Movie filmed on Eastern Washington University campus: an interview with 213 Bones producer Tyler Olson

A whodunit horror movie “213 Bones” is being filmed on Eastern Washington University’s campus this fall quarter.

The production follows a group of anthropology students as they begin to find human bones scattered around their campus and personal property, and their subsequent scramble to unmask the killer responsible before one of them is the next victim.

One of the movie’s producers, Tyler Olson, sat down for an interview with The Easterner. Olson was born and raised in Bellevue, attending the University of Washington before moving down to Los Angeles to pursue acting. He has worked on many movies and shows, notably “Midnight in the Switchgrass”, “Force of Nature”, and an episode of “The Big Bang Theory”. After 25 years away, Olson says that returning to Washington to work on 213 Bones has made him feel as though he has come full circle.

Olson compared the movie to the “Scream” franchise.

“It’s for those horror genre people, I’d say early 20s to early 30s would be the demographic – like high school, college age,” he said. “Just hoping to entertain the young group, you know… make them not want to take an anthropology class. If the movie does what it is supposed to, anthropology will be –,”

“No more. [Anthropology] will cease to exist,” Jeffery Primm, the film’s director, interjected humorously in passing.

In the final film, Eastern students will recognize various campus locations such as the JFK Library, The Visitor’s Center, and select classrooms in Williamson Hall as being part of the set, along with locations in Spokane such as Rusty’s Diner.

While very few– if any— EWU students will be seen in the backgrounds of scenes, the campus-famous squirrels are another story.

“I know we saw [a squirrel] and Jeff was like, there’s a squirrel, shoot it! I don’t know if we got it, but we need a squirrel,” Olson said.

Overall, Olson said that the campus has been very friendly for their movie, with people leaving the crew to work undisturbed.

“Campus has been great. Nobody’s been bugging us, so they seem okay with us here which is nice. Everybody is paying for an education here and we don’t want to disrupt that. So we appreciate that hospitality,” he said.

However, there has been an unexpected obstacle that came with working in the Pacific Northwest: the weather. Dropping to temperatures below freezing at points, none of the cast or crew were prepared for how cold some of their shots would be.

“It was 20 degrees out last week and I’ve never worked in that cold of weather. Between myself, the other producer, the director and [director of photography], we probably collectively spent $3,000 at North 40. We spent a lot of money in that store – we should own part of it.” Olson said.

However, this quick temperature drop led to what Olson described as one of the most amazing moments in production.

“One of the things we wanted was a lot of the fall leaves, and we shot the stuff we needed outside the day before the leaves fell off,” he said. “Nobody really said anything, but we finished that day and we were like ‘thank God we shot that, because if it was tomorrow we would have missed it.’”

Olson’s favorite scene offers a glimpse into what audiences can expect from the finished movie. The students had discovered some bones, and were trying to decide if they were from a human or a dog.

“When the kids say ‘I think it’s a dog,’ Dean Cameron, who’s a big [actor] from the 80’s and 90’s, says ‘those aren’t dog bones, I know dogs’. The way he delivered it was super funny,” Olson said.

The movie should be complete in a couple of months, after which the team will be doing a film festival run. They hope to have the movie released in local and potentially international theaters just in time for Halloween 2024.

“We just want everybody to go see the movie,” Olson said. “Hopefully [EWU students] are happy having a movie they can go watch and say, ‘that’s here on campus,’ or ‘I was there when they were shooting.’”

Depending on how well the movie is received, Olson says that there may be a continuation filmed on campus in the future.

“We are setting it up for a sequel,” he said. “Spoiler alert – not all of the students die, so maybe we’ll use them again, or maybe it’s a totally different cast of kids. Different plot, but same color. If it takes place on campus maybe we’ll just stay here. And not shoot when it’s cold.”

View behind the scenes photos featuring locations across EWU campus and Spokane below.