Markian Tarasiuk

“Don’t go to theaters” everyone said. A battle the whole way. I couldn’t have asked for a better brother-in-arms than @seanharrisoliver . We never gave up and never took no for an answer. Thank you to every single person who has believed in this film. I owe so many people so much. @huntingmatthewnichols now playing EVERYWHERE.

🫲SHOWBIZ🫱

April 10.

Day 12/12: Into the Cabin. By this point I was completely burnt out, running on adrenaline. This was where being both actor and director really started to collide, but thankfully it was our final day. Between takes of screaming, sprinting through the dark with a camera, and somehow still steering the ship, it felt like pushing through one last storm. I leaned hard on the team that day. Huge stunt work with Tara flying into the trees, the drag out of the cabin, and the totem ritual. High end SFX too… aka a pendant on a string that we painted out in post. That exhausted, manic, chaotic energy ended up feeding the final sequence. And @miramac delivered the kind of performance every director hopes for. We definitely made some continuity mistakes we had to fight through in post, so if I could do it again, I’d give us one more day in the cabin. But we were basically at zero dollars by then. Got home around 6am and didn’t get out of bed for two days. Once the exhaustion faded, all I felt was pride. What we pulled off in 12 days was a miracle. And it only worked because of this cast and crew. Still the most fun I’ve ever had on a set. #hmnjointhehunt #huntingmatthewnichols 📸 @reznekcreative

Day 10: Forest Part 1. Into the darkness we go. These forest days took the most prep. We had two days to shoot the entire third act, so everything had to be mapped out down to the minute. We started with the hiking sequences around 3pm and pushed straight into the night. This was mid-December in Vancouver. Cold, wet, and unforgiving. But the crew showed up and pushed through, with an incredible stunt team led by @always.adventuring . After the hikes, we moved into the final stunt sequence of the film, “the tree.” It was one of our most complex setups and required hours of makeup by uber-talent @andyleartistry . We shot it at a paintball arena in Surrey. The cabin there might look familiar, it was used in Yellowjackets. I had also worked in that same cabin on Supernatural, which is part of why I wrote the film with that location in mind. We wrapped around 4am and had to be back a few hours later to do it all again. #huntingmatthewnichols #hmnjointhehunt 📸 @reznekcreative

Day 9: Nichols Basement, Hospital, and Reimer house. This day was probably the most difficult to coordinate because it was three separate locations all an hour travel time from each other. Two full company moves. First was Nichols’ basement which was a different location from the main home because I wanted that wooden 90s style aesthetic (like the basement I grew up in). We did all the boys home videos and a now deleted scene with Tara and Brenda. We then moved to the hospital which was our hardest location to find. We ended up using a church’s back hallways/offices in New West and dressing it. Hospital sets in Vancouver are min 10k a day or gate-kept by larger productions or location booking agencies that make them impossible to attain. But @dougteather did a great job at prod design and this location really worked (that’s Doug as an extra in the wheelchair). Fun fact: the mid credit scene with me in the hospital was added on the fly during production. I asked @andyleartistry to do me up and we shot that scene in the same bed as Tara and just flipped the footage in post to make it look like a different room. I wanted to keep this movie open for sequels and justify Markian’s “survival” for our eventual marketing shenanigans. Then we moved to the Reimer residence for the last scenes of the day for Mitchell’s interview. I don’t have any pics from that location because we were in such a crunch to finish the day within 12 hours and I was manic. #hmnjointhehunt #huntingmatthewnichols 📸 @mi2old4this

Day 7+8: Port Hardy. We woke up at 6am and the entire town had no power. No lights, no hot water, no open businesses. The whole north end of Vancouver Island was down. No food, no way to charge batteries. But we had to shoot. Breakfast was Clif Bars. We split into three units and just started knocking things off the list - police station, drone shots, forests, timeline shots (the church shadows are me and Ryan). A lot of the dah was figuring it out on the fly. “Does this work?” “Yeah, just roll.” There was one place open - @macandales1 - running on a backup generator. That ended up being the only interior we could shoot. The staff and owners were so incredible. They pulled in their friends and family to step in as the extras of citizens of Port Rupert. By lunch, Save-On-Foods finally opened but it was ch aos. Shelves were wiped. We grabbed whatever we could - deli meat, chips - and kept going. Somehow we got almost everything except Tara’s fall into the water because the tide was too far out. That night the hotel was completely dark. No staff. We lit the hallways and our rooms with camera lights and played board games. The power came back on just before bed. Next morning, 5am call. We went out to the water. Perfect fog, perfect tide. Got the shot. Then straight to the ferry back to Vancouver. #huntingmatthewnichols #hmnjointhehunt

Day 5+6 included all the library scenes (a basement of a college) and travelling to Port Hardy (our Port Rupert) on Vancouver Island. Day 5 was supposed to be another day at the motel but we came ahead on schedule and had a free day - so we decided to pull the library day and did only a half day of shooting to give everyone a rest. Then, the next day, we took a skeleton crew to the island. We had an envoy of vehicles and shot the entire way. Miranda and I would chat casually and then decide to shoot in the car when we felt like it on that five hour drive. It was important to me to go up North on the Island to shoot to stay authentic to the story even though it added a hectic complication to the schedule. So travel day = 1 hr to ferry + 2hr ferry + 5 hour drive = 8 hour company travel/shoot day. #huntingmatthewnichols #hmnjointhehunt 📸 @mi2old4this

Day 4+5/12 was every scene at the motel. I picked the most dank, rundown motel I could find for this location. Each room reeked of cigarettes and there was one room with a bloody mattress just sitting there. But it was the vibe I wanted. The gross yellow looked so good on camera. We had a ton of scenes to cram into two days and we worked at lightning speed in chronological order so we could build our investigation wall - it grows every time we see it in the movie. It was like performing a one location play and probably the closest experience to theatre I’ve had on film. We’d rehearse - shoot - rehearse - shoot and so on. The tape watching scene with Ryan and I was filmed. We had a vintage tube tv connected via RCA to my 2011 laptop for playback. We had shot the boys cabin sequence during pre production so Ryan and I had something to react to. We did 5 takes of varying reactions and emotions and I eventually chose our most subtle performance because it felt honest and a juxtaposition to what we were hearing. #hmnjointhehunt #huntingmatthewnichols 📸 by @mi2old4this @reznekcreative

Day 3/12 was all the in studio interviews, news anchor, and professor. This was all done in one day and one location (the studio had a library set already and that’s why we chose it). Though not moving around much, it was still a challenging day because it was 10 hours of interviews and keeping track of dates, times, and who knows what when. #hmnjointhehunt #huntingmatthewnichols 📸 @reznekcreative

Day 2/12 was the Nichols home. Incredibly hectic day because we had to shoot mom’s interview, house b-roll, driving scenes and a ton of home videos (all shot on a camcorder from 2000). We redressed the house three times: modern day, Taras birthday and Christmas 2000. PM @dougteather had a mind bending day as we had two units shuffling around the home. We had to get everything in because we only had that one day at the location. Also fun fact that Brenda’s cat came with the location and took to @susinnmc and was included in the movie. I love that detail. #hmnjointhehunt #huntingmatthewnichols Photos by @mi2old4this

Hunting Matthew Nichols took 12 days to shoot. So for the next 12 days I want to take you on my behind the scenes journey of each day. Day 1/12: We started with The Mayors interview and then moved locations to do the scene between Tara and Pam at the dinner table. I was nervous as hell because that scene was pivotal to the whole movie’s narrative success and I was working with Miranda and Christine for the first time. Also… I’ve never directed a feature film (yikes). So this was my experience and how we did it. #huntingmatthewnichols #hmnjointhehunt