Queen Anne: Shooting a short film entirely on pinhole

Posted by sean

I’ve always been fascinated by stories set in one location. When I was young I was startled by the old time radio dramatization of Sorry, Wrong Number, a twisted tale about an invalid woman stuck in her apartment bedroom who slowly realizes one evening that she’s being stalked by a killer. I also had the idea growing up that if there were ghosts, they stayed in one place, way out in the middle of nowhere in the cold and dark, alone and unmoving. I’d look out the window on starless winter evenings driving home from my grandparents’ farm imagining lost souls in the black tree lines miles from the road, standing motionless in the sharp cold, listening to the trees creaking in the wind.

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Hequet: Horror in a Silent Film Style

Posted by sean

Hequet is the fourth episode in my web miniseries Summer Stories, and my latest attempt at telling a story with images and sounds only. With this silent style of filmmaking, strong composition, music cues and actor’s movement and facial expressions are key to telling the story. This style of film storytelling has always appealed to me because it places so much emphasis on the cinematography and forces the viewer to engage with the story in a creative way–they have to piece the story together themselves rather than it being handed to them on an exposition platter. I’ve always enjoyed mystery in stories, leaving some of the big questions unanswered, and Hequet is no exception. What happened to the man’s wife? Is the statue really a supernatural entity or just in the man’s head? Who is the mysterious masked woman? Well, that question at least can be answered by watching Summer Stories Episode 3.

I hope you enjoy Hequet, and maybe even get a little spooked in the process! It was certainly a joy to create.

Summer Stories: Penguinarium

Posted by sean

Here’s episode 2 of my new miniseries Summer Stories. In this episode I wanted to capture the essence of 1940’s and 50’s horror with silent film storytelling. I shot the entire episode on my new Sony A7S II with a vintage Canon FD 20mm lens for a slightly surreal, off kilter look, and I chose a penguin to be the antagonist because they are inherently funny. Actually, this is an example of a prop inspiring a script. I found a retro plastic penguin statue at my local antique store this spring and the script just kind of fell into my head.

Summer Stories: Make Films Until They Don’t Suck

Posted by sean

Prolific indie filmmaker Jay Duplass once said “Keep making shitty short films until one of them doesn’t suck one day.” So I took his advice and earlier this year my friend Jeremy and I began shooting a series of shorts film scripts I had written. Originally I intended these shorts to be self contained, but as I looked over them I realized they all had some basic elements in common: they were all set in the Midwestern suburbs in the summer, and they all involved slightly paranormal occurrences. Now I’m releasing them about bimonthly on YouTube as Summer Stories, my first ever miniseries! Summer Stories is a loosely connected series of short films about the strange and mysterious things that can be found just around the corner in the summer suburbs. It’s also been a great learning experience for me, and I plan to continue writing and shooting the series into the winter, although I suppose I’ll have to change the name to Winter Stories at some point.

Here’s the first episode in the series, which I released last week, just in time for Halloween.

And here’s the trailer for the series, containing clips from some upcoming episodes.