I was the Production Designer for a filmmaking team that competed in the National Film Challenge. Our pre-selected theme was "horror", and we drafted a script titled "Salvage" about a couple who gets in a car wreck in the middle of nowhere. Fortunately, there is a nearby junkyard, manned by a creepy attendant who is preoccupied with an attractive visitor.

We filmed in the countryside of Melrose, MN. Part of the "set dressing" I did included this 1952 Farmall tractor. I got to drive it a few miles to the shooting location, and it was the highlight of my day. I even looked the part, wearing an oily Carhartt jacket and knee-high mud boots. Nothing beats chugging along road at 6mph through the crisp country air, mud flying off the 5ft tall tires, and passersby waving to you from horseback. The tractor wasn't even part of the script. I just thought it looked cool and asked to borrow it for "texture" in the background.

I also got to dress up a bathroom to look like it had the dirtiest, most disgusting toilet EVAR, and I got to fabricate a roadside roll-over car wreck. Passersby kept stopping by, asking of anybody was hurt or if we needed a wrecker! We had to keep explaining that it was for a movie, and none of it was real.