TV Cameraman Lends a Hand to Maine Thriller

Writer-director Damian Veilleux got a nice shout-out recently on WABI-TV 5 in Bangor for his micro-budgeted indie thriller The Eighteenth Hour, which premieres Wednesday July 18th at the Maine International Film Festival. In part because the movie's director of photography, Mike Cole, works as cameraman for the station's Central Maine bureau in Waterville.

The psychological drama is based on a short story Veilleux, now 30, wrote when he was 16. The piece was rejected by organizers of a literary contest, but all these years later, it provides the basis of what the filmmaker hopes will be a film trilogy.



Alexander Pauley stars as Dominic Walker, a teen who flees into the comfort of daydreams to escape life with an abusive father. However, are those daydreams in fact real? And is the villain of this apparent fantasy world a specter who can jump out into the young boy's reality and double the abusive stakes?

Using equipment purchased by Cole for his various professional pursuits, Veilleux was able to keep the production costs way down. The official final price tag, according to a write-up in the Morning Sentinel newspaper, was exactly $1,214.74.

[The Eighteenth Hour]