This post is sort of a blast from the past for me – and my team, I’m sure. Linked here you will see the first episode in what was once planned as an epic horror feature, written and directed by me and starring some friends and family members. It was ambitious, to be sure. Our team was riding off some success from being runners-up at the 48 Hour Film Festival that year, and our genre was, of course, horror.
I am very proud of what we were able to achieve with this project. It was filmed initially back in the summer/fall of 2011, and has gone through numerous rounds of editing since then. It was an experiment for all of us. Of course, it wasn’t constantly worked on. Life got in the way and the project faced some obstacles that I didn’t foresee when we started off. However, this is the first part of hopefully three episodes. It’s called Dead River, and it involves a missing child, some beautiful yet unforgiving Maine woods, and a creature lurking in the shadows.
You won’t see much horror in this installment. Most of that comes later on when things start to fall apart for our protagonists. But, the scenes that we filmed in this episode were really fun, and I had a blast hanging out with some great friends, seeing what we could do on our own. I wouldn’t mind working on more horror films in the future.
Like I said earlier, the script was ambitious – not to mention the special effects I had in mind. I’m still tackling some of those shots in the later episodes. I hope they come out, and if they don’t, I hope that I can find a workaround for them. This is really b-movie horror, and it was a blast to imagine and execute.
Will our heroes find the missing girl? I’m not saying! You have to watch the episodes to find out.
Franklin Kendrick 