May 21, 2006
The hell blog
It’s been a long and difficult journey, but the first film thru Cinema M 3 is nearing its completion. Dark Places started as an idea between Brain Damage Founder Darrin Ramage and me over dinner one evening. I know a conversation about crack whores and demons isn’t exactly a dinner topic, but when brain storming with Darrin the ideas seem to flow freely and we came up with what was a roadmap to this film.
We have decided that we wanted a visual movie that tells its story through rapid images and sound. An experience that would leave its audience with wonderment and (of course) horrified. One of our first tasks was to seek the help of David C. Hayes, actor and writer (http://www.davidhayesonline.com/) to help me create a world in which our heroine can explore. I knew David could explore the dark side of what we were looking for, and in some ways delve deeper into that abyss.
Once the script was complete, we all knew that casting Keri Walker was going to be very difficult as she carries this entire film, and it is her performance that will make or break this film and it was on a Sunday morning that we met Nessa Hawkins, an award winning filmmaker in her own right and talented actress. She nailed her audition, but it was when we asked her to come back dressed as she thought this character would look like, we all knew we have the right person for this part.
We knew we had Syn Devil (http://www.syndevil.com/) to play our angel of death, Lilith and David was perfect for the part of Luther, her violent and creepy husband, so our leads were in place. Shooting would be difficult because we knew that in order to get the effect we were looking for we would need to shoot an abundance of footage. For this, I brought on John Scott Mills and Gary F. Carr two of my partners from Autopsy A Love Story (http://www.braindamagefilmssales.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=66) and with the three of us armed with cameras, we rolled cameras.
The greatest portion of the film was shot in a house in Phoenix, Arizona with production continuing on in various locations throughout the city. Another of our challenges was finding the right team of people to post the hours and hours of footage we shot. After many attempts, we found Nic Hill and Morgan Tucker. They had been looking for a project that they could work on together in which Nic could edit and Morgan could score and do sound design at the same time. Dark Places seem to be a good fit for them and they took on the challenge with some amazing results and I think when you see the film you understand what both Darrin and I imagined during dinner that night.
This film couldn’t have been produced without the help of some key people that saw us through this entire process; Dan Bentel our first assistant director who I spent many late nights shooting “B” roll and pick up shots. Eleni C. Krimitsos, who was someone who was always pushing us to do better and caught things that others would overlook and (of course) my wife Wendy, who came on board as our unit production manager but was instrumental in the over all art direction and look of the film. It is very hard to make a movie like this, and even harder without the support of loved ones, but she has always supported me and given me the countless late nights and early morning demands that films take to get done and for that I thank her. She and I have made a lot of great friends along this journey, some that we know that we will work with on any project we produce.
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