Speak of the Dead Interview Series, Screenwriters from Shriekfest: Colin Clarke
Participating writers and filmmakers from Shriekfest past and present talk to Screenwriting for Hollywood about their horror thriller suspense movies and experience.
Raven’s Hollow
Writer/Director/Actor Colin Clarke
speaks to Screenwriting for Hollywood
The movie:
Billy, his sister Lisa, and her boyfriend Mike spend a night at the drive-in after trick or treating on Halloween. When Billy threatens to walk home through an old cornfield, Mike tells him a legend of Old Farmer Blood who is said to have seeded his field with the blood of murder victims. When Billy disbelieves, Mike leads the trio into a nightmare of unrelenting terror.
Inspiration:
The idea was to write a story that symbolized everything I loved about a haunted Midwest with cornfields, scarecrows, ghosts, drive-in movie theaters, and that autumnal Halloween night atmosphere.
I’m a big fan of old Hammer vampire movies too, so I figured out a way to work that out of my system.
There was a ghost story in my neck of the woods about a haunted farm and a vengeful farmer that I kind of tried to tap into the spirit of as well.
We worked out a way to incorporate a motion-comic in there to tell the flashback story for which Andy Carlson did the art. We got together and worked out how many shots it would take us to tell the story. I made some thumbnail storyboards and we went from there. That was probably one of the most satisfying experiences in making the movie.
Budget:
The budget of the film was probably a couple thousand dollars, when all is said and done. Since it’s done with 3D animation, my actors, props and sets were purchased from online stores or obtained from online databases.
I paid for it piecemeal over the course of the production.
Background:
I’ve known I’ve wanted to make movies since as long as I can remember. I don’t remember when it started exactly… I know that over time I became aware that movies were something that were made by a process, and I read everything I could to understand that process for myself.
My dad had an old Bell & Howell Super-8mm movie camera that I began making short, one-reel films with and editing them on a splicer. It was a very limiting experience, working with film with no sound, no color correction, no transitions, no effects, etc.
It was the advent of digital technology that made me realize that I could make my films do at last what I had always wanted them to do. I taught myself some rudimentary computer animation as a way to work on making shorts on my own schedule, around other obligations of my time.
My previous credits include Frankenstein vs the Wolfman in 3D and the Gothic superhero short films Raven and Raven 2.
The Journey:
The script for Raven’s Hollow was written by my friend Marc Packard and myself.
Raven’s Hollow is made entirely on home computers with off the shelf software.
In addition to CG animation, Raven’s Hollow incorporates a motion comic segment which transforms line art, drawn by Andrew Carlson and colored by me into three-dimensional animation.
Raven’s Hollow reunites the core creative team from Frankenstein vs the Wolfman in 3D, including co-producer & audio designer Andrew Carlson, co-writer Marc Packard, and score composer Andrew Kalbfus.
It hasn’t been seen in a film festival yet… I just finished it up a few weeks ago and have been busy submitting it to festivals. I’m hoping that it will get a few festival screenings in the Fall and people will get a chance to see it. Hopefully they like it. I’ve been to several festivals in the past with some of my prior shorts, and the experience has always been great – you get to sit in the dark with other horror movie junkies and watch a bunch of stuff made by your peers. It’s a blast.
Update: Raven’s Hollow will have its world premiere at Gen Con Indy 2011 on August 4-7.
Influences:
I think Guillermo del Toro is the best filmmaker working exclusively in genre films today; but I’m a big fan of early John Carpenter and George Romero. I think Alexandre Aja and Rob Zombie are two of the most interesting people working in horror today.
My favorite horror film of all time, if I had to pick just one, would probably be the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre. I think that film, in its power, intensity and its narrative simplicity, may be the most effective horror movie I’ve ever seen.
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You can visit the official Raven’s Hollow website for screenshots, wallpapers, and more at:
http://www.daredevilfilms.net/ravenshollow
Visit us on Facebook for updates at:
http://www.facebook.com/ravenshollow
Raven’s Hollow on IMDB.com
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1913111/
Shriekfest: Calling All Independent Horror Thriller Sci-Fi Fantasy Filmmakers & Screenwriters !
Super 8, Screenwriter J.J. Abrams Dream Cast!
Actors Elle Fanning, Joel Courtney, Ryan Lee, Riley Griffiths, Kyle Chandler, and the many others of the ensemble cast who star in Super 8 are a screenwriter’s dream!
How such an amazing cast of young actors was compiled for one movie is mind boggling. Across the board, the acting is phenomenal with real kid faces and personalities. It’s been a long time since we have had such a powerful child driven cast, one that is so natural that you feel like you yourself are a kid again, hanging out with your buddies doing dumb stuff and getting into trouble.
There are a lot of good movies this year in 2011 and Super 8 is hands down one of the best. It is a 1980s ET (1982) meets The Goonies (1985) sci-fi flick.
This is a big movie with a lot going on visually; you should really see it in the movie theater. There is a lot of violence, so it’s better for older kids.
Written and directed by J.J. Abrams, Super 8 is a fun intense suspenseful movie.
A while back, screenwriter J.J. Abrams came and spoke at my school, the University of California in Santa Barbara; he has been a top screenwriter inspiration for me ever since. Young and excited still, he spoke about the sale of his script Forever Young (1992). He said Disney offered him $3 million or he could go with Mel Gibson who offered $2 million. What a choice?! I’ll never forget hearing his story. He went with the $2 million and the rest is history.
If you can learn something from Abrams about securing a long career in entertainment, maybe it is that having a great cast is far more important than the immediate gratification of more money.
J.J. Abrams is one of the lucky ones whose career launched quickly, achieving the kind of screenwriting success about which the rest of us only dream. Other writing credits of Abrams includes: Armageddon, Mission Impossible III, and TV shows Alias, Lost, and Fringe. What an impressive resume and growing still.
I’m thinking J.J. has a secret time travel device at his disposal. Who can achieve so much in so little time? Sheesh.
Don’t miss the extra footage in the final credits sequence of Super 8.
Click here for more information about Super 8 on IMDB about the cast and production.
Speak of the Dead Interview Series, Screenwriters from Shriekfest: Xstine Cook
Participating writers and filmmakers from Shriekfest past and present talk to Screenwriting for Hollywood about their horror thriller suspense movies and experience.
Suckathumb
Writer/Director/Actor Xstine Cook speaks to SfH
The movie:
Suckathumb is about bloody thumbs, a starving brat, and spontaneously combusting cats. Fueled by her mother’s horrific bed-time tales, a child’s imagination runs wild in the Canadian wilderness.
We use puppets, green screen, animation, shadow puppets and a combination of analogue and digital techniques to create the horror-fantasy realm of the girl’s imagination.
I play 3 characters: Mama, the Tailor, and the Prospector.
Mooky Cornish plays the little girl Suckathumb. Mook is famous for her clown work with Cirque du Soliel’s Varekai show.
Chrystene Ells created the 2D animated sequences.
Inspiration:
The inspiration for Suckathumb came from an ancient tattered book of children’s poems I’ve owned since I was a child. It’s called “Poetry for the Four Five and Six Year Old.” It is so old that it doesn’t have a publishing date and the pages are falling out. In it are 3 poems by Dr Heinrich Hoffmann, a German loony-bin doctor who wrote a series of cautionary children’s poems and illustrations for his child’s Christmas present in the 1800′s. His friends found these morbid poems so hilarious, they insisted he publish them.
What drew me to the original poems is the stark depiction of misbehaviour and punishment. As a child, I found it ludicrious these poems were considered children’s material, and yet, they fascinated me.
If you sucked your thumb, a big tall tailor would come and cut off your thumbs. If you played with matches, you’d burn up til there’s nothing left but your shoes and a pile of ashes. If you didn’t eat your soup, you’d wither away to a skeleton and die.
As an adult, I attempted several cabaret interpretations of the poems.
Once I became a parent, I found inspiration in the contrast of a child’s curiosity and capriciousness versus a parent’s need to teach and protect. Sometimes as a parent, I wonder if what I do truly helps my child, or will it scar her forever?
Suckathumb depicts a mother reading one of these terrifying poems to her child, then leaving the child in the darkness of the wilderness. The poem is real to the child.
It took me about a day to write the script. I then worked with Raul Viceral, a Pixar-trained storyboard artist, who helped create the visual arc of the film.
Budget:
$28,000
I secured the money by writing grant proposals to various levels of the Canadian government. I went through three rounds of funding and rejections before I finally obtained the budget and the project went ahead.
Background:
I wanted to be in movies since I was a teenager. I went into theatre instead, where I wrote, directed, designed and acted in my own original plays for 13 years. I only started making movies in the last 5 years.
Having kids inspired me to make movies. It’s much easier to burn a disc and mail it off, than to do a live touring show, to fix all the puppets, retrain the troupe, book gigs, pile it all in a van and hit the road… with 3 small kids.
The Journey:
Suckathumb had a bit of a tougher time getting seen than my previous film Dead Boyfriends.
Running time and genre seem to be the problem. As it is 9 minutes long, it is hard to find the right spot for it at film screenings. It is not a straightforward horror film, though it is closer to horror than anything else. For sure, it is not a kids’ film — we found that out when my seven-year-old showed it to her second grade class and caused the other children nightmares. With the film’s fantasy realm and lack of graphic violence, it’s not purely an adult film either.
Recently, it has been picked up by a number of festivals, which is really encouraging.
The quality and production value goes up with each film I make. Suckathumb‘s quality is really high for the budget we had.
Being Canadian, we’re fortunate to have resources to make short films, while still maintaining absolute artistic control.
Now that the film is made, I’m still not sure what I’m supposed to do. I’d love to get distribution and have it seen everywhere. How does one go about doing that? I don’t know.
I don’t really have any interest in pitching film concepts to a producer, because I produce my own films; I’m too much of a control freak to give that over to someone else. I’d rather be patient and raise the money my own way, do it ghetto style. I guess when I’m ready to do a feature, then that will be a different story. For now, I’m just learning the process with short projects, and maintaining control in the meantime.
Influences:
The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock.
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Photo of director Xstine Cook by Colin Way
Illustration from Suckathumb by Chrystene Ells
Shriekfest: Calling All Independent Horror Thriller Sci-Fi Fantasy Filmmakers & Screenwriters !
Speak of the Dead Interview Series, Screenwriters from Shriekfest: Antone Anania
Participating writers and filmmakers from Shriekfest past and present talk to Screenwriting for Hollywood about their horror thriller suspense movies and experience.
Hawthorne Road is a clever script played by believable actors and filmed over eight days without a crew by lone ranger Antone Anania who takes a painfully intimate and witty look at why real people (not zombies or ghosts) are disturbing enough. What is more haunted, the house or the people in it?
Hawthorne Road
Writer/Director Antone Anania speaks to SfH
The movie:
Hawthorne Road is my version of a “six people go into the woods” movie. Only it’s not about flesh eating diseases, a killer, or zombies, it’s about six desperate people doing desperate things to hang onto their lives. It’s kind of like turning on the news any given night, all the terrible stories you hear. That’s the movie, which to me is SCARY.
See the movie trailer here: hawthorne road- movie trailer. You can also watch the entire movie online.
Inspiration:
The thing that really inspired me was when I went to see the Blair Witch Project in ’99. There was a line out the door. My date and I paid to get to the front of the line. There was so much anticipation. The fire marshall came and made people clear the isles. When they finally did show it, it scared the shit out of me. Loved it!
Budget:
I asked some rich friends for the money for Hawthorne Road. A bunch of them said no. I kept lowering the amount I needed. Finally a friend loved my ambition and said he’d give me the entire budget. It was $10,000. I hired a boom mic guy and did everything else myself.
The Journey:
It took about the better part of a year to write the script for my movie. With re- writes and doing it right, it takes about that long.
I wanted to do a one-location scary movie, my way, something along the lines of Magnolia set in a haunted house, tragic and unexplained, yet something we see everyday in front of us.
My experience in getting the film seen has been okay. People really respond well to the movie once they see it. Most film festivals turned it down due to it’s high-conceptness. I wanted it to feel like something that has never been done. Or at least fresh enough to stand out. People that have seen it, love it. Just getting them to see it has been challenging. It’s tragic. I think a a lot of people shy away from that, but hey, it’s a horror movie. It’s supposed to be tragic!
Background:
I knew I wanted to make movies when I was about 18. I was super paranoid about my future, never fit in anywhere and knew I needed to do something. Nothing felt right to me or “mine”. Film just came. It was a blessing. I’ve never looked back since.
Influences:
My favorite horror film of all time? Who can say really? Blair Witch Project is up there. I love Session 9. 28 days later is great. Exorcist 3. There are so many.
The best horror film maker? There’s so many sub-genres it’s hard to say. Wes Craven is a classic. Sam Raimi. Tobe Hooper. I think Exorcist writer William Peter Blatty is underrated; The Ninth Configuration is great as well as Exorcist 3 and nobody’s seen either of them.
Shriekfest: Calling All Independent Horror Thriller Sci-Fi Fantasy Filmmakers & Screenwriters !
