Ye Olde "Blood to Blood," a tale of teenage vampire romance

Back in 2012, I participated in a 48-Hour film challenge with a group of film-makers in Augusta, Georgia, called Fabian Strategy. I didn't have very much experience working on films at that point, having joined the Southeastern Filmmakers the year before. I just got lucky in terms of becoming a member of Fabian Strategy, which had as much to do with timing as it did bullying my way in. Either way, I was given a chance to work closely with several other local film-makers.

We had several pre-meetings where we discussed things like who we could get to act in our film, and where we could have access for locations. Finally, on the Friday night, we "hit the button." That started our clock ticking. We were given the genre of found footage, a line of dialog, "You're still too weak. You don't have enough hate, and you know something, you never will." The only other required element was an exterior shot of our hometown, Augusta.

The group began to brainstorm story ideas, and scenarios. This part of the discussion lasted a few hours. Enough people, however, were dissatisfied with the found footage genre, that they decided to "hit the button" again. This was a one-time, no return ticket that would give us another genre, but when we did it, we were stuck with the new genre, NO MATTER WHAT. A vote was taken, and we hit the button, and out came our new genre... Teen Vampire Romance. Great!

Somehow, our group came up with a basic outline of a story, and dispersed, leaving me and one other writer to flesh out the story, and give it voice. We did, and knocked out an 8-page classic that certainly incorporated vampires, romance, and few new pieces of vampire lore that we created, and decided to use.

Needless to say, it was a long weekend, with lots of tired people, but somehow we pulled out an 8-minute masterpiece... or something like that. We called it "Blood to Blood." We got the film in to the film challenge personnel, and had high hopes for its future. That was not to be. The film won no awards, not even the fan favorite award, which went to a film called "The Godfather's Day Off," a mashup genre film, which somehow shot up to 40,000 views in a few weeks' time. (It hasn't progressed much past that as of this writing.)

Not too much came of our little film back then. I submitted it to a few festivals, and promoted it on a few websites and forums, but had no joy. So, it sat for awhile, unnoticed. I would check on it from time to time, as did another group member. One day I received a message from the other member stating that "Blood to Blood" was over 8000 views, and was in the top 10 most viewed films on the 48GFC (48-Hour Guerrilla Film Challenge) YouTube page. Over the next few months, I monitored the views fairly closely. It wasn't viral, but the increase in view count was consistent, and sometimes amazing. By the 4th anniversary of completing and submitting the film, it was at 35,000 views. It has continued to gain views, despite virtually no promotion, and has gone on to become the most viewed video on the 48GFC YouTube page. It just topped 70,000 views. We'll see where it eventually goes.

Not too bad for a little film we put together in 48 hours.