Woods Hole Film Festival 2009

When eight-year-old Emily Hagins saw Peter Jackson’s “The Fellowship of the Ring,” it was life-altering. It was the moment she transformed from a mere fan of movies into someone desperate to make her own. She even wrote a fan letter to Peter Jackson to tell him so. To her surprise, he actually wrote back.Jackson put Emily in touch with Harry Knowles, editor of Ain’t It Cool News, who also lived in Austin, Texas, which opened Emily up to the local film community. She gained access to special movie screenings and began expanding her film palate. And then she saw “Undead.”“Undead” was a zombie import from Australia. A low-budget film with no stars. But Emily didn’t care. To her, it was amazing. After that, her appetite for horror was insatiable. She landed an internship on a horror film and even started writing her own feature-length movie about a mysterious zombie-inducing contagion in the water. Not long after her 11th birthday, the script for “Pathogen” was complete, and Emily had already set her mind to shooting it.It took a while to get things moving, but she eventually held auditions, casting 12-14 year-old kids. With a few adults thrown in there, too. It was around this time that the logistics of a 12-year-old actually making a feature-length film started to catch up with Emily. Because of that, her mom, Megan, found her own role to be expanding.Megan and Emily had always been best friends. As a huge movie-lover herself, it was Megan who introduced Emily to “The Lord of the Rings” and sat by her side at every film she ever saw -- including “Undead.” So, naturally when Emily decided to make a movie, she wanted her mom’s help. And not just because she needed a chauffeur and a credit card. They had no idea how much the next two years would test their relationship.Things started out simple enough. Emily shot chronologically, which meant that the climactic zombie apocalypse -- where everyone dies -- wouldn’t be a problem until later. Which was good, because she was making every mistake in the book. On the first day she even forgot to say “cut” at the end of the scenes, providing much confusion for the actors. Plus, it wasn’t easy to coordinate the schedules of half a dozen middle schoolers. And money was running thin. Which is why, after only a couple months of sporadic shooting, things ground to a halt.Despite Emily and Megan’s best efforts, it appeared that “Pathogen” was dead. But, come summer vacation, Emily resurrected it like the zombies she so loved and rallied her cast and crew. She scheduled 7 days of back-to-back filming to wrap it up. Megan had to burn all of her vacation days at work, but she was there to help. In a long-shot attempt to raise desperately need funds, Megan even talked Emily into applying for a Texas Filmmaker grant, though the competing applicants were mostly three times her age.Armed with new ideas, they dove into the final week with a script more ambitious than it had ever been -- which led to more problems. Some scenes had so many characters that Emily confused the actors’ schedules. And Megan’s endurance began to wane as the pressures of being a full-time employee, movie producer, and mom took their toll. Emily was demonstrating a new confidence, with her experience giving her better command of her actors, but by the end of the week they were all near their breaking points. And then things broke. The day after the epic climax -- where Emily directed two dozen zombies in full makeup, complete with an aerial crane shot -- she learned her hardest lesson, yet. She forgot to cue her tape and recorded over some of the footage. It was heartbreaking. She had to reshoot the lost scenes and try to find the energy to start editing. By this point the debt was mounting, and Megan worried that they couldn’t afford to finish. As luck would have it, the Texas Filmmaker’s Production Grant gave a welcome boost by making Emily its youngest recipient ever. It was just what they needed to help slug out the next nine months -- a grueling period of editing, reshoots, and more editing.After two years, Emily’s directorial voice was maturing. She made decisions with confidence and grappled with the difficult fact that she no longer shared a cinematic vision with her mom. In the past, Emily had defaulted to Megan on many decisions, but now she stood her ground and insisted that the film be done her way. It marked a turning point in their relationship.As they prepared to premiere “Pathogen” before a sold out crowd, Emily realized that it was unlikely they’d ever work together again like they had on this. And Megan was coming to terms with the fact that thirteen-year-old Emily was growing up. “Pathogen” was once-in-a-lifetime experience, but now it was over. As a filmmaking team, Megan and Emily were through. But as a mother and daughter, they had grown so much that it didn’t matter. And luckily, the zombie movie that started out as the far-fetched dream of little girl would forever be there to remind them of that.