Step behind the scenes of a feature film currently in production in Bellingham
Tucked away along the windy roads of Bellingham’s Barkley neighborhood is the Lake Whatcom Manor, where a film crew is currently hard at work.
At first glance, the inside of the house appears to be utter chaos; people are running around, orders are being barked and walkie-talkies can be heard. But a deeper examination shows everyone has a purpose — they all have a job to do and know where they are going and how to get it done.
“Love and Other Crimes,” directed by Clarito Zapanta, is currently in production, and the crew is filming throughout Whatcom County.
A synopsis on the film’s imdb.com page offers the following description: “A charming drifter’s romance with a small-town waitress is derailed when he’s pulled into the violent world of an old friend’s crime syndicate, where survival means embracing the darkness or risking everything to escape.”
“I was hunting down some scripts for a while, and I read a bunch of different ones, some of them really good, some bad, but I found a writer. I read one of his features first. I was immediately like, ‘Wow, I can, I can shoot this.’ I was able to see it right away,” Clarito told The Bellingham Herald
The feature is a longer version of a short film that was released in May 2025 with the intent of the story expanding into the current project.
“We only shot the short for maybe four days in Bellingham,” actor Jordan Nancarrow said. “But it’s just truly night and day from the short to this. There are different faces, a different cast, bigger production. There’s just so much that goes into a feature.”
The film is being produced by Clarito’s wife, Kristina Zapanta, who is the puppet master behind the production.
“I went through [the script with Clarito],” Kristina told The Herald. “We approved it together, bought it, I hired all crew, did all the contracts for everyone, made sure everyone got paid. I basically oversee the whole project, from conception to pre-production to production, to post-production, to distribution. So my job is to make sure it gets made.”
During a recent day of filming, Kristina walked around the set, laptop in hand, carefully observing everything while simultaneously writing the next day’s call sheet. She walked to the second floor of the manor to oversee production and make sure everything ran smoothly.
There were excited rumblings throughout the night. There were talks about stunt work for later in the evening. The protagonist of the film, played by Justin P. Slaughter, was going to run on the roof of the house and jump on the roof of a U-Haul truck.
Christopher Bogdanski Shore and Yessenia Cassio, who own Miami Action Design, were in charge of stunt coordination.
“When we’re coming up with fight design, we take a lot into once we go through the script. When we do a script analysis, we break down each character and what each character’s background is,” Bogdanski Shore said. “Then we talk to our actors. We need to understand what they feel, what is going to be coming out whenever they dial in and develop their character. From there, we end up designing the fight and how they move according to their history. So as we’re going through it, everybody moves different.”
Around 9 p.m., set-up, sound checks and extras were in place as filming began. The first scene of the evening was set at a party. Between takes, it’s apparent that the cast and crew enjoys one another’s company — and that’s why they do it.
“Clarito has a very clear vision — not just as a storyteller, as a director, but also psychologically — of the people he wants on the set,” Cassio said. “He just understood, the energy and the culture that [he wanted on set], and I think that’s what he chased after.”
“Everybody here’s passionate. You can see the love that everybody’s putting toward it,” Bogdanski Shore added.
It was midnight when the production team all had the same realization; there wasn’t enough time in the day to get they had planned everything done. This doesn’t happen often, according to Kristina, but when it does, they must pivot quickly.
They had a lot on their plates for the rest of the evening, including stunt work that can take a lot of time due to safety precautions. Everyone was at a brief loss regarding the best course of action.
Suggestions were being thrown to film partial scenes, to focusing on the stunt work, to splitting the production team in half to film two scenes at once. After much conversation, the solution they found was to film scenes that were planned for Friday — film it now to free up Friday evening to focus on stunt work.
While they still had an ample number of extras on set, it was determined that the best use of time would be to film another party scene.
It was nearly 1 a.m. when Clarito called a wrap for the day. Actors and extras were thanked profusely, and although it was the end of a 12-hour day, laughter and spirits were high. The cast would return the next day and do it again.