The Making of Vanessa’s Summer Blog!
Last week, my brother Adam had informed that he really wanted to make a short film for the Chiller/Halloween Horror Nights Scream Contest. We had planned on doing so for over a year but we were always too lazy to actually come up with an idea. Months passed by and finally my brother said, “We’re making a film for the contest!” He said this on Monday, the entry for the contest was due by Friday. Adam had come up with a rough idea of what he wanted this 1 min 30 sec short to be about but details were still pretty scarce. We assembled a cast with just a few texts. Chelsey Monroe would be playing the sweet, innocent and annoying Vanessa Bush and the serial killer HAD to be my best friend Michael Reyder. Everything was set.
The concept: Vanessa Bush your average teenage girl is gushing away to her webcam about her latest love conquest when unbeknownst to her a mysterious killer breaks into her house. Through acts of fate and malice, Vanessa is unfortunately not able to upload her latest blog to YouTube but lucky for YOU, the footage will be shown.
The killer: We had no name. No idea what we wanted him to look like. Just that he had to be disturbing, his mask had to look like a deranged serial killer made it and it had to be disturbing. So we went to our friends at the Haus of DaVoah and designer, David Maldonando through together some rough designs for the mask.
The above concept art was based on bongage gear, a dream I had regarding deadly Grace Jones and pure/unfiltered IMAGINATION!
Thankfully we had designer David Maldonado working on the above because while my brother and I are talented directors, we are terrible designers. Our mask turned out looking a little bit different then what we had originally planned.
The Haus of DeVoah masked turned out a tad bit MORE AMAZING/SPECTACULAR and with a ripped up purse and some leather was able to create the final design for Hades. We’ll get to him in a little but now I’d like to introduce you to our cast.
The beautiful and stunning Chelsey Monroe. She’s one of the most
amazing actresses I know but her disgusting level of humbleness has
mentally forced her out of the acting game. Thankfully we somehow
convince her to give it another go.
And Michael Reyder. My best
friend for the past seven years. He’s about 6 ft. 5 and weights 140
pounds. His hair is longer than your mother’s and his looks perfectly
fit an American Apparel catalog.
So after setting up and choreographing our one shot film, we were ready to film. We had the amazing and somewhat ominous location of my sister’s house. It’s a beautiful neighborhood but there’s a bit too many windows for me. I’ve always thought that windows are absolutley terrifying. When I was a kid I use to always put blankets up over all my windows and staple them into the wall. I’ve had a fear of windows for sometime, I had knowing that you can see a killer outside of them and he can easily shatter the thin border separating the two of your with a simple kick. Okay, enough of my newfound window phobia that I just realized I had :-)
We began filming, used a lot of improv and before we knew it Summer Bush was a well-rounded, sympathetic yet so annoying character who I think I may be in love with. After an hour of shooting, we finally wrapped and I’m so proud of our final product.
I’d like to now introduce you to HADES.
Would you like him to pay you a house visit?
I want to thank everyone again for your help.
Thank you Chelsey for delivering such an amazing performance. Thanks Michael for not cutting your hair for years and year and for looking so scary under a mask. Thank you Becky & Adam for lending your house as our film shoot. Thank you Dave for such an amazing mask. Thank you Diane for entertaining and dancing for Dave as he made such an amazing mask. Thank you mom for babysitting Eden and being supportive our horror films even though you despise them with every bone in your body. Thanks dad for watching our horror films then saying Chelsey talked too fast and it wasn’t good. Thank you Eden for crying and ruining several of our takes. And thank you most of all to my brother Adam, you are my hero, my inspiration and my mentor. I look up to you so much as a director and I think it’s spectacular what you are able to accomplish when you put all your energy and creativity towards it. This film was 100% of you and I thank you for pushing me to help make it with you. It’s an absolute honor to work with you each and everytime.
We won’t know whether our film was chosen for the Chiller film contest for another few weeks but regardless of whether the film was made or now, it was an amazing day that I got to spend with those that I love and appreciate the most. There’s no better companions to have than creativity and art. This small film shoot has inspired us to make a series of these shorts that will hopefully be entertaing, hilarious and terrifying. This is only the beginning.