Chris LaMartina is the writer-director of Spirit Tasting, which premieres Thursday at the historic Senator Theatre in his native Baltimore, and then embarks on a nationwide roadshow. In the piece below, the director of WNUF Halloween Special and more details how he made his latest feature under strict, self-imposed limitations.
Can you shoot a good feature film in just four days? I think we did with my new movie, Spirit Tasting.
In 2025, I celebrated my 40th birthday by making a feature film in just four days — because I’m a masochist. It’s called Spirit Tasting, and it’s a modern riff on the classic horror story “The Monkey’s Paw,” set in a distillery on New Year’s Eve.
Now, four days isn’t a long time to turn an 86-page script into a movie. So here’s how we did it.
Number one: Make it a bottle movie.
Company moves slow down production. We knew if we kept the action to one location, we could cut production hours. A “bottle movie” centers on one location, and we knew from the start that this project needed to be one. And since I love a pun, a bottle movie meant a movie set in a distillery.
Doubling down further, we decided to make it a bottle movie in a distillery about what is essentially a genie. The “Be careful what you wish for” theme was a great vehicle for suspense and fused perfectly with our other priority: a character-driven, dialogue-heavy movie. Both were critical since four days wouldn’t leave room for big-action set pieces.
Although we’ll get to a few of those later — it is a horror movie after all.
Number two: Pre-plan as much as possible.
Prep is everything. I storyboarded every shot, then broke them into lists: must have, should have, and if time allows, numbered by importance. Call sheets were built around our most complicated setups, with multiple work streams running at once, but more on that later…
For talent, we cast actors with strong theater backgrounds who weren’t intimidated by heavy memorization, and ran Zoom rehearsals to nail down character relationships and emotional beats.
For the crew, two items were key: one, hiring people we knew well and shared shorthand with. We had no time to over-explain when two words or a pop culture reference would do. And two, hiring people who understood economies of scale: folks who can make something great in 20 days or good enough with 20 minutes. That’s a rare skill, but it’s essential for low-budget filmmaking.
Number three: Split shifts.
We hired three directors of photography, mostly shooting two cameras simultaneously, while a third grabbed second unit shots or trickier setups like dolly moves. Tripling up on cameras gave us breathing room, and split shifts shaped how we planned each day, maximizing downtime for efficiency… especially with special effects. This movie has some gnarly death scenes, and to stay on schedule, we strategically filmed the big effects shots between other angles in the same scene, or around scenes happening in other rooms at our location.
Number four: Get it done — not perfect.
You can’t be precious. Remember that priority shot list? I didn’t always get those last angles, and after falling two pages behind on day one, we rescheduled some angles by turnaround setups instead of by scene. For the uninitiated, a “turnaround” means flipping the camera for the reverse angle, usually after finishing one character’s coverage – sometimes requiring a full relight. That’s why we minimized turnarounds within scenes, but only when it didn’t disrupt performances. After all, the goal was never to make a movie, it was to make a good one. Performance and quality always came first.
And there you have it: How we managed to make a movie in just four days for $40,000. Did our strategies pay off? Why not see the movie and decide for yourself? Check out Spirit Tasting at one of our upcoming screenings, or pick up a Blu-ray to see the finished feature and a full-length making-of documentary.
You can read more about where to see Spirit Tasting here.
Main image: Spirit Tasting director Chris LaMartina and director of photography Mark Hutchings. Photo by Leah Hewitt.
