January 1, 2009 - by Nate Q

In 2006, Nathan A. Quattrini, David Lavallee Jr., and Brandon Luis Aponte met on the set of a local student film. They all had an interest in action films, and felt there were no decent action films coming out of the local scene. So they partnered together to make something worth showing as demo reel material. This was the forming of DBN Productions, standing ever so cleverly for David, Brandon, Nathan. The earliest concept that was written in January 2007 consisted of three 2 minute action demos. They would be three demos written by three filmmakers each with its own action theme : hand to hand combat, weapons combat, and gun combat. At this point Nathan also began a job where he needed to learn camera work, video production skills etc, which allowed him to learn for both his job and for the films. He would spend months on forums self learning the art of independant film production in preparation for these short demos. As the three film makers held meetings over the next 3 months to brainstorm and write, the idea of demos began to expand. Demos would be good, but who wants to watch a demo fight scene with no reason of it happening? How does that show film making ability?

So as time went on the first two demo ideas - weapons combat (started as a bar room brawl) and hand to hand combat (originally called 'Run')- started to evolve. They began to write backstory to encompass the fighting. The bar room brawl idea was focused on multiple enemies attacking at once, and slowly evolved into swords from pool cues. And from the bar room, the the forest. Eventually Brandon would write the first draft of Sons of Lemuria. The hand to hand combat idea was Nathan's demo idea, and was inspired by the chase scenes in Mel Gibson's Apocalypto. Originally it was considered for the weapons idea, with the main character running until reaching a sword in the ground, and having a sword battle. Once Sons of Lemuria took the sword theme, 'Run' took on the theme of hand to hand fighting. The third demo with guns was left unwritten for a few more months.

Once the themes and minor versions of the stories were in place, the demos exploded with ideas into short films. It took many weeks of re-writing to get them to the point where all three film makers were happy with them, and in the spring of 2007 pre-production would begin. It was a learning experience for all involved, and alot more work than they had ever imagined. The first film that would be tackled was Sons of Lemuria. Costumes needed designing and creating, weapons needed to be found, actors needed to be cast, fighters needed to be found, two major fight scenes needed to be choreographed, schedules needed doing, etc and so on.

Some time during the pre-production of Sons of Lemuria, the third short film was developed. After a few months of deliberation, the gun idea was about dropped, and they decided the hard hitting action and serious tones needed to be balanced out, so the third film was converted into a comedy. Nathan had an old idea that was oringally created when he was 12 years old and wanted to make a video game. The game character was someone who learned how to fight from watching action movies and playing too many video games. The idea of this character was updated around 2004 to be a short 2 minute sketch about a guy who thought he learned martial arts from watching Hong Kong action movies. Little did Nathan know how close to home that idea would hit with David. David is an avid fan of Hong Kong action films, a very comedic actor, and has trained in Wu Shu Kung Fu for 8+ years. The idea was a perfect match to become the third film. So the foundation for the Triple Short was finally completed, and all effort for the time being would be put into creating Sons of Lemuria first.