In 2005, shortly after Bryan Carmody and John Versical founded Screen Door Films, they took a creative ‘retreat’ to John’s 640 acre family property “The Shiawassee Ranch” in northern Michigan to determine the next creative direction of the company. 

It was Bryan’s first visit to the ranch, and it was within a few hours it was determined by both partners that the Shiawassee Ranch would be the perfect location for a film…  Easy enough!

It was then that John dusted off an old short screenplay he’d written about a ‘man in the country who was haunted by the a ghost in his backyard’.  It was a rough screenplay, written over the course of a few nights, several beers and a carton of cigarettes while John was ‘holed up’ in a crew housing complex during a feature shoot in 2003. 

“The Swing” was re-born, and began a full revamp including months of re-writes.  The script swelled from a short allegorical piece into a full 30 minute ‘mini-feature’.  It was quickly realized, if not always intended that Screen Door’s first big project needed to blast out of the gate. 

In order to produce a mini-feature film in its class, significant funding needed to be landed.  In October 2005 the partners of Screen Door produced a short 90 second promotional fundraising trailer by shooting a few scenes of the film on location at the ranch.

Throughout the rest of 2005 and most of 2006, up until principle photography in September 2006 Bryan and John aggressively marketed “The Swing” and the concept of the mini-feature film.  With the advent of streaming video-on-demand through services such as iTunes, Netflix, CinemaNow, and others the market for quality entertainment in the 30 minute category was ripe.

Production began full swing, no pun intended, in August of 2006 after fundraising had secured enough to accomplish principle photography and post production. 

By September 21st, 2006, a crew of over 18 people and a cast of 8 descended upon the remote Shiawassee Ranch, importing everything from electricity, high definition cameras, a mobile edit suites, grip trucks, food, motor-home and tent housing to make the 9 day shoot happen…