“My wife and I had just moved to south Dayton when I met Patrick through a local church community,” Box said. “I had played guitar in a band in college and the church needed a bass player.”
Box was born and raised in Anderson, Indiana and went to college at Eastern Kentucky University. He met his wife, Michelle, and the couple married in 1998.
“I graduated from high school in 1994 but took some time off before college,” Box said. “I assumed I would grow up to be a writer for ‘Rolling Stone’ or something. Just following bands and writing about them.”
“I was feeling a little bit lost at that time and wasn’t sure what I wanted to do,” Hague said. “I still loved the idea of playing music, but I was over touring.”
Hague played in a band in high school but grew weary of touring. So after the band broke up, he started writing what he thought would be a book. But as he started working out the details in his head, he realized it sounded more like a movie screenplay.
“I knew Mike was into writing,” Hague said. “So I showed him the screenplay, which was 250 pages long. It was too big to film.”
Over the course of the next few years the pair worked on the screenplay together and both agreed there were good ideas and some not so good. So they slashed it down to a point where they could film it on a small budget.
“We first started to bond while talking about classic dystopian fiction novels,” Box said. “I thought to myself that this kid is ambitious, and I loved everything about his script except for the length.”
Knowing they couldn’t afford to pay professional actors, Hague and Box reached out to friends and family, asking them to audition. They also found someone to serve as the production person and line supervisor.
Production of their first film began in March of 2011. Hague worked with Kodak and got them to sell physical film at a low price since most movies were being shot digitally. They worked on filming for about a month before deciding to shut it down due to clashes between Hague and Box and their cinematographer.
“We did some rewrites and parted ways with the cinematographer,” Box said.
In June of 2011, the filming of “A Savior Come My Way,” was complete. But with no budget for film processing, Hague ended up putting all the film cans under his bed.
Meanwhile, Box had moved up to supervisor at the juvenile rehabilitation facility where he worked. He and wife, Michelle, were raising their growing family and trying to balance this with movie making.
“Now that I’m in my 30s and have my first child, I know what he was going through,” Hague said. “By the summer of 2012, I was back to editing the movie and had it down to 90 minutes.”
Hague said though there were parts of that movie he loved, there were also parts he didn’t like and didn’t want to share with others.
“I knew some of the takes and performances were bad,” Box said. “But I try to be very gracious when it comes to how other people operate with their art. I wanted to give him enough space to create something he was happy with.”
They worked on cutting the film down to about 20 minutes and decided to submit it to film festivals.
“This is the movie we would have made in film school had we gone,” Box said. It’s the one where we learned everything about making films.”
Over the years, both Hague and Box continued on with their lives, while Hague, who constantly carries a notebook with him, jotted down ideas for another film. Then during the COVID-19 lockdown, the pair began to brainstorm again.
“We wanted to do something, so we decided to start our own production company,” Box said.
On Feb. 22, 2022, EchoEterna Productions LLC was launched. Hauge had developed some social media skills working for an independent record label in Cincinnati and of course, he had “stacks of notebooks,” and ideas.
Today they are focused on building their brand and creating name recognition and credibility so they can hire talent for a dystopian science fiction film currently in the works. They have hired actors and are now raising money to fund the movie, which centers around a futuristic band of four musicians.
“It’s about a post punk band called The Riot Police,” Hauge said. “They are operating in the underground music scene and there are government sanctions on any art. So they are breaking the law.”
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