GuyOnAWire

Welcome back to the series where I post the behind-the-scenes details of our Just Scare Me Horror Shorts.

This time, I explain how I spent several hours in a hot trunk trying to perfect the timing in our short, Someone Has to Die.

When I signed up for this round, Erica and I were already behind. We were deep into our season of 9-1-1 working our butts off, and on top of that, while we had a few ideas kicking around, we hadn’t fully landed on one yet. Now, the latter issue is sort of normal for us. We always either have an idea, or a handful of kernels to use as a jumping off point. Finally, we cracked our way into one of those kernels that we had bandied about for months.

*SPOILERS* for the short from now on. If you want, you can watch it here.

We had this shot, a POV from the inside of a car’s trunk, but had no story around it. We contemplated making it the POV of a person who had been captured for a ritualistic sacrifice by a dangerous cult, but it never felt like a complete idea. And I definitely didn’t want to just ape Tarantino’s iconic trunk shot for nothing. So, we built on it, and asked ourselves: “Why would someone have another person in their trunk?”

We wanted to keep with the spirit of Just Scare Me and make it more of a horror thing, and we had always been looking to pull off some kind of werewolf form, so we came up with an idea for a werewolf but with new rules compared to the traditional werewolf mythology. In this short’s world, if you get turned into a werewolf, every month – on the full moon – you transform into a werewolf. Same so far, right? But here, you MUST make a human sacrifice before you can transform back into a human. So, if the full moon is over and you haven’t killed anyone, you continue to roam the woods as a lycanthrope until a life is taken.

This idea created a clever way to lock someone in the trunk. This woman, the werewolf in question – played by Erica – would find a scumbag of a person and kidnap them to make her mandatory sacrifice a little more bearable. Then, right before the full moon shone itself, she’d let them go from her trunk and chase them until she could devour them. It had everything, a way into our initial idea, tension (especially with the ticking clock), and a great monster payoff.

I quickly wrote the short and then we began searching for our props. For this short, we would incorporate a film staple: The Texas Switch. It involved switching one person (usually the actor) for a stunt person to sell a stunt. For this short, we would switch Erica for a much larger monster. After the man in the trunk escapes, he finds Erica, about to transform, falling by the side of her car, out of view, in a dark city park. Then, I’d rise up as the werewolf to emphasis the difference in scale, and then chased the man until I captured and eviscerated him. To sell this effect, Erica and I had to each be wearing the same shirt, so we bought identical flannels in two sizes (long-sleeved to hide the arms and avoid any major makeup applications). Next, I would need a werewolf mask and gloves to cover my skin. We found this rather cool looking mask that opened its mouth when the wearer did, so I snatched it up.

Next, I asked my friend Talon Rudel, who was gaffer on Self-Employed, to assist us once again. This time, he recruited his friend, Benjamin Gammon to assist with the grip work. But before anyone else got involved, I had to choreograph the trunk portion. The day before the shoot, I spent four hours in the back of Erica’s Honda Accord in our sweltering parking garage. I had to time out the video and find the edit points, so I could splice in the shot from inside the car at night, and the part where I exit the trunk before being eaten. The edit points were easy. Anytime I felt I needed a cut, I just put the flashlight face down on the floor and the screen went black. It helped that the guy was freaking out in this scenario. I mean, if you woke up in a trunk, wouldn’t you?

Luckily for all of you (and unluckily for this shoot), trunks are VERY easy to escape these days. Her Accord had a small release lever that takes minimal effort to open the trunk. I tried to pretend to open it on the camera, but it kept popping open with the slightest of touches. So, I had to be very light on the pull, but also move it just enough to make a locked sound effect. The result was surprisingly believable.

Once I shot all the trunk footage to my satisfaction, we were set to shoot the rest. We shot a few run throughs for timing and lines in the parking garage. Surprisingly, I could hear Erica extremely well through the back seat. Good thing we’re creating our own rules, otherwise she would have heard every little sound I made as “The Man.”

We wanted to inform the audience that the “She-Wolf” Erica was playing had to rush. She wouldn’t make it in time to a proper wooded area, so she has to settle for a park. To do this, we had her get a call from her boyfriend – who knew about her curse – and pleads for her not to kill this man. For this part, I needed another male voice, so I enlisted Brandon Doyen (from Nostalgia Be Damned, We Need Movies, and the occasional Not Quite Hollywood episode) to do a voiceover cameo. But that was a later problem. We still had to shoot the exterior shots!

We drove around with me in the trunk as we headed toward a quieter side street. Here, we shot a portion of the dialogue as the Man in the trunk finds the latch to open the backseat. But she stops short because she’s not paying attention to driving and he falls out onto the laid down seat. The She-Wolf turns back, and with superhuman strength, pushes him up and back into the trunk with one swift motion. To accomplish this shot, we had Talon in the backseat on the other side helping to push the seat back up. It timed out beautifully on the third try.

Next, we had to go to the park. Like Erica’s character, we had to improvise with a park because I couldn’t find any wooded areas that suited what I was looking for, so we chose the park where they shot the end of the Michael Scott’s Dunder Mifflin Scranton Meredith Palmer Memorial Celebrity Rabies Awareness Pro-Am Fun Run Race For the Cure in North Hollywood. Just outside the North Hollywood Recreation Center to be exact.

We parked on the north side of the one-way Chandler Blvd and realized that it was rather busy. Talon threw up his LED light panel on the parking sign to boost the available light in the area, and Ben became an honorary PA to help lock up the sidewalk. It seemed every time we did a take, someone decided to walk through. Good thing too, as we needed to work out the choreography of this piece. Talon took over on camera, using his DLSR to stitch together from the trunk portion right before the door opens. I changed roles and played the Texas Switched werewolf form of Erica. I applied some KY Jelly to mimic drool emanating from the wolf’s mouth, but it was rather dark to truly make it out. I wish we got a take that worked out on all fronts – timing, avoiding bogeys, and the drool, but I’ll take what we got! The end result turned out wonderfully, and now, all I needed was to begin the edit and work on the voiceover.

I Zoomed with Brandon and directed him as he recorded his dialogue with his podcast mic. And after that, I worked with Erica in our closet to record her entire dialogue. Erica absolutely loves recording ADR or voiceover, especially for the Audio Description versions of our shorts.

All in all, the short came together quickly, and it fell way below the expected duration. In fact, it’s our shortest short yet at 2:58. (Stay tuned because I feel like I’m going to beat that soon.)

What do you think about Someone Has to Die? Let us know in the comments below! And check out our other shorts here.