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Eager (stylized in all uppercase as EAGER) is a 2020 American independent fantasy short film produced by the production team Quids in Butte County and the surrounding areas by local filmmakers. It is the third major film work of author Daniel B Salas (following his student short film Flittering Scotoma in 2015 and his debut feature length film Sow in 2018), and the first official film completed and shown as a Quids product. Author Daniel B Salas was in communication with the local theatre called Pageant for an official premier, but no date was set when the theatre temporarily closed due to the Coronavirus epidemic, forcing many business to close as well. Without a venue to premiere EAGER, instead an online release was settled for through YouTube on March 23, 2020.

Many of the cast and crew were greatly effected by a devastating wildfire mere months before production, with the production team's major members all losing their homes. The disaster occurred on November 8, 2018; the original start date of principal photography was moved from December 2018 to January 21, 2019 in direct response to the fire.

Plot
The timeline of EAGER jumps around the film's course, though each scene conforms within the same day. Cande recently slew a dragon in the town of Nearly. This has become legend in the sister town of Eager, which also has a dragon harming its citizens. It is known by few (Cande among them) that each town in the world has its own dragon. Cande plots to gather a number of the citizens of Eager willing to abandon their town to explore the rest of the world and slay the dragons in the process, and many citizens have a response to this plot. Some are indeed eager to join Cande, others are less privy to abandon their town and thus leave it vulnerable, and even some others are now challenged to face the ultimate decision: do I go to save the world, leaving behind all I know and love, or stay in town, leaving the fate of the world in others' hands? The film covers the day before Cande's plot is to take action, exhibiting individual citizens of Eager as they experience a normal winter's day in their hometown.

Cast
''Note: All characters were named for the script, but not each character's name is displayed or spoken in the film. These names are those used in the script and which the actors identified as for production's sake.''
 * Lola Yang as Cande
 * the leader of the folks abandoning town
 * Riley Fox as Jolly Roger
 * Cande's best friend and recruiter
 * Daniel B Salas (credited as Jimothy Timothy) as Trot
 * the citizen of Eager which undergoes transformation over the course of the film
 * Bret Neste as
 * Phillips; the citizen plagued with the choice to either abandon town or stay
 * Ignacio; the citizen who stays despite his calling
 * Logan & Sunflower; citizens who ignore their calling to abandon town
 * Greg Ellery as Tucker
 * Jolly Roger's father
 * John Los as Pat
 * a patron at the bar with a loose tongue; this citizen disagrees with the notion of abandoning Eager
 * Bruce Dick as Reader
 * actor provides voice of the narration; is on-screen to accompany voice in bookended Prologue and Coda scenes
 * Stephen Salas as Reader
 * a visual manifestation of the narrator
 * Franceska Costamagna as Anna
 * a cruel citizen of Eager
 * Nick Justice as Bret
 * a citizen unaware of Cande's plot
 * author Daniel B Salas provides the voice
 * Bradley Duquette as Bradley
 * a citizen unaware of Cande's plot
 * Schuyler Willis as Matt
 * a citizen unaware of Cande's plot
 * assitant director CalebJud provides the voice
 * Elijah Anderson as Willis
 * a citizen who makes the tough choice to abandon his wife, child, and town for Cande's plot
 * Jessica Anderson as Willis' wife
 * Korra Anderson as River child
 * a child citizen who is aware of Cande's plot
 * Lukas Anderson as Willis' child
 * Riley Eriksen as the Figure
 * a cloaked enchanter whom Trot discovers in the forest
 * Seth Abernathy as Staunch
 * Scratch's lover; a citizen eager for Cande's plot
 * Jessica Sijan as Scratch
 * Staunch's lover; a citizen eager for Cande's plot

Production
Principal photography was shot on location between January and April 2019 mostly in Butte County but also in Tehama and Plumas counties. Originally, production was to initiate in December of the previous year, but the Camp Fire pushed it a couple months. None of the locations were affected by the scorch, but the event did rattle the cast and crew fundamentally as some of them (including author Daniel B Salas and the other major production members, plus many cast members as well) were Paradise locals, the other cast members were local to Chico (which experienced great change in direct cause from the fire as well). The original budget for the film was $10,000, but the finances it took to survive and mend during the aftermath of the fire lowered the budget to $5,000.