MARYSVILLE — Marysville’s Nick Poling and Alex DeRoest are both old hands at stage plays, but while they’ve been proud of their theatrical efforts, they eventually began to feel like their work was yielding diminishing returns.

“We couldn’t always get a lot of people out to see our plays,” said DeRoest, who co-wrote and has co-directed a film called “Cuts & Bruises” with Poling. “We started thinking that it’d be nice to have something that we could show people years from now.”

Although the two have been hashing out elements of their script for “Cuts & Bruises” for the past few years, it wasn’t until the start of this year that they were able to start turning it into an actual film, after an investor who’d been impressed with their previous theatrical efforts donated $3,000 to the dark comedy project.

“It’s about terrible people who do stupid things and learn nothing,” DeRoest laughed. “It’s based on us.”

“They suffer a lot of violent consequences, but after an adventure lasting several days, they wind up in the exact same situation they started from,” Poling said. “It’s based on the limbo of being college dropouts who go through periods of unemployment for a long time.”

Scott Randall of the Red Curtain Foundation for the Arts has aided in the makeup design, while the Washington State Studio Network is working with Poling and DeRoest’s Final Boss Productions to possibly distribute “Cuts & Bruises” to the Seattle International Film Festival. The film features dozens of extras, but centers on 10 main characters, with DeRoest and Poling serving as their own crew. In spite of their limited budget and resources, the two have been ambitious in the scope of their story, filming not only in Marysville and Arlington, but also in Stanwood, Snohomish, Mill Creek and Everett.

“Our first scene was filmed in 18 locations around Marysville, where the story is set,” Poling said.

“It’s a lot cheaper to do a lot of the filming now,” said DeRoest, noting that much of their filming is done on still cameras that have been modified to shoot longer stretches of video. “Digital media has democratized the production, but it still costs a lot and requires a lot of preparation.”

The two hope to have “Cuts & Bruises” completed by around August of this year, in spite of difficulties in working around the cast’s schedules and their own non-cinematic responsibilities. DeRoest actually counts himself lucky that he broke his arm changing a tire a while ago, because it allowed him to take paid leave from work, even as he’s struggled to hold the boom microphone for certain shots with one hand in a cast.

Ideally, Final Boss Productions aims to release “Cuts & Bruises” to independent film festivals as early as next spring, and while DeRoest and Poling take their craft seriously, they also hope viewers will be able to see the vision within their limitations.

“You can get away with a lot more in theater can you can in film,” Poling said, “but you can’t get so caught up in looking professional that you forget your art. It’s more important to be creative than it is to hit all your marks technically.”

The Washington State Studio Network is looking for more content from filmmakers. To find out more, log onto www.wssnetwork.org/movies.