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Bagnardi about the filming of
Edge of Reality, one of 12 films screened as part of
the recent Dead of Winter film festival held at the New York
State Museum. "Maybe it was a few rocks too many, or
the leaves taking on more water than we expected, but the next
thing we knew, the sack we were using for our dead body was
dropping like an anchor-a really heavy anchor." In
order to make a second or third shoot possible, explained Bagnardi,
the sack had been fastened to the boat.
"Well, we couldn't lift
the 'body' back out, so we just paddled around in circles for
a while," he laughs. "It took a while, but
eventually some of the crew figured out that something was wrong,
and came out in another boat to rescue us."
Yes, when it comes to making
scary movies on the cheap, the devil is in the details.
Such were the lessons gleaned
from Dead of Winter, a two-weekend-long celebration of independent
(scary) moviemaking around the Capital Region. The first of
its kind in the area (for horror-centric subject matter, that
is), Dead of Winter (held Jan. 22-23 and 29-30) cast a spotlight
on the work of five local filmmakers who've managed to carve
a bloody niche for themselves in the world of low- and no-budget
horror over the last decade or so.
Even the early screenings (beginning
around 10 AM) attracted a substantial audience-a level of attendance
that, admit some of the filmmakers, was higher than anticipated.
Whether the high turnout was the product of Capital Region horrorphiles
or indie-film buffs, many of the filmmakers said that the crowds
helped ease one fear in particular of the event's organizers:
that the Capital Region had no interest in seeing the scary
potential of their own neighborhood.
"There are some beautiful
cemeteries around the region, and we've been thrown out of the
finest of them," laughed filmmaker Bruce Hallenbeck
during last Sunday's panel discussion with the festival's filmmakers.
Like Bagnardi, Hallenbeck has been making horror films since
many of the festival's audience members were still in diapers.
The potential for a good scare, agree both veteran directors,
has never depended much on the filmmaker's location.
Take, for instance, a scene
in Latham-based filmmaker Jeff Kirkendall's first film, Night
Therapy, in which the main character-played (in the grand
tradition of low-budget moviemaking) by Kirkendall himself-is
asked why his business hours begin when the sun goes down."It's
the ambience," grins Kirkendall's character. "It's
all about the ambience."
You see, for many of the region's
eminent scaremeisters, there's a particular appeal in keeping
things local.
The abundance of old buildings
and secluded acreage in upstate New York has provided ample
opportunity for standard fright-film fare, and the improvisational
use of familiar buildings and locations catch the eyes of a
hometown audience. Referring to the Egg, Hallenbeck chuckles,
"You know, I've always wondered what might come out
of that thing when it hatches." The Empire State Plaza
landmark doubled as an alien spacecraft in The Risen,
the second film from Albany's Brandon Bethmann and Eric Szmyr.
Bethmann and Szmyr also used exterior shots of the city's Legislative
Office Building to depict the Washington, D.C., headquarters
of the Central Intelligence Agency. And many of the festival's
filmmakers have found the Capital Region to be more than accommodating
to independent productions.
"All we had to do was
ask-and show them a copy of the script," says Bethmann
when asked how he and Szmyr were able to set much of their first
film, Raising Hell, in and around the most well-known
landmarks in downtown Albany. In the film, a fictional New York
governor enlists the aid of a supernatural demon to ensure his
reelection-a story that, at one point, called for an actor portraying
one of the governor's aides to be attacked by the film's 7-foot
foam-rubber monster in the bus stop along Washington Avenue,
just outside of the state's Department of Education building.
Of course, in the post-9/11 world, independent fimmakers have
had a much harder time achieving that level of accessibility
and freedom, says Szmyr, making scenes from Raising Hell-in
which a gunfight erupts in the plaza and a suspicious stranger
walks around the Capitol in an overcoat, sunglasses and briefcase-all
the more memorable. Overcoming challenges, how ever, is all
part of the fun, according to the festival's featured moviemakers.
While several of the films shown
during Dead of Winter ran less than 30 minutes, many of the
movies were of the feature-length 90-minute variety, with Bagnardi's
Shadow Tracker: Vampire Hunter-featuring Hallenbeck
in the title role-topping out at a full two hours. Maintaining
a cast and crew of local talent over the course of such an extended
endeavor-and without pay, in most cases-was, according to many
of the filmmakers, a horror story in itself.
"People tend to be really
excited when you start out," says Kirkendall, "but
they become less so as the film goes on for night after night
and weekend after weekend."
The premiere of Hallenbeck's
vampire-hunter flick, London After Midnight, on the first
day of the festival, marked the climax of a seven-year project
for the director. Along with enduring a computer crash that
sent a significant portion of the film into the digital hereafter,
a major rewrite had to occur when David Louis, the lead actor,
was diagnosed with cancer during filming. The show eventually
went on, though, with some script-tweaking that had Louis and
fellow actress Prudence Theriault switching roles for the conclusion
of the film. He became the "damsel in distress" and
she rushed into danger to save him.
"See? Tarantino's always
ripping my stuff off," laughs Hallenbeck, comparing
his use of a sword-swinging heroine with director Quentin Tarantino's
swords woman from the Kill Bill films. But while many of the
festival's filmmakers looked forward to the big-screen opportunities
that a Hollywood debut might offer, Hallenbeck says he's perfectly
content with his chosen genre these days: low-budget exploitation
horror, or "boobs and blood," as he puts it."I
don't care what size the screen is, as long as it gets shown,"
reasons Hallenbeck, who, like Bagnardi, has had several films
picked up by straight-to-video distributors. And that opportunity,
according to many of the festival's filmmakers, is one of the
few advantages to working in the horror genre. Many of the major
independent film festivals frown on low-budget horror: "The
Blair Witch Project was a fluke," asserts
Hallenbeck. "The success there was in the marketing."
The market for straight-to-video horror films, however, is booming.
"I was on the Internet
one day and found a site in Thailand that was advertising Blood
of the Werewolf" (a 2002 Bagnardi, Hallenbeck and
Kevin Lindenmuth collaboration), laughs Bagnardi, who also recently
discovered Shadow Tracker in frequent rotation on a satellite
television channel devoted to low-budget films.While the directors
say the profits from these projects have been few and far between,
anything left after paying off the film tends to be rolled over
into the next project.
"You definitely don't
do this for the money," says Bagnardi. So why burn
your face with zombie makeup night after night and endure overnight
shoots in freezing temperatures?
"To tell you the truth,
this is why we do it," says Kirkendall, gesturing to
the audience assembled in the museum's theater for The Temptress,
the last of his four films being screened that day. "Sure,
you can throw your film on TV at home with your friends, but
sitting in here with an audience is what it's all about. Even
if you don't get laughs where you might have wanted them, and
you get some where you probably shouldn't-if people are responding,
that means they're not completely bored with what you've created."
Many of the festival's filmmakers
see digital-based filmmaking as the most likely sign that festivals
like Dead of Winter eventually will become a more frequent occurrence,
thanks to a host of aspiring new auteurs. In fact, said Hallenbeck,
a local horror-film competition might be added to the mix in
future years if the festival continues to draw a crowd. Whether
that comes to pass or not, the Dead of Winter's scaremeisters
are hoping that this year's festival will go the route of any
movie monster worth his body count, and return next year for
a sequel-or two, or five.
rmarshall@metroland.net
Article from Metroland Magazine,
Feb. 3, 2005.
Special thanks to Bruce and
Rosa Hallenbeck.
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