BASS DEMON PRODUCTIONS is a film crew from Los Angeles.
They recently made a film, and it’s called BLANK SLATE
It was directed by Aaron Tebache, who also did the cinematography, scoring, editing, and writing. Sean Roche acts and writes. Aaron McGuire handles coloring and also operates the camera.
The prelude to the “Demon”, was a short film called Pacific Smoking Club, written by Sean Roche and Daichi Marian, released December 24th 2021.
During the filming of PSC, one of Roche’s friends encouraged him to speak to
Aaron McGuire, specifically because he would “be mean to Roche’s work”.
Roche was already acquainted with McGuire but involving him in the work begun the first step to build the team for Bass Demon’s first project, One Wheel Dave. This short film, released September 29th 2023 was directed by Sean Roche.
The film featured Roche, alongside Aaron McGuire, and the titular character,
“One Wheel Dave”, portrayed by David Lopez. This film had help from a newcoming team member Aaron Tebache. Having already been a long time friend of McGuire, and offering better knowledge in audio to amend the team’s mic issues, Tebache was a natural addition the “Demon”. He also shot One Wheel Dave.
After One Wheel Dave had released, Roche and McGuire sat down with Tebache to formally create the team.
They agreed that they wanted to make as many more shorts as they could, and their plan was to rotate directors each time. Their first film was directed by Roche, and their second by Tebache. At the time of interviewing, they were finishing up McGuire’s directorial debut.
Blank Slate was a spawn of Aaron Tebache’s Covid infection. During his time in quarantine, Aaron made an effort to make at least one new song each day. Then he would share them with his friends. After hearing one of Tebache’s songs, Sean began to draw ideas. He was inspired by the unique sounds Tebache had
created and felt it tell a story. He sent drafts of vignettes that the team began to build their film with. Tebache would then continue to score the entire film and the scenes were built off this work.
Aaron thanks Roche for writing his ideas down in the first place because he felt that without that, he probably never would have done anything with the songs.
Once Roche had the snowball rolling,
Tebache was able to build off the ideas.
The group effort had begun to film Tebache’s project, his first true
directorial experience. Tebache had previously directed a music video for his song Dirty Hands and long before that, worked with McGuire on various videos in elementary school, but otherwise he had no experience with something on the scale of BLANK SLATE
The team all agreed though that making this film was a test of
organization. Setting up shoot days with a larger crew proved difficult at times and most of the time meetings were set by Tebache, often last minute and only possible thanks to text reminders from Roche.
It was important that the team all held each other accountable and soon felt their collective vision come together as the shoot progressed.
The shoot days amassed a lot of content but not
everything made the final cut. Some cuts were an editing choice, while others were a matter of
circumstance.
The last scene of the team’s first day shooting was the fight scene, which featured Roche and Tebache first in conversation and then in a stressful, fast paced chase sequence. The location for the scene was a pick of Roche’s, as it was an industrial area that would theoretically not have too many people to bother them while filming.
The location was in fact quiet and ideal, up to the filming of the climax of the chase scene, where Roche is to catch Tebache, bring him to the ground and punch his face bloody. Then cops come to intervene.
These were not scene characters though, they were real cops. And so the bloody fight scene in the script never ends up happening.
The cop asked,
“Are you guys making good life choices?”
Meanwhile, Tebache has blood on his shirt and dripping from his nose, all while laying on the floor. Sean tried to play the “student film” card and then resorted to “indie film”. They were denied both times and it was apparent that the officers were neither impressed by their creative direction, nor supportive in their film
education. Roche felt the officer kinda just wanted to “be a dad about it”. 
When asked about difficult to access shooting locations, the team was given trauma from flashbacks to their first day of shooting.
The spot that came to mind was one of Tebache’s picks, a park that he visited with his girlfriend a few months prior. The scene was the opener, which featured Keiva Bradley standing on a wooden structure surrounded by a nature preserve. The team arrived to shoot at the location early, and this was before the sun had risen.
The crew journeyed through marsh to reach the structure and encountered a single golden orb weaver spider along the way. Some members of the team were startled by the spider, but not discouraged. That was until coming back from shooting on the wooden platform that the now risen sun revealed a very large number of these spiders on the team’s path. As they got deeper into the marsh, they would find more and more.Tebache counted at least twenty.
Aaron McGuire claims it was his brave leadership that guided the team out.
To him a lesson was learned, and that is in his words:
“Whatever you cannot see, cannot hurt you”.
On the other hand, the way Aaron Tebache recalls:
“Dude, I was having a
fucking panic attack”.
The team all agreed that Blank Slate was a rewarding challenge for Bass Demon Productions and for them, a big step towards creating the work they have always
wanted to make. McGuire mentions that there is a gap between taste and capability, and that they found through trying new things that this gap becomes smaller, and you become closer to your best work.
Roche had a coworker compare the team’s work to the likes of an A24 production, and that, for him, showed his team was shooting in the right direction.
Alongside praise from the film’s viewers came a series of in-jokes and
possibly even a cult following, all surrounding the character revealed in the final scene of Blank Slate, Pepper, a blue otter plush.
During the week of the film’s release, Tebache’s coworkers would come up to dap him up like Pepper and would tell him how much they loved the character.
The plush originated as an obsession of Aaron McGuire‘s that stemmed from an Instagram Reel featuring plushie otters in a rainbow of colors. He claims it is the single best video he has ever seen.
Because of this, McGuire located one at a local Japanese store and would bring the otter along to each day of shoot. Pepper lifted the team spirits during moments of stress and in Tebache’s words:
“He’s a team player, he’s really inspiring … he’s really squishy.”