen said he also learned a bit about screenplay writing in the process — mostly that doing it on the fly rather than preparing it in advance is a bad idea, he said with a short laugh.
“I learned that wasn’t the best idea,” he said.
Tickets to the screening are $5 per person. Erlandsen won’t make any money on that; it mostly pays for the deposit to the theater, he said.
“I’m just excited to have it shown,” he said.
If he had to give it a rating, Erlandsen said he’d rate it PG. It’s eerie, but there’s not much blood, he added.
“I might take it to film festivals, I might put it on YouTube eventually,” Erlandsen said. “I’m not real sure what I’ll do with it after Kiggins. I’d also like to expand it to a feature length film with more subplots.”
The trailer for the film is on YouTube at http://bit.ly/1l9CBas.
Next up for Erlandsen is a new film called “Dead Lake,” which will be a suspense-thriller set in Ridgefield. It’s about an art teacher in the town whose students suddenly start to go missing.
That film will also include actors and support from Magenta Theater, Goff said.
Erlandsen just started a crowdfunding campaign for “Dead Lake” on IndieGoGo at www.indiegogo.com/projects/dead-lake.
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