1966, Point Pleasant, West Virginia -- over one hundred fifty individual sightings of a seven-foot tall winged man seen hovering over an abandoned military ammunition storage area. Hundreds of additional sightings of UFO's hovering in the night sky and mysterious Men in Black lurking in the shadows. 1966 was a hot year for the booming border town of Point Pleasant attracting UFO and paranormal nuts from all across the globe to the small town in the hopes of catching a glimpse of what a rogue journalist dubbed the Mothman. One year later, a horrific tragedy, the collapse of the Silver Bridge, would kill 46 people and all but completely cut off the town from the rest of the world. The mysterious sightings stopped abruptly and Point Pleasant fell into oblivion. Until now...

Ellis Gladson, played by newcomer Ed Schofield, is stuck in small town West Virginia. His dreams of being an animator for Disney are continually crushed and he remains the caretaker for a nearly abandoned apartment building inherited from his father. While wallowing over his latest rejection from the cartoon empire, Ellis has a close encounter with what can be none other than the famed Mothman -- a creature who hasn't made an appearance in thirty years. Frightened and excited, Ellis runs into town to tell his friends and finds ridicule and sarcasm at the news of his sighting. He becomes an outcast from the town. Just like Old Man Hudson, played by John Fredrick Jones, the town loony who claimed to have seen the gigantic bird-man thirty years ago. But while his friends laugh, a dark shadow listens carefully and follows Ellis' every step. Agent Fulmer, a mysterious Man in Black played menacingly by Earthworm Jim writer Doug Langdale, seems to be after the same creature Ellis now must prove he saw, but for very different, very dark reasons and he will stop at nothing to be sure to capture the Mothman ... Alive...

The conceptual work for Mothman stated when animator and artist Doug TenNapel was hired to illustrate a book of urban legends. One of his assignments was to create a Mothman based on the tale in the book. TenNapel became intrigued with the idea of this winged man and set out to work on a screenplay placing the creature in a contemporary setting. The creator of Earthworm Jim, a successful video game character turned cartoon star and the DreamWorks Interactive computer game The NeverHood, Mothman would serve as TenNapel's first excursion into motion pictures.

With the script completed, TenNapel turned to producer Mark Russell to put the production package together. Russell, working with the support of the DreamWorks post-production team began to put together the project's components. Just before leaving for England to work on Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan, Russell hired long time friend and associate Jay Holben as a co-producer to coordinate the efforts while Russell was overseas. TenNapel interviewed several different cinematographer's for the project before Russell recommended one a little closer to home. After their first meeting, TenNapel and Holben seemed the perfect team to attack the Mothman head-on. TenNapel's 'objective art' vision of an imperfect world conflicted productively with Holben's strong narrative imagery sense. The two would strive to push each other to new plateau's in their respective arts and help shape the vision of Mothman into a sum much greater than its parts. In TenNapel's vision, the film would serve as a testimonial to the human side of the art of filmmaking. Deliberate imperfections were built in to the final look of the film in the shape of "soft-focus" shots, odd and uncomfortable compositions, bizarre camera operation and natural non-professional performers giving true on-screen testimonials. This form of artistic representation was very taxing on the crew as they were asked to intentionally err a particular shot. "I had a very hard time with some of the shots that Doug was looking for," recants Holben. "When he was asking for 'shakey-cam' or an out of focus take -- everything in my body was screaming NOO! To deliberately flub a shot goes completely against everything I've ever done and I became paranoid that no one would understand the motif of the film. I had these visions of an audience pointing at me -- 'you screwed that up!'... It's very trying on one's ego to deliberately do 'bad' work, but, Doug pushed me into a realm that I had never gone before. He forced me to simplify even more than I would have normally and find the narrative truth in his vision."

The production would face much greater obstacles in the shape of budgetary and time constraints. "When do you not have those problems?" laughs Holben. The initial budget written for the film was $650,000 and was quickly pared down to $150,000. When 2/3 of that funding fell through, it was Holben and Russell's task to formulate a $50,000 budget. "It got down to the point where we were asking for favors on our favors," sighs Holben as he recalls the moments of intense stress trying to compress a feature not only into 15 days, but into a monetary frame 1/13 the size of the original estimate. "We did have some very powerful friends in the background who were giving us the quiet nod of approval and that helped considerably." Working with generous donations from Panavision, Deluxe, Kodak, Universal Studios and many more -- the production shot for four days in Redlands and LaHabra California before making the trek across the country to shoot on location in West Virginia.

When the budget was pared down, more than 90% of the crew got the ax and it forced some very unorthodox decisions to be made. Holben turned to longtime collaborator Chris Probst to serve as the unparalleled and horrific hyphenate of the entire camera department, gaffer and 2nd unit director of photography. "Doug and I would be discussing the next shot while Chris was loading, then we would be lighting and Chris would be setting lamps, working with Chris Rauch the Key Grip, getting focus marks and running to the camera to pull focus for the shot. He was a wellspring of energy and a driving force behind the production." explains Holben.

Although the production's schedule would be pushed back several times before principal photography would be completed, time and money were not the only forces acting to challenge the production. "The worst nights by far for the crew were the nighttime exteriors in the West Virginia forest," recalls Holben. "It was freezing, we were deluged by a constant freezing rain and scattered echoes of hunters stalking deer in the not far enough distance. At one point, as our best boy electrician Adrian Brown was refocusing the 12K on top of a set of parallels, a man emerged from the trees with an AK-47 assault rifle in his hands... Luckily, he liked us!"

The film continues into post-production now and the producers hope to have a mid-summer 99 release. "We're continuing post-production in the same manner that we completed principal photography -- through the generous donations of others. One drawback to this is that we are at the mercy of their free-time, and we're never quite sure if our sessions will get bumped by other commitments," Explains Holben. Regardless of a set schedule, the end result will certainly be a sight to see.

Eastman Kodak, 5279 & 5274.
Photographed with Panavision cameras and lenses.