Mia Moore Marchant wrapped up filming her directorial, feature film “Again Again” on Grays Harbor recently and as she reflects on her time back in the place she grew up, it’s clear she enjoyed a positive experience in her old stomping grounds.

“It was really good,” Marchant said while on a walk through Los Angeles, where she lives now. “I grew up on the Harbor. I mostly lived in Hoquiam and then moved to Aberdeen down the line. I don’t know what I expected but I definitely got a warm welcome from people.”

Marchant said filming throughout the area made people curious about what was happening.

“When people saw us filming on the street they were so excited to see us doing something creative and cool and something that like showed off the area and showcased what was cool about it,” Marchant said. “It was definitely interesting. Everybody who saw us on the street had to stop and see what was going on. And I think my crew had a really fun time too. It was a lot of people who had never been to the area before and it seemed they got a taste of what the Harbor’s all about.”

Marchant, who led a small crew of 16 people through a span of 18 days of shooting in order to make the film she wrote, produced and co-directed, talked a little about a couple of the locations where “Again Again” was shot.

“We shot about 70% of the movie in a motorhome in my mom’s driveway,” Marchant said. “And that was absolutely a cool thing to do. It was interesting trying to shoot in small spaces and trying to figure out how to keep it interesting, but we had a lot of fun with that.”

Melissa Goshe, the film’s gaffer and grip, spoke about how the crew, on a limited budget of near $100,000, had to make the most of the time they had without exhausting the crew.

“A lot of it was shot outdoors, so we tried to use the natural lighting,” Goshe said. “When we were moving inside the motorhome, the RV, that was a whole other different space to light. It was a very small space. We were all climbing on top of each other. Everyone was being kind and courteous. A lot of our lighting needed to be Velcroed to the ceiling, power strips and all. Sometimes we had cameras on the roof of the RV that were looking through the vent holes. A lot of times we had to be creative in working in such a small space.”

The creativity included shooting night shots during the day. Goshe said she and other crew members had to black out the windows in order to make it look like nighttime.

“And that’s part of the efficiency of it all,” Goshe said. “You only have so many days. “You can’t keep all of your crew members up every single night. We did have a couple nighttime shoots where we had to do some shots outside in the dark. And that’s just what has to happen. But if it’s an indoor atmosphere and we have the ability to block out the windows and still shoot during the days so we weren’t all exhausted being up all night. We’re still human beings. I think they really did a great job in managing when we worked.”

Goshe said part of the managing was taking good care of the crew. Part of the success was making sure they had time to sleep. The other part was the food.

“Oh my gosh, can I mention the food?” Goshe said. “Alexa (Feeney) is an amazing cook. I actually terribly miss her cooking. Alexa, Ian (Schrank) and Rachel (Kendra) all did an amazing job in the kitchen for everybody. Just absolutely tickled pink of how taken care of we were and how attentive everyone was to our needs as far as creature comforts. We had air conditioning when we needed it. We had heaters when we needed it. We had bug spray when we needed it. We had chapstick when we needed it. Everything we needed to be safe and well was taken care of. And you can’t duplicate that. They were genuinely good to us. We all lived there together in Mia’s parents’ home. We all managed somehow to take our turns doing laundry, taking showers and I don’t remember it ever being a problem.”

Feeney, executive producer and on-set coordinator of the film who took care of a lot of the behind-the scenes responsibilities, said it was a little cheaper to feed that many people if there is someone cooking. And Feeney likes to cook. Feeney said she got nothing but rave reviews.

“It was a goofy job because I had to take a lot of dietary considerations into play,” Feeney said.

In addition to taking care of the crew with meals such as vegan chili, chicken fajitas and grilling for the Fourth of July, Feeney talked about one place in particular she loved shooting — underneath the Young Street Bridge. Besides being a fan of Nirvana, it was the bridge itself that Feeney remembers.

“It was funny, so we went on location scouting about a month or so before filming started to get a sense of everything for pre-production,” Feeney said. “We wound up getting to the bridge a little bit before sunset. And as we experienced watching the sunset behind the town, it glistened off the river and everything while we were under the bridge. We were just like, immediately, ‘we’re changing the script to make sure this scene happens at sunset. This is magical.’”

Originally the scene was supposed to take place at night. But after seeing it, the feeling was the film needed the sunset effect there.

“It profoundly altered a little chunk of the script just for how transcendent it was,” Feeney said about the bridge.

And like Marchant and Goshe, who loved filming in Aberdeen and loved how welcoming people genuinely were, Feeney liked how convenient it was to film in the small towns of Aberdeen and Hoquiam. One of the conveniences of being in a smaller area is how close the different filming locations were. But, more importantly, it was Grays Harbor itself that charmed Feeney.

“It was cool to put this slice of Americana on screen and kind of celebrate it,” Feeney said. “The whole Grays Harbor area is just fantastic. It was also dope to shoot under the Kurt Cobain bridge. That is unequivocally one of the coolest things I’ve ever done.”

The bridge was also Marchant’s favorite.

“That to me is such an important landmark of Aberdeen’s history,” Marchant said. “I grew up listening to Nirvana. Kurt was always somebody to kind of look up to and it was really cool to be able to sort of capture that space on film.”

Marchant said she felt a “kinship” with Cobain.

“I think especially growing up queer and not really knowing how to exist in that space, not really knowing anybody else like you, and then seeing somebody who you have a kinship with who’s long dead is a really personal experience,” Marchant said. “We left our own little mark under the bridge that made it into the movie. That made me really happy.”

Another location that the crew liked to film in was Boomtown Records. They shot there for three days straight. Marchant said it was fun to film there, especially with the character “Naomi” who worked there and who also lived there.

“We were able to set up this amazing little apartment that had this ratty old couch and two pinball machines and all of these records scattered all over the place,” Marchant said. “I think it really added a lot to the character to just have her kind of sequestered off in the edge, in a corner of the place. That was really fun.”

Think the movie “Clerks,” where the main character is stuck behind the convenience store counter.

And the excitement for both working with Mia and the future of the film itself is clear. Ask James Shawyer, a Montesano resident who worked as an extra on the film. He’s a bartender at Rediviva.

“Working with Mia was great,” Shawyer said. “Her energy was super infectious and it was easy for me to be comfortable working with the crew almost immediately because of her. I’m extremely excited to see the final product because I’ve always had a lot of respect for Mia’s writing.”

Weekend happenings

Friday, July 28

Noon to 2 p.m. — The Iron Stallion Band — Hog Wild in Ocean Shores (Ocean Shores Convention Center) — 120 W. Chance a La Mer NW, in Ocean Shores

2:30 to 4:30 p.m. — Deerswerver — Hog Wild in Ocean Shores (Ocean Shores Convention Center) — 120 W. Chance a La Mer NW

5 to 7:30 p.m. — SR 109 — Hog Wild in Ocean Shores (Ocean Shores Convention Center) — 120 W. Chance a La Mer NW, in Ocean Shores

8 p.m. to midnight — This Way Out — Ashley’s Pub Haus — 710 J St., in Hoquiam

Saturday, July 29

2 to 4 p.m. — SR 109 — Hog Wild in Ocean Shores (Ocean Shores Convention Center) — 120 W. Chance a La Mer NW

4 to 7 p.m. — Richard Jones — Ocean Pours Taproom — 759 Ocean Shores Blvd NW., in Ocean Shores

4:30 to 6:30 p.m. — Deerswerver — Hog Wild in Ocean Shores (Ocean Shores Convention Center) — 120 W. Chance a La Mer NW

7 to 9 p.m. — Boogie at the Bogs (Black Shepherd) — Grayland Community Hall — 2071 Cranberry Rd, in Grayland

8 to 11 p.m. — Jon Reynolds Music — Gepetto’s Italian Restaurant & Sports Bar — 126 Pioneer Ave. E., in Montesano

Sunday, July 30

3 p.m. — Plank Island Theatre Company (Comedy Improv Troupe) — 105 W. Heron St., in Aberdeen

Contact Reporter Matthew N. Wells at matthew.wells@thedailyworld.com.

Mia Moore Marchant A “little tag” that the film crew “Again Again” left underneath the Young Street Bridge in Aberdeen. The bridge, full of personal, graffitied notes to Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, served as location for one of the crew’s favorite filming spots on Grays Harbor. The “tag,” which says “Naomi was here,” was because one of the film’s characters is named “Naomi.”