Last weekend, Portland’s GuignolFest 72-Hour Horror Film Festival took over the city with its usual mix of chaos, adrenaline, and creativity. I joined the I Man vs Film production team as the behind-the-scenes photographer for our short film Unity Day, created start to finish in just three days.
GuignolFest has a pulse of its own — long hours, improvised brilliance, and the kind of focus that only shows up when everyone’s working toward something wild and impossible. Every team pulls a genre, then has seventy-two hours to write, shoot, and deliver a complete horror film. It’s exhausting, unpredictable, and completely alive.
While protests and rallies unfolded across the country that same weekend, we were tucked away in our own small world of filmmaking — exploring themes of unity and fear through a lens that felt both surreal and grounded. I spent Sunday on set, camera in hand, watching the story come to life in flashes of tension, laughter, and quick problem-solving.
Unity Day became a zombie film in the end — raw, strange, and full of that messy kind of humanity that horror so often reveals. These images capture that weekend’s rhythm: the collaboration, the fatigue, and the quiet magic of people creating something together against the clock.
Come and see the screening at the Clinton Theater October 25th at 5pm!
(GuignolFest 2025 – Portland, Oregon | Man vs Film Production Team)
For the entire collection and individual downloadable photos go HERE
