“Wild Animal” Sneak Peek: Inside the Cage
Trusting the Film Gods through pure chaos.
Post-production on Wild Animal is nearly finished, which is kinda weird to say. I’ve been living with this film for nearly 7 years. I don’t even know what life will be like without it… empty nest syndrome? The film is about a female MMA fighter and the long road back from physical and emotional trauma set in the Big Sky Country of Montana.
We had originally planned to shoot with a real fighter in the lead, and so our approach to the fighting was minimal yet impactful because we knew that we could lean on the fighters to do the heavy lifting for the choreography and scene work. That was our approach to the short film, which you can see here.
For the feature, we cast Kiana Madiera as the lead. She had recently completed an MMA romance film called Perfect Addiction, so she already had a bit of training to look the part, but that also meant we had to take a new approach to shooting the fight scenes.
Our good friends, Shea and Ariel O’Neill of Copper City Combat Club in Butte, Montana, played several roles in the film, both on and off screen. Shea was instrumental in choreographing the scenes and translating what I’d written in the script onto the screen. And both he and Ariel played parts in the film. Ariel was reprising her role from the short film as the smiley-faced yet brutish opponent who puts Rhiannon, the lead character, into the hospital. For those hard-core MMA fans out there, you can see Ariel on season 26 of Ultimate Fighter.
Truthfully, we had been putting off figuring out the fight scenes because of the grueling 14-day schedule and my own lack of mental bandwidth. And when the day finally came, we really had no idea what we were gonna do.
My DP, David Vollrath, came to me in my hotel room the day before and said that we needed a stunt double or else we weren’t gonna be able to pull it off. Coincidentally, Kiana had just worked with a stunt double, Yessenia Cossio, on her previous film. My producer, Lysette Urus, called her up, and five hours late, she was on a plane heading to Montana.
The scene was shot at the Anaconda Golden Gloves Boxing Club in Anaconda, which is about 45 minutes outside of Butte, Montana. These guys were the real-deal, hard-core fans and unbelievably generous with their time and resources.
This scene happens early on in the film. Rhiannon steps into the ring with no preparation and takes this (essentially backyard) fight for only $100 after being fired from her part-time job at a local cannabis dispensary. During the fight, she takes a hard elbow to the head, causing a traumatic brain injury. But despite that, she manages to eek by and snag the win.
It really is incredible what happens when you put your faith in something much larger than yourself and trust that if you keep pushing forward that it’s all gonna work out. I would say that’s how 90% of this film was made: by surrounding myself with incredible talent, preparing as much as possible, and pushing through all the adversity that got thrown our way.
This scene turned out to be one of my proudest moments of the film. The film gods (and Yessenia) were truly shining down on us that day.
There’s more coming soon. Thanks for being part of this. If you dig it, please share this Substack with your friends and family!
– Joe.
Closer every day! ❤️
That stunt double could be her sister, holy hell. You can't tell at all.