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Vincente DiSanti
183 Plays5 years ago
Vincente DiSanti
Founder / Producer / Director WOMP STOMP films
Vincente DiSanti moved to Los Angeles in 2008 and has since worked in several aspects of the film industry including live-action, feature animation, story development, voice acting, visual FX, commercials, and much more. A jack of all trades, Vincente is best known for his directorial work on Never Hike Alone (2017), Never Hike in the Snow (2020), Imagine (2018), The Red Room (2015), and starring as Michael Myers in The Spirit of Haddonfield (2018).
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5719786/
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Overview
00:00:00
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host Ken Volante. Editor and producer Peter Bauer.
Vin's Fan Films and Friday the 13th Tradition
00:00:17
Speaker
This is Ken Volante with Something Rather Than Nothing, and we have for this podcast, Vin DeSanti of Wamp-Stomp Films. Never Hike Alone, Never Hike in the Snow, amongst other bits, continuing the Friday the 13th tradition in films.
00:00:37
Speaker
And Bonita Rancliff, a horror film buff, a friend of mine, and serving this episode as something rather than nothing's co-host. Welcome Bo, welcome Vin. Pleasure to be here.
Vin's Creative Beginnings and Influences
00:00:55
Speaker
Thanks for having me. Yeah, sure. Yeah, great to have you here, Bo. Vin.
00:01:03
Speaker
Uh, so, you know, we're talking Friday 13th, we're jumping right in here, but we want to talk about when you're younger. I mean, we get to, we get to horror movies. We need to filmmaking art. What, uh, what were you like? Yeah, I mean, I was a little hell raiser. I mean, I feel bad because I'm, you know, I'm with someone in the teacher's union and I was kind of one of those like troublemakers in school that was always.
00:01:25
Speaker
always down in like the planning room as we called it. Trying to figure out better. Yeah, and so I spent a lot of time down there really just being this creative kid because I think I was one of those undiagnosed ADHD just kind of I was all over the place, you know, I was, you know, reenacting things from movies and, you know, making the class laugh. But when you put me by myself and you gave me some things to do, I would create art and
Transition from Journalism to Film
00:01:55
Speaker
You know, a lot of it was inspired by horror movies. My mom was a big fan of Stephen King in horror movies and things like that. So we had that stuff around the house and I was watching horror movies very early and watching, you know, more adult type films, you know, like, not like adult films, but more like, you know, PG-13 rated R. There was no really restriction in the things that I could see. So, you know, I kind of just got this, like,
00:02:22
Speaker
full-on view of the world, the way that it came through media. And obviously, media is very powerful. It had a big influence on me. I used to love reenacting scenes and recreating scenes and stuff like that, video projects. Anything that had an art sort of flair to it, I kind of jumped on it and loved to kind of get my hands dirty and tell stories. And that's really where I think as I started to mature in school and get older, I found a love for storytelling.
00:02:50
Speaker
You know, I eventually went into to study journalism was actually my first career choice when I entered college and first major that I started working towards. I spent a lot of time writing and telling stories and found that I kind of had more of a fascination with.
00:03:06
Speaker
the film side of it. I realized when I got into the film studio and the TV broadcast studio at school, I was kind of like, oh, I want to use the equipment and make stuff and not just do the standard thing, but kind of push the envelope and make people laugh or scare somebody. And I think I realized, I was like, you know what, maybe I should be looking at more creative arts.
Journey into VFX and Directing
00:03:28
Speaker
Not so much journalistic and that's when I made my switched full time to film and TV production and that's and that's when I really kind of started to pursue the career I'm after now. Yeah, well, and thanks for that. It was great to kind of hear your development in contact.
00:03:47
Speaker
you know, with film, but also, you know, looking at, you know, other things that, you know, that you're interested in. Is film the dominant, for you as an artist, is film the dominant form that you do and perform and use? Yeah, I mean, film is what I've worked in for the last now 12 or 13 years. I moved to LA in 2008.
00:04:10
Speaker
I've worked in various facets of it. I got my start in basically VFX production where I was just on the production team working on a curious case of Benjamin Button. And then I moved along into commercials and then eventually feature animation where I spent a majority of my career working on the production teams of small independent
00:04:30
Speaker
animated films. I worked on three of those. And then after that was when I kind of had this inclination that I was working in animation, I was working my way up, you know, I kind of had a knack for what I did, you know, running teams. And I worked a lot with the editorial departments, which is what I studied in school most closely. And then I learned a lot along the way about, you know, animation and story and
00:04:54
Speaker
script writing and development because I spent a lot of time with those teams during those years. So it was not only just doing the story and editorial, but it was development, it was directing assistant. And my love for storytelling kept urging me and I kept kind of hearing this calling that I really wanted to direct. I really wanted to have a chance to helm something creatively and, you know, kind of find, you know, a singular story that people would rally around and want to make. And so
00:05:21
Speaker
You know, lo and behold, a few years go by and that opportunity turned into the Never Hike Alone project.
Success of Never Hike Alone
00:05:30
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:32
Speaker
And one of the things I wanted to mention, Vin, as far as I know I have shared with Beau, you know, your films, you know, your films with the Friday the 13th universe. And one of the things I wanted to say, so I don't forget or have it lost, is that, first of all, these films are just incredible. They're so great. I mean, I think you do a nice nod and tip of the hat to
00:05:59
Speaker
People love the Friday the 13th universe, that includes myself. But there's such fantastic films of speaking to fans, but even as they stand by themselves.
00:06:15
Speaker
Were you, and given that you've distributed these, you know, as independent and a lot of people have viewed these through YouTube, I mean, is there any sense you've been surprised at the amount of attention or views, etc. of people finding your films? Has that surprised you at all? Yeah, I mean, I think the outcome of it surprised me in a big way.
00:06:37
Speaker
I mean, the goal, I mean, right at the beginning when we were doing this, it's like we knew that the potential for a lot of views was there. We had seen other Friday the 13th fan films that were online for, you know, a decade that had, you know, grossed a million views. And to me, that was something very special. I mean, I was like, wow, that's really cool. Like, they did a fan film and
00:06:59
Speaker
you know, over the time it's been viewed a million times. That's pretty cool over a 10-year span. So that's a couple thousand or 10,000 a year. That's impressive. That might be cool to do if we can make something of that equal stature that, you know, people would want to watch. We know that there's people who are going to watch it. You know, as filmmakers and artists, what's the one thing that we want more than anything? It's other people to come in and look at what we've done, whether it's music or art or film. We, you know, eventually the goal is to put it up on a big screen and show it to everybody.
00:07:29
Speaker
And if you're a good director, your goal is to get reactions out of people. And those reactions should be good reactions in some way, shape or form. It's not that everyone has to walk out like the hero always has to win or anything like that, but you should get reactions out of your audience in a similar way that I remember.
00:07:46
Speaker
you know, when I was in college, Saw had come out. And that has such a great twist ending that I didn't see coming. I mean, I was a young college student. I didn't have,
Technical Aspects of Fan Filmmaking
00:07:56
Speaker
you know, maybe I would have saw Coming clear as an adult. But at that time, I remember, like, being really blown away by that. And I was blown away so much by it that I brought my friends back to the theater to watch the film.
00:08:08
Speaker
And when it came to that moment, I turned around. I knew it was going to happen. I knew he was going to stand up. And it was the look on their faces that it really ingrained in my mind of, if you make a movie that's going to mean something, somebody has to make this face at some point. So you know that you've
00:08:29
Speaker
raise the bar of their day in a way like they watch something they didn't expect and they were something was delivered that they didn't expect especially when you look at something you know along the lines of a Friday the 13th fan film where you know at the time the bar was set at you know the most accomplished fan films at the time were completed in 2008 2009 2010 so you have some of the digital technology but it's not quite there it's you know it's filmed on like high-end DV cameras which are great for documentaries and
00:08:58
Speaker
But they're not great for telling theatrical style stories. It's not shooting at the right frame rate. It's not capturing it with the right focal length, depth. It doesn't have those things that we attribute to what a feature film is.
00:09:13
Speaker
When we approached Never Hike Alone, we wanted to approach it in a way that we're going to shoot it with the same tools that are going to replicate a filmic look. And luckily for us in 2016 and 2017, there were cameras like Black Magics, which we started with. And then we moved over to the Sony A7S II, which became the first camera that we really leaned on to create a cinematic look. And with that, we created our first few trailers. We shot half the film.
00:09:40
Speaker
And we were able to capture what we thought could be a very theatrical presentation, which is what we were trying to do. We loved Friday the 13th, and I really wanted to tell a Friday the 13th story, but I was also after this kind of brass ring of quality. And I was like, everything that I had sort of
00:10:02
Speaker
tried to make previously, or I had worked on with other people. There was always this feeling of, you know, it's shot like a feature film, but there's something missing. There's this extra layer of, you know, production quality that, you know, we're not quite figuring out yet.
00:10:18
Speaker
And how are we going to do that? And for us, this whole entire journey has been two things. What types of stories can we tell with Friday the 13th that aren't the typical formula, but play into a lot of the themes that went unexplored throughout the 12 films that were released? Like these golden nuggets of stories that you could follow if you really wanted to, but it didn't necessarily
00:10:42
Speaker
you know follow the formula friday the thirteenth so it would never be really considered for something like that so we wanted to explore stories like that that's where never hike alone came from the right in the snow they're very personable character driven stories. That don't necessarily play by the rules when it comes to friday the thirteenth and at the same time.
00:11:01
Speaker
We're taking the elements that we have at our most availability, which were these cameras, and using today's technology, digital cinema, to recreate what it took hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to make in 1980 through 1993.
00:11:19
Speaker
And then when they made the other films in 2003 and 2009.
Impact of Pandemic on Filmmaking
00:11:23
Speaker
I mean, million dollar films to create that type of look could be recreated for 10,000 bucks. That was the goal. And not to say that we had everything that matched that, but we got it pretty close. And I think with Never Hike in the Snow, we really started to match what we needed to be to say, okay,
00:11:44
Speaker
Our goal, yes, we've been having a lot of fun making Friday the 13th films, but we also want to make original content. And if our original content can look like that too, let's start really starting to expand our boundaries. And so that's really been the goal with our company since these films.
00:12:02
Speaker
you know, continue making these films, have a lot of fun doing it, but now we're like starting to realize it's like, okay, we have the tools, we have the workflow, we have, you know, the pipeline to get something that looks like that out into the world. So how do we use this pipeline to create as much, you know, quality content as possible? And then now you kind of throw a global pandemic on top of it and a lot of questions about how does the independent film move forward? That's really kind of through a curve ball at us this year. And so that's what we've been really,
00:12:31
Speaker
trying to deal with for the last, um, you know, I would say eight months is saying, okay, you know, we were about to step into some of these original projects and we had other ideas for never hike alone and that we were going to pursue, but how do we pursue it in this environment? What is the safest way to do it? And so it's been really, you know, it's been a really challenging year for us.
00:12:50
Speaker
Yeah, and I really appreciate your your explanation, Vin, and I can definitely see. I mean, I can say as far as your intent as an artist, I mean, this might be useful. It's like I see what you're doing with that. And I can, you know, intimate some of the things that you've run into in this environment. But
00:13:09
Speaker
It's really exciting film to watch. It just is. And I know, Bo, you're over there as co-host. You've got to have about two billion questions. I have about a few. Bo, why do you have that at Vin? I know you had some questions about horror and otherwise, but... Yeah. Well, I have to say, I think that's something that struck me as a fan watching it was
00:13:36
Speaker
the quality not only of the cinema, but of the practical effects, that it was really, I think that's something that stood out to me was just the amount of quality, not only in horror in general, but as something that is, you know, put out to the public free to consume on YouTube. I think you guys just did an amazing job.
00:13:59
Speaker
Thank you. Well, I mean, a lot of credit goes to our artists. Those include Kelsey Burke, who worked on Never Hike Alone. She was the lead artist there, did a majority of the work. The Never Hike in the Snow was a collaborative effort. It was led by Nora Hewitt, who some people may remember from Face Off, I believe season nine. She won. She's a student of Tom Savini. She went to the Savini School of Art, where that makeup effects school, I believe it's in Pennsylvania.
00:14:28
Speaker
And yeah, I mean, she's a fantastic artist. She was just recently married to the second of that film, which was Rachel. And now they're married. So they kind of worked as a team to get that whole thing done. And we had a lot of help from another artist by the name of Bill Hunt. Bill Hunt was an actual development and VFX artist on Jason Goes
Themes in Horror During a Pandemic
00:14:49
Speaker
to Hell. And he's become a good friend of mine. And he helped us out.
00:14:52
Speaker
pro bono for the most part to do these like concept paintings and concept drawings so it kind of started with us talking about what we wanted to do and all that stuff and really you know my philosophy when it comes down to that it's you know with our films it's we'd rather pay for one great thing that looks awesome and really kind of
00:15:15
Speaker
raises the level, then sprinkle it out between a bunch of mediocre types of looks. So the idea was to go big or go home with each thing, and then see how much we kind of had left over. And with each one, it has its own challenges. So we knew when it came time to the gore that the best practical effect that we could create on screen was going to be important. And so I think for the most part, we really hired two of the best people that we really could get, and we're lucky to have them.
00:15:45
Speaker
Yeah. And thanks for giving some more of the background of the other artists that were involved. I get a question for you, Vin. In a pandemic, what's the role of a horror film? I mean, I know there are practical difficulties in putting it out.
00:16:08
Speaker
Um, you know, it was a horror film in, in the time of, in the time of horror. I mean, did, was, did any of that come up or how to get it done or whether people want to be steered in a time of fear or any, you know, I mean, I, for never hike in the snow, it was really funny. Never hike in the snow has a lot of themes that kind of echoed the year, which was really funny. No, people not being able to agree on how to solve an issue. And thus that issue gets even worse. It's like.
00:16:34
Speaker
It's really funny, you know, if you kind of look at it from that perspective. But I mean, for us, like we were really lucky to finish filming when we did. It was a week before the first announced lockdowns. And prior to that, leading up to it, I mean, we were really kind of like, Oh, this is another like, swine flu, you know, it means like, it's gonna go away in three weeks. And, you know, it's just the next kind of thing. And it wasn't until they actually announced a lockdown that we were like, Whoa, you know, we're really lucky that we didn't get locked down sooner. And
00:17:03
Speaker
You know, we ended up having some challenges along the way. We had, you know, a crew member lose a family member along the way. And so we kind of shut down for a while and we spent the year working on it. And it took like a lot of work to get it into shape. And it was really challenging because it wasn't the same. It wasn't like, hey, I'm coming over and we're going to hang out for, you know, 10 hours and just cut this thing. It was like our time together was really limited and we had to limit our interactions. And there was, you know, real life things going on and us trying to figure things out.
00:17:33
Speaker
But by the time we got to October, I know that horror fans were dying for content.
00:17:40
Speaker
And I mean, I'm kind of proud for the fact that like we comboed with some other people. We ended up helping out with another film called Happy Halloween. And, you know, from October 13th through October 16th, I mean, Wampstone Films had a big impact on this year's Halloween kind of celebration. We brought, you know, some really high level dark, you know, story tones. You know, looking back on it, even as I was going into it, I was like, you know,
00:18:09
Speaker
I didn't expect us to all be in such a dark place. This is a really dark film. And I wonder how it's going to be received. And for the most part, people loved it. And then there's the other part that didn't realize that it's a pilot episode for additional content. And there was a lot of confusion to try to wrangle. But it just kind of goes to show the challenge of doing something that the people who are in this, the people who have been following,
00:18:35
Speaker
you know, they understand and they've been kind of following along and they were the ones who I think were the most happy. And there are people who kind of following along who were confused. And so it's, you know, it's a weird journey that we're on. Because again, going back to like a previous question, it's like, we didn't anticipate this to build so much momentum. You know, this was only supposed to be this one thing that we're like, Oh, this is great. And we didn't realize that there was a potential to keep doing it. And now that potential has, you know, kind of,
00:19:05
Speaker
you know, caught up. And it's like, wow, it's like, here we are. And now we know what we can do. You know, now how do we progress in with these new challenges? You know, it's like we just got done kind of figuring out a lot of things on the last film. And now there are new challenges on top of where we want to go building bigger scope and scale.
00:19:26
Speaker
and constantly increasing our production value and doing that, and then also trying to weigh the cost of filming in a pandemic, the safety of filming in a pandemic. What happens when an independent film gets shut down because someone gets sick?
Insights into Storytelling in Horror
00:19:42
Speaker
It's a lot different than when a multinational corporation has to shut down a project for a few weeks. Yeah, I mean, they're actually paying way more than we are, but those are numbers that they can throw around. Yeah.
00:19:55
Speaker
and weigh that load. And some of them may not even be able to, some of the mid-range stuff. So for us, we want to be really careful. That's one reason why, aside from coming through with the production, with the fulfillments for the Indiegogo that we've done, our main focus has been building an animated movie.
00:20:14
Speaker
which has been a lot of fun. It's actually called Ghost Chicken and it's about a vegan restaurant that's haunted by the ghost of a chicken. And so this fun kind of animated, it's my trip back into animation. It's something that's allowed me to work from home, work remote with a lot of other artists and people who are helping us create this venture. I've actually got, I'm actually in the animatic phase so I have all my storyboards and I'm starting to record voices and we're recording people from a distance.
00:20:40
Speaker
you know bringing them in and building the project and it's been a lot of fun as a way to pass the time and something that I can do while other things are out of my control and so yeah when you when you know life gives you lemons you you adapt and you find a way to make lemonade and so this little project has become like our
00:20:56
Speaker
you know, our island of rescue to just be like, at least we can make something, you know, it's like we're working on something and it's different. And, you know, not that I don't love Friday the 13th, but it's not Friday the 13th. It's something of like that we came up with. That's our thing.
00:21:12
Speaker
And no one knows what this is and then we can be really mysterious about it and we can take our time with it. And so, you know, as this thing develops, we're really excited to, you know, present another side of wamp-stamp films that people haven't seen before and diversify the type of content we can provide. Yeah.
00:21:32
Speaker
Hey Bo, I think Vin DeSanti is Santa Claus. I mean, he started with our Halloween. He was correct in saying horror fans were dying. We were literally just, you know, waiting and waiting and waiting. And we got that.
00:21:49
Speaker
If you hear about these projects, it's fantastic. I would say, hey, Vin, the touching moment in there in a time of great upheaval and difficulty with the pandemic and the horror film, of course, Mrs. Warhees comforting Jason, those touching moments you have delivered to help us all.
00:22:13
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that was one of the last scenes that got written into the movie. And it's a scene that I've actually thought about for a long time. It's this kind of scene that's lived up in my head and I always said, oh, this is one of these things and I'm just going to keep it tucked back there. And when the time is right, I know I'll use it.
00:22:33
Speaker
There's a lot of themes that are being set up for the overall story, some of the bigger things. But we have to remember that this story all started with a mother who lost a son and never hiking the snow is primarily about a mother who lost her son and a son who was taken from his mother.
00:22:50
Speaker
And, you know, the people who are caught in between. And so there's this bigger story there. And, you know, in the middle of it, as we've been telling this story about Jason, you know, it started with Never Hike Alone and we kind of touched upon it. And then we did the Disappure music video, which really kind of opened up a different side to Jason. It opened up kind of a look into his world and we wanted to take an even further step in Never Hike in the Snow.
00:23:14
Speaker
You know, at the end of the day when sometimes people ask like, well, who is the main character of this movie? I mean, I think if you really look at it, Jason might be the main character of the movie. There's lots of people sharing that role. They're passing it on to each other. Rick has a strong presence as we carry through with his story. Mark has his own through line.
00:23:33
Speaker
Really, the connective tissue between everybody is Jason. Jason is the through line. And we see what I think the first time is, is what is Jason fighting for? What is Jason protecting? What is all this trouble worth to Jason? And when you boil it down, it's that moment. It's that moment of being, you know, drawn into that memory, drawn into whatever is making him see these things and hear these things the same way that Pamela Voorhees
00:24:02
Speaker
heard his voice. We wanted to draw on that in the concept of Tommy having visions and being driven insane. This thought of the curse is like, once you're cursed, it sticks with you. So we have Kyle in Never Heck Alone. He sees visions of Jason before Jason arrives because Jason is haunting him now.
00:24:24
Speaker
Jason knows exactly where he is, and he's closing in. And as long as Kyle lives, as long as Tommy lives, as long as all these survivors live, Jason is somehow haunting them in some way. And they all just deal with it in different ways. But at the core of this concept is, what does Jason see? How does Jason react to this? Is Jason projecting himself through time and space to go haunt these people? Or is there a bigger force at work here that's also working on Jason, showing him his mother?
00:24:54
Speaker
and drawing him into this conflict, and it's something that might be bigger than the whole thing. But all he knows is that he is...
00:25:02
Speaker
just serving his mother, and it was a great representation of that. And I think it was a moment to realize what Jason is at his core, what Pamela is at her core.
Artistic Expression in Horror
00:25:15
Speaker
But the funniest thing about that is that they're having this beautiful moment, but surrounding them are dead bodies. You have the dead body of
00:25:25
Speaker
Mark right there. There's another dead body behind Mark from the Disappeared music video. There's dead bodies on the bed that are under those tarps. And so it's like this wake of death for this relationship and what Jason is protecting. You see that he's willing to go to any length to protect this one lasting connection that he has with his mother. Whatever this connection is, it's the closest thing he'll ever get. And if this is what he gets for doing his job, then he'll continue to do it. And I think that that's a cool kind of
00:25:55
Speaker
introspective look at the way that Jason may be the villain in these films, but he may also be just as cursed as everyone else because eventually, when you really look at it, it all started with this 11 year old boy who just wanted to go for a swim.
00:26:09
Speaker
It's something that the films really don't look at, you know, it's not that they dive into, I mean, part eight kind of really haphazardly dove into these waters to try and cover, you know, the story of like this drowning boy with drowning Renny and all this stuff, but it was really not, it wasn't, it was kind of hokey in a way.
00:26:26
Speaker
And, you know, I wanted an opportunity as a fan to be like, listen, like if you strip away all kind of like the bubblegum rap from this thing and you go to the core stories, there's actually really like strong story arcs here if you just put them together correctly. And if you just weed out kind of all the nonsense that there actually is a scary story here, but it's also emotional and it's, you know, and it's tense and there's a lot of things kind of going on and it's complex and it can be
00:26:54
Speaker
you know, it can be a lot more than just kind of what we had seen from the other films. And it's not that those films don't have their value and they haven't been enjoyed and they won't continue to be enjoyed. It's just, you know, for the sake of argument, I think really what it is, it's like, what happens if we make it like with a little bit more quality? What would happen? Would it get better? Would it get worse? Would it, you know, would it be goofy? And, you know, we are taking those risks, but we're finding that like,
00:27:21
Speaker
It really does stand up and these themes really can work if we have the opportunity to tell. Yeah, and I want to zero in on a component of that as you describe it.
00:27:37
Speaker
Your description, you're distilling down those story elements and some of those that have long fascinated me, but also developing them. And I think it's connected to horror and art. And this is the question for you, Vin. The main question quite simply is,
00:27:59
Speaker
What is art? But I was wondering if you could comment in the answer to the question about what is art is a little bit more of the role of how we view art or film or otherwise when it's like horror or science fiction. There's something about us when I think people get tripped up critically on it. And as a horror film maker, among other things that you do, what is art?
00:28:27
Speaker
Well, I mean, I think that art is an expression of emotion in some way, shape, or form. That's how I've always tried to steer my art, is what emotion am I most feeling with this piece? And how do I represent that with visuals? It's a visual art, so we create visuals to say things without, show it, don't say it. That's kind of the way that I go at it. And with music, obviously, it's all sound.
00:28:57
Speaker
You know, with art, it's the single image capturing a lot in just one pose or one, you know, one canvas, you know what I mean? To say a lot of things. But I think at the end of the day, we're all looking at some type of emotion that we're driven by. So specifically with horror.
00:29:12
Speaker
It is it's fear you know it's it's this like we want to be scared we want to look beyond the fray we have a curiosity we have. There's lots of themes that can you know explore exploration of the unknown there's a lot of things in the horror world that.
00:29:32
Speaker
that scare people. Most of the thing is being scared of the unknown, the things that can't be explained. And the more you try to explain it, the weirder things get. And that's usually indicative of a good horror film. No matter how much a character thinks they have a situation under control, the situation continues to spiral out of control. And as viewers of art and cinema, we want to go on that ride.
00:30:02
Speaker
You know bring everything to the edge but at the end of the day if the characters on screen that are gonna have to deal with the consequences and we just react to how it makes us feel so
00:30:11
Speaker
when you're a director and you're designing the ride. I mean, that's how I think about it. I think about a film like a roller coaster. It's like, what part of the roller coaster are we on right now? Not everything can be a loop de loop. Not everything can be a straight drop. Sometimes you need something that's leveled out just to kind of reset the palette and being able to pace that out so it really kind of delivers. And at the end of the day,
00:30:36
Speaker
whatever that emotion is, whatever we're making people feel, it's really down to the fine tuning of all those elements, at least in film, working together to deliver that sound, you know, communication to people. We're admitting that emotion. People should be feeling that emotion. And I think when
00:30:56
Speaker
people have criticisms, it's because they're either looking for another emotion. That's not the emotion that they want to be told right now. Like I could understand if someone watched, you know, Never Hike in the Snow and said, this is way too depressing for me in a pandemic. This would be great if I could, if I was looking for something that was dark and depressing and, and maybe it's cathartic to even feel it and feel like another character and how they react to the same situation and stuff like that. There's different ways that we can interpret it. And, and I think that like,
00:31:27
Speaker
what a good viewer can do is you know a lot of you know we we tend to do this a lot and and i'm definitely just as guilty of it as anybody is you know setting an expectation for a film and saying okay if the film's gonna be good it has to be this rather than watching a film and saying what is it trying to say and do i like this you know what i mean and and there's also i mean and that's just my view of it there are you know other films out there that
00:31:54
Speaker
There's no theme, there's barely a story, it's just a character going around and doing crazy things. One of the early advice that I got when I was getting into this industry was that the power of character in film. In film, you can have a lot of great cinematography and story, but if you don't have a powerful character that your audience can all rally around,
00:32:23
Speaker
You're going to have a hard time delivering on everything else. And a great character can make up for a lot of shortcomings in all the other departments. And so it's really about the character and it's about does it resonate with people.
00:32:35
Speaker
And those characters and the emotions that they make people feel are very important. And it's something that you have to take a lot of time to analyze while you're creating something. Whatever the focal point is, it's got to be in film, it's character. And you can do other things too. I'm sure there's ways around it. But these are just kind of the tools that I lean on.
00:32:57
Speaker
when I'm telling stories is to be character-centric and then put it on a good story track and make sure that the pacing leads into an emotional resolution or an emotional charge. It's meant to do certain things and leave people with certain emotions and it's
00:33:16
Speaker
Are people going to be satisfied with the material enough that even if it's like never hiking the snow, like you have that feeling like you want more or you got to know what happens next that, you know, it's a good feeling of I want to know what happens next and be like, wait, that's that's it. You know, it's like, oh, like.
00:33:32
Speaker
Well, what I watched wasn't good and I didn't even get any good stuff. It's like, wow, that was great. Now I want more.
Expanding the Friday the 13th Universe
00:33:41
Speaker
That was kind of the goal. And so to see a lot of people having that reaction, it's more of a mixed reaction, but it's a positive mixed reaction because it kind of highlights that we did
00:33:55
Speaker
that we're on the right track and that these projects really do need the right type of support and funding and that when we get it, we can deliver. And so that's really kind of the ebb and flow of this process and getting people to buy into it because it's not as satisfying as getting something on Netflix that you can watch all eight episodes all at once. We're not on the same money stream that Netflix is on or that Hulu is on or stuff like that.
00:34:23
Speaker
We can only make this so fast and that's I think the most frustrating start of our process is the fact that it takes so long to make these things. So if it's going to take this long and it's going to cost us that much amount of money, we have to make sure that that product, no matter how long, short, you know, whatever.
00:34:40
Speaker
It just has to deliver on the fact that if it hits an emotion, if it hits, you know, the right chords with people and we're able to elect, you know, we're able to make people sad when we lose Mark after and go and meet his mother or we.
00:34:55
Speaker
have that moment when Jason and his mother embrace or that people genuinely get scared when Mabry goes into the attic at the end of the movie and we see Jason in this, we see a cop try to arrest Jason, which is like, hilarious and terrifying at the same time. And then, you know, his, you know, unbelievable demise, like we really like at the end, it was all about like,
00:35:16
Speaker
okay, I'm gonna make people sad. I'm gonna bring it back with Jason and his mother. We're gonna get excited and then we're gonna try and build a really scary sequence for Halloween because last year it was all about the fighting and the more of the build of tension and kind of like these adventure sequences because Never Hike Alone was more of an adventure movie. I was like, in this one, we really wanna go horror. I really want the tones to be scary. I want this to feel like
00:35:44
Speaker
what we did in Never Hike Alone, but now we could follow through with the kill because we don't need this character in the next movie. This one's expendable. We could actually kill this guy. And how could we do it in a way that would bring something fresh to Friday the 13th?
00:35:59
Speaker
you know a kill that we haven't seen before. We've never seen Jason use you know a firearm on anybody and it's not that he pulls the trigger but he gets the guy to blow his own head off and so that's something and it and he moves so fast in that moment that I think it's it's scary and we wanted to like I really wanted that saw moment at the end of Never Hiking the Snow and I and I know for the most part I got it because watching all the reaction videos
00:36:24
Speaker
everybody was like, oh my god, like, ah, and like, it's shocking. And I wanted to shock people. And then I was leaving it off there. It's like, you know, it would be great if we had, if we could just jump into the next part of the story. But, you know, the next stage of this story happens three months later in the spring. And, and by the time we were getting to that level, we were all in full lockdown. So there was going to be no additional filming this year. And so we just went with what we had.
00:36:50
Speaker
And, um, and we knew that we were going to address things in later episodes. So we were just like, you know what, it's like, we have it covered. Like we're just, it would just be bonus stuff at this point. This is the story. This is the story about how Jason gets away with it. You know, it answers a question. It's like for all these years, what's the circumstance in which Jason has killed somebody and gotten away with it? Because all the movies are about the times that Jason goes to kill people and doesn't get away with it. You know, by the end of the movie, he gets his comeuppance.
00:37:16
Speaker
And I wanted to show a movie that he didn't get his comeuppance, that he's able to still exist out there. And that's what the original Never Hike Alone was supposed to be. It just so happened that Andrew was so likable as Kyle that we couldn't kill him. We couldn't bring ourselves to end him. And we added Tommy to the end of it. So we had to morph it into something else.
00:37:38
Speaker
Because that was supposed to be the story of the people who go in and don't come out. And that's what Never Hike Alone was supposed to be about. And so we kind of went back to the drawing board with it on Never Hike in the Snow, and we're like, let's tell that story with these characters. Let's show how Jason is able to get away with these murders and not be found, about how he's always one step ahead of the police, always one step ahead of Tommy, how the conflict between
00:38:00
Speaker
Tommy and Rick is really allowing him to thrive because neither you know one has a plan that's supposed to work but it doesn't really work and then the other one tries to enact his plan but it doesn't he doesn't have any support and he never seems to be able to follow through on the on the one thing which is find Jason.
00:38:18
Speaker
We have this Don Quixote Tommy Jarvis who's out there jousting at windmills and can't find the actual dragon and then you have this governing party that's stopped running after windmills because eventually you're going to end up in the right one and then all hell's going to break loose and it's going to be all your fault.
00:38:38
Speaker
you know i mean like swans just leave it alone if somebody happens to wander into the wrong windmill that's on them because we put up all the signs and we you know we did all our due diligence and these are the things that we. Continue on in the story but we wanted to set them up you know without you know having to do long dialogue scenes and you know have it explained to the audience we just wanted to present.
00:39:01
Speaker
situations in which this is how it plays out. And as we go on the pieces will fit when you start to see how when they have these, you know, these arguments over ideology.
00:39:12
Speaker
Eventually, the wrecking ball in the whole situation is Kyle McLeod. And Kyle McLeod is the one who gets out now. Really, he just got his head crushed. But he gets out, and now Jason has something to lose. Now we know what's at risk for Jason. If they come back, it's not going to be good. Jason has been chased to the last corner, and they know that he's out there. The kid has proof that he's out there.
00:39:41
Speaker
And, you know, there's going to be no more hiding. The people are going to come with pitchforks and it's better to bring the fight to them. And so the worst nightmare of Rick is happening. Jason is coming to town and it's not because of Tommy, it's because of Kyle. And the problem is, is that, you know, yeah, Rick said, yeah, well, if they wander in there, they don't come out. That's the problem. The problem is, is what happens if one of them make it out?
00:40:04
Speaker
You know what I mean? Jason's coming after them, and he's going to bring them after us. There might not be Tommy. It might be somebody else, and that's what Tommy's trying to tell him. But Rick doesn't want to do it, because it's worked. So far, Rick's plan, for the most part, yeah, there's people who have died.
00:40:20
Speaker
He hasn't had a, you know, a Friday the 13th massacre in over 25 years. You know what I mean? It's been quiet. You know, people have gone missing, but people go missing all the time everywhere. So, you know, he really can't attribute it to anything more than that and is happy to live blissfully in that lie. And Tommy's not. And so it's kind of a cool, like,
00:40:41
Speaker
look at how life would have continued on in Friday the 13th as if they actually followed Tommy's story and if they actually followed the events of part six. And what was the fallout of all these years once Jason is banished for a long time. And in our series, we count part seven and part eight as events. They happened in some way, shape, or form. And that's how Jason was released again. But at some point after the, quote unquote, Manhattan incident,
00:41:12
Speaker
You had to come back to Camp Crystal, they can start a new life. And so this is what our Jason is. Our Jason is the post Paramount, the, you know, the fork in the road. They went to, you know, New Line took it to Jason goes to hell where it's like, well, that's where you went. But if this storyline continued forward and we looked back at through these eight films and we said, okay,
00:41:32
Speaker
If we washed away all kind of the studio bullshit and the mandate of the formula, what are the coolest stories in between that we've always wanted to know about? And what are the facts that really make it the strongest type of story versus things that muddy the situation? And we narrowed it down and kind of built it up from there. And so we built this world on top of Tommy now and this existing kind of
00:41:58
Speaker
our version of Ghost Jason, we call Ghost Jason, and how Jason would exist is this kind of revenant that haunts these woods and is just trying to protect himself now. It's gone back to more of that part two style Jason to where it's not about going out into the world and inflicting damage, but rather just defending territory, which is where I think most people
00:42:21
Speaker
Kind of think of Jason you know subconsciously I don't think that they you know even though he doesn't really act like that in the movies most of us kind of assume like oh yeah Jason just protects his land and you know does you know if you go in you're gonna get killed and that's the story of Friday the 13th is a camp you know the camps curse.
00:42:40
Speaker
Um, but that's not necessarily the way most of the films treat it Um, it's kind of like what they just kind of retrofit it to to do whatever they want So we wanted to do something that like played by all like the best rules in the franchise And then saw what happened when you kind of put all those elements together Yeah, I remember even on the the remake, you know the friday 13th well of the same title friday the 13th there was a little bit of an emergence of uh
00:43:08
Speaker
You know more intelligent planning booby trapped you know crystal crystal like is the idea of like protector or keeping off of it, but you definitely work on them, the more I definitely see where you place it as far as how you develop it out is more of like.
00:43:25
Speaker
the protector of the lands are trying to maintain.
Vision for Friday the 13th Future
00:43:29
Speaker
Yeah, in this way, it's less about even the camp itself and more about his existence. It's staying hidden. And that's where I would say our Jason is different than the remake Jason, because the remake Jason is a little bit more proactive than our Jason is.
00:43:48
Speaker
you know, randomly fire on people driving a boat. You wouldn't draw that sort of attention to himself. He wouldn't go into a barn during the day. It's a step up on that. There are a lot of great themes here, but if you really think about it, it could be better.
00:44:07
Speaker
And we try to take those elements and say, OK, what happens if we did what they did, but we did it with a little bit more? We've had hindsight's 20-20 in a way. Now that we've seen it, it needs a little bit more thought than this. This is a little thinly veiled. So that's where we really kind of, elements from 2009 that had the right idea. Because I was really excited for 2009 when it came out. I really do like a lot of the
00:44:34
Speaker
the themes that are kind of presented, I think the follow through on a lot of it kind of gets lost along the way. That's kind of like my biggest criticism of it, is that it's like, there's a lot of great ideas here, but they kind of fall apart after a while, and then it just becomes like a hoot nanny hoe down with Jason, and she's just chasing everybody around at one point. His all strategy kind of goes out the window at that point, and it's just like a five tier final girl chase, like with people running in all directions.
00:45:03
Speaker
Rather than like seeing a newer, smarter Jason systematically take people out who don't even know that he's out there until it, you know, kind of like that part two, which I think is like the greatest, you know, those setups where it's like, you know, it's Ginny and Paul, and it's just the two of them, and then they come back and everybody's dead. And it's just those two against Jason and it's isolated.
00:45:22
Speaker
you know, part four, you know, they add the element of Rob, Tommy and Trish. And so, but it's Trish and Rob that go into the house and Tommy stays behind. And that element of like the couple taking on Jason at the end, you know, the boyfriend going down and then it's just down to the final girl and her little brother. There's an element to like the escalation in those films that I feel that's where 2009 loses its edge.
00:45:52
Speaker
because it just becomes kind of this free for all. And it was a different approach and it's a different style. And I think that a lot of people really do appreciate it. And I think with our Jason, where we tried to kind of be a little bit different is be more tactile and stealthy. Kind of like that part for a Ted White Jason who was always there in the right moment to take out the person he needed to take out and then move on to the next person.
00:46:20
Speaker
and really kind of take people down because I think that's scarier. And that's just kind of my opinion on that. But I think that's where my kind of thought is on it.
00:46:35
Speaker
Yeah, and we're speaking with Vin DeSanti, Wham! Stomp Films, Never Hike Alone, Never Hike in the Snow. I'm talking a lot of mythology and creativity within the Friday the 13th universe. And Bo, I know you had a question or two. I know you're interested in some of the practical effects and other aspects of horror. I wonder if you want to pop in another question at our man Vin.
00:47:04
Speaker
Yeah, of course. I think that you kind of really hit it on the head there as a fan of horror, right? To be able to tell some kind of powerful story that it's not just, you know, running through the woods and getting to see those great kill scenes, although I enjoy that as well.
00:47:21
Speaker
Um, but I think a bigger question maybe is like, why is it that you create and more specifically why horror, especially, you know, you know, um, when you ask people, nobody ever says, you know, Oh, I hate comedy movies or I hate, you know, drama, but you do have people that come out and say, no, you know, horror is not for me. I don't really like it. So why in particular, do you choose as a creator to use horror?
00:47:49
Speaker
I mean, I like it. I mean, I love the horror franchise. I love horror. I love comedy. I love drama. I plan on making lots of different types of films over my career. But horror is a place where I think I have strong storytelling abilities. I've always just been a storyteller. I've always loved
00:48:08
Speaker
You know, you know when someone's like what happened last night? Like that was like my cue You know what I mean? I would stand up and I would do impressionations of everybody and reenact the entire night or if somebody wanted to know a movie I would reenact the entire movie I just love the act of storytelling and I love the effect that it has on people You know, it's it's something that like, you know when you can brighten someone's day with a story it it's a cool feeling to have and so
00:48:35
Speaker
you know, I like doing it. And it's just one of those things that I kind of just over time realized I had a passion and a knack for it. And so I, and so that's where, you know, it kind of led me down this path. And so, you know, with that comes with it, you know, you know, to have that passion is one thing, but then it led me down the avenue of like, how do I do this? And a lot of that was watching
00:48:59
Speaker
behind the scenes featurettes when I was a kid and watching the people who made the films and seeing that there was a whole crew and everyone has a different job and one of those jobs and who does what and my pursuit through film has been answering those questions that I had as a child. Who does what? Who do I need to talk to to go blow up someone's head?
00:49:21
Speaker
Who do I call? And so I think after all these years of working, I've collected all my numbers, you know what I mean? From the start, being able to write, those are things that I can do myself, things that I was taught, things that I researched.
00:49:36
Speaker
You know, being able to contact story artists or being able to contact actors and a director of photography and, you know, a sound person and gaffers and, you know, rent equipment and get the things to shoot in and special effects people and all that and having access to all of those people. But they're also my friends. They're people who I've worked with on other shows.
00:49:54
Speaker
So we all have this personal connection and when we can all gather together to make something, I get to hang out with my friends. I get to be with the people who I really like being around. I'm building a set of basically the people who I love working with most. It's really a privilege and an honor.
00:50:11
Speaker
at that point. And we all get to be collaborative. And luckily for me, you know, as a director, everyone kind of buys into what I'm doing. And it all starts with, you know, every single person that works on these shows starts with me sitting down with them and reenacting the entire movie and saying, this is the movie. It starts here. And I mean, never hike in the snow. I was acting that out for two years before we got to make it. I was like, it's going to start and we're going to do the whole like, and it's going to be like rad music. And like, you're going to be cutting back and forth between him running. It's going to be in slow motion.
00:50:40
Speaker
won't be these cool like Robin Hood shots. And, you know, really just getting excited about like, it's gonna be so cool. I mean, think about I mean, it used to just be an idea in my head used to just be images in my head of thinking about how cool it would be to see Jason in the snow with a bow and arrow shooting this guy and then splitting his head in half. And it's where the idea grew. And then
00:51:04
Speaker
You know, over time it evolved into, what happens afterwards? Where does it go from here? How does the people of Crystal Lake react to this? What are the dominoes that fall out and how does Jason get away with this? And so that's how it all kind of started.
00:51:25
Speaker
And you know, as far as like, and that's something you can only do in horror films. And of course, I'm a big Friday the 13th fan. My whole life, all I've ever wanted to do is work on a Friday the 13th movie officially. And you know, if this is the closest I get, this is the closest I get.
00:51:41
Speaker
And I think that I wanted to, you know, I want to do the franchise justice when I do this stuff I don't just want to do it to do it I want to do it so that it has impact and that, you know, like I said when we first got into this we looked at those other fan films and said,
00:51:57
Speaker
these you know they have an impact you know what i mean it's like they they have drawn attention and this is a great expression of love for friday the 13th and i i would love to contribute to this and so you know some of these contributions some of these ideas i think they're things that i don't think the studios will ever ever produce and
00:52:17
Speaker
For me, as a Friday the 13th fan, a lot of these ideas, I'm just itching to share with everybody. I'm just passionate about the fact that, oh, if I could tell this story, I really think there are a lot of Friday the 13th fans out there who would appreciate it, who would appreciate this point of view, who would appreciate this lens on it.
00:52:34
Speaker
And if we can deliver on that, that will have a lot of impact. But it will also allow me to say what I want to say about Friday the 13th. And usually, as fans, we're pretty voiceless in getting what we want from larger entities that kind of guide their own way. And something as diverse and non-linear as Friday the 13th is and has been, you never know what you're going to get. And it might be great.
00:53:02
Speaker
some redeeming quality in some way shape or form it might be a great retelling of the way that Friday the 13th used to be and it may be a fun film or maybe do you know XY or Z but there's something just very specific about the story that I'm trying to tell that I feel like
00:53:18
Speaker
I don't think that they could ever do it. They could never pull the Tommy Jarvis's of the world and build this story up from him and bring this light back to saying, yes, this is the Paramount Jason that was from the original films. Wherever it's going to go, it's going to be from a fresh take.
00:53:34
Speaker
You know, we're never going to get that resolution to the Paramount era Jason that, you know, you know, as much as I love Adam Marcus as a person, Jason goes to hell for a lot of fans did not satisfy that palette of saying what happened to that Jason because this is not no.
00:53:51
Speaker
Like this is just something else. Like this is like, now we're getting into the what if, like the Marvel what if of like with Jason, if he was in the evil dead world, it's a cool thing to look at. But I think that there's another way that we can end this other story without having to bring in the Necronomicon, to not have to bring anything out from outside forces, but actually looking at the elements within Friday the 13th that are there.
00:54:13
Speaker
It's just about activating them. It's just about calling them back. It's about bringing them and giving them purpose and using these things that exist within the film already without having to branch outside of what the franchise has already created. And at the same time, you know, trim it back, you know, prune the tree. It's like it's grown wild. Like we all know it has. If I snip a few branches off, you won't even miss some type thing. And I think that that's what never hike alone proof is that we cut a lot of the branches.
00:54:44
Speaker
And at the same time, there's lots of continuity things that people don't understand are going on in a certain way.
00:54:51
Speaker
And that's why we wanted to tell more story because it's like, no, if you really looked like if you can kind of get up to where this like, again, I'm the guy with this movie. I've already watched it a million times in my head. And as a Friday the 13th fan, it gets me really excited. It makes me feel like, oh, if they could only deliver a movie like this, like if they only had the forethought to like really put this much thought into it.
00:55:14
Speaker
Um, it would really be special. And I think that like, this would be such a great send off for this character. You know, something that we really haven't had an opportunity to have for this character. And then we could go on to your all to the new ideas. You know what I mean? We can go on to all the stuff that's different and weird.
Shared Experiences in Horror Cinema
00:55:31
Speaker
you know, you can do whatever you want, but it's like, can we just have this one ending that allows us to kind of have closure with that specific character because we feel like it's, you know, him washing out the drain at the end of part eight is not, that's, there's, there's gotta be a little bit more of there. Like, you know what I mean? And, and I have,
00:55:51
Speaker
what's developed out of this whole story is this really great timeline of events. It's this really tragic story of this monster that it's poetic, it's sad, it's violent, but it has a lot of heart to it and there's a lot of different closure for different characters and closure for the town in a way.
00:56:16
Speaker
You know, it introduces our new character, Kyle McCloud, and lets him be the fresh perspective in this ongoing story. The growing story of Anna Campbell's character, Diane Hill, and her grieving the loss of her son, and then getting whipped up into a Friday the 13th story of her own, and emerging as a really important part.
00:56:35
Speaker
you know, character that's there for Tommy and Kyle in this battle, and it really kind of becomes their story. You know, and then Rick is the antagonist, like the second antagonist to Jason, and then the havoc that Jason's going to wreak throughout the town as he, you know, gets closer to, you know, his goal of, you know, ridding the world of Kyle, this footage, and anyone else who gets in his way. And so there's, you know, there's clear
00:57:01
Speaker
goals and themes that play, and there's resolutions that tie up in a bow, and for the first time in Friday the 13th history, it feels like all the information that we've been fed kind of gets delivered in one package that just makes sense. We all can kind of breathe easy and go,
00:57:19
Speaker
Yeah, okay. That's how it could go. That feels rewarding after we've put in all these years. And then there's also the side of it that people just want to see Friday the 13th. It doesn't matter what form it comes in. Just as long as Jason has a hockey mask and he's murdering people, that's what people want.
00:57:37
Speaker
I get that. But at the same time, this is something that like, I don't know, I just I have this instinct that tells me that if it was put together and put on screen, that the fan base would react to it in a in a really, you know, invigorating way. Yeah. And I think I think that's noticeable. And I really appreciate
00:57:58
Speaker
you know, your comments on, you know, the universe as a whole in a lot of the undeveloped bits that you talk about that have interested, you know, that have interested the fan base over time and developing those and taking risks as far as where, you know, where the story takes place. And I know on the initials, without giving away, you know, I think about with the initial
00:58:24
Speaker
Uh, kill. I know like when I was watching it, I was like, no way. Like, cause it was like, it was, it was great, but it was such an evocative response of being like, I didn't know that could happen. And, uh, it was, it was exciting to see as something, you know, within film where I've, I've watched, um, you know, the films, uh, a real lot ever since I was younger, but kind of rejoicing in that kind of creative satisfaction you helped with, uh, with, with, with, with presenting, um,
00:58:54
Speaker
Uh, then I got a big question for you here. Um, why is there something rather than nothing? What? Why is there something rather than nothing? Um, I is that like just an introspective question in which to kind of like look inward and yeah, it's the big one Jason horror everything. Oh man, I mean You know, I I just
00:59:23
Speaker
It's, you know, when it comes to the world of horror, I guess, it's just we always love, like I kind of said before, exploring the unknown. You know, that's what story is. Story is a way to cope with existence. It's a way to put down on paper or to put up on screen.
00:59:43
Speaker
thoughts and introspective views on the world and introspective views on situations. And then it's also there just for entertainment. It's just to sit back and elect responses and have people react, whether it be good or bad, whether it be positive or negative. It's stimulating our brain because we thrive for it.
01:00:09
Speaker
I mean, if you think about the pandemic and staying home for the last eight months and a lot of the issues that people had, you know, a reduction of stimulation and the fact that we're not, you know, going outside as much, that we're not interacting as much, that we're not, you know, going on trips and journeys and adventures, this, you know, the seeking out of
01:00:28
Speaker
you know, we all start in a place and we always end up, you know, most of us end up somewhere else. And some of us, you know, never leave where we came from. And I think, you know, for me anyway, I've, you know, I started in a little town in Massachusetts. I've traveled across the country and I've lived in Los Angeles for the last 13 years. I've traveled the country and met horror, you know, horror fans that had film conventions and
01:00:51
Speaker
and horror conventions and film festivals. And, you know, if it wasn't for COVID, I probably would have turned that into a trip around the world, a place where, you know,
01:01:02
Speaker
The amazing part is that making Never Hike Alone has given me this opportunity and an excuse to travel. It's before I was like, oh, I got to work. I got to do this. I got to do that. And now it's like, I could take my film to England. I could take my film to Ireland. I could take my film to Germany, to Italy. I could take it over to New Zealand, Australia, and places where
01:01:23
Speaker
fan bases have popped up in Brazil and things like that. And it's all centered around this same thing, Friday the 13th, horror films, this
01:01:38
Speaker
shared love that we all have for a genre and we all sort of get it in the same way and we were drawn to each other as fans to collectively you know because that's what the you know and and that's the whole thing with like you know that's a kind of jump the curb here but to bring the concept of like things coming in on streaming and being released on streaming instead of going to the theaters and you know having the option to stay home and watch it rather than go to the theater it's like there is nothing like getting together with you know
01:02:03
Speaker
fans of, you know, like-minded fans to watch something. I mean, that's why we go to screenings of films that are 40 years old and pack the house. You know what I mean? Like, we have them on Blu-ray and 4K on our 75-inch TVs and all across the, you know, no matter what you got. We will happily go to a place where we can get popcorn and sit in the theater and have that shared experience. I don't understand why people are so afraid of the cinema experience dying rather than
01:02:31
Speaker
reinventing itself and getting better, the technology is going to get better. The situation in which you find yourself sitting in is going to get better. I just see more and more theaters turning into like Alamo draft houses, where you can go and order a meal and, you know, taking a movie on a giant screen that's been
01:02:48
Speaker
you know, the screen has been tested, the audio has been tested, and is being presented exactly how the filmmaker wants it. You know, quite often, I don't think people realize that when you go to the theater, you know, I'm sure that there are, you know, filmmakers out there who would agree, it's like they can't test every single screen, they don't know what, how it's being shown in
01:03:08
Speaker
you know, in Ohio versus in Oklahoma versus, you know, in Europe. I mean, there might be a standard, but who knows the last time that specific place changed that bulb? Who knows the last time that they actually, you know, what are they doing to keep their theater, you know, at the forefront of what's going on? And I think that if anything, you're going to just have to see theaters, you know, rethink this thing so we can have this collective experience.
Where to Find Wamp-Stomp Films
01:03:31
Speaker
So, like,
01:03:32
Speaker
Why? You know, something from nothing. The something is that community and it's that shared experience that we all have. It's like films resonate with people because it's something that we can all relate to. It's something that we all can
01:03:49
Speaker
you know after the film like almost share our own experience of what it made us think of or where it brings us to or like have that same shared like for certain scenes and characters and things like that it's something that we all share because we're all drawn sort of what to the same thing it's like we have the same taste and
01:04:04
Speaker
You know, it's, you know, I think anyone can attest like staying home and not being able to share your thoughts about a film with somebody is, you know, grueling. It's like, I can't tell you how many films I've watched. And I've just been sitting here like flipping out like, Oh my God, like, you know, then like, it's like, like, I got no one to talk to. But
01:04:23
Speaker
I'm having these epiphany moments when I'm watching these movies because it's just like, oh, wow, I never realized this or realized that and having somebody to discuss that with. I think that could round out that question.
01:04:44
Speaker
Uh, one thing at the end here, Vin, and, um, uh, I want to tell you, um, I, I, I really love, um, uh, listening to you in, in, in your process and talking about, uh, Friday 13th has been, um, is, is a great pleasure. One of the things I want to do.
01:05:03
Speaker
Um, here at the end is kind of make sure, you know, some of the, you know, you can't just go out to the movie theater to see your films. Can you lay out for folks, uh, for listeners, you know, where to find you, your films, uh, you know, how to interact or comment or anything along those lines, uh, you know, for your comfort.
01:05:24
Speaker
Oh, yeah, sure. I mean, all of our projects are on our YouTube page, which is youtube.com slash wompstompfilms. Our entire catalog is up there. Everything that I've made since I started filmmaking, starting with The Red Room, which was my first short film, all the way through Never Hike in the Snow.
01:05:45
Speaker
We have another film on there, Pathosis, which is our first original project that we released, which is directed by a good friend of mine, Austin Boning. One genre blast short film competition, which is pretty cool. And that's one of the top 50 genre film festivals in the country. So we're really proud of the film. We debuted at Telluride Horror Show with that one. So it's definitely one that if you like creepy crawly movies about things that scare you in the dark, that's a really good one. All of our Friday the 13th content is there.
01:06:14
Speaker
And there's lots of other cool little things that we've posted in the last few weeks. We posted another piece called The Ghost Cut, in which we cut all three Never Hike Alone pieces into one feature length anthology that lays them out in chronological order and fills in some gaps on when things are happening. Add some new elements and things like that. There's a few new shots, some voiceovers, some special against appearances. So you're definitely going to want to check that out if you're a big Friday the 13th fan.
01:06:44
Speaker
But for the most part, right now we're working on the fulfillment for the Never Hike in the Snow blu-ray, which we're just waiting for the disc to arrive now so we can start shipping them out. And then after that, we're really going to turn our focus to Ghost Chicken. So you're definitely going to want to keep an eye out for updates on that as we progress.
01:07:03
Speaker
And you can do that on our Instagram, on our Facebook, on our Twitter, all at wompstompfilms, which is pretty easy to find. You can find our logo and stuff like that. And if you ever want to email us, it's wompstompfilms at gmail.com. All right, that's great. And Benita Rancliffe, Benita, thanks for joining as a co-host.
01:07:30
Speaker
I communicate with Benita around the thing that you need, Vin, as far as like, you need somebody to talk to about the film you just saw.
Community in Horror Fandom and Digital Discourse
01:07:39
Speaker
I mean, I send messages first. We get to see this thing. When I was yelling, no way at that never hike in the snow, I'm like, I have to send some messages. Oh, man, is this real? Definitely. I think that sense of community and discussion is missed in these times, for sure.
01:08:01
Speaker
Well, I mean, it's out there. It's too bad that a lot of it has been driven to online. And I feel like the online version of it usually tends to get snarky and negative. And a lot of things get lost in context because it's in text and you don't hear someone's voice messing around, poking fun at something. It seems like, oh, they're really mad at it.
01:08:22
Speaker
So you get like a lot of hot takes and stuff like that. I really miss, you know, being able to sit down with people and have like a, like a good hearty debate or, you know, disagreement or even like likewise, like we both love it. Like I just miss having to have like the real nuanced conversation. It feels like everything online is just like cut down. You know what I mean?
01:08:43
Speaker
Yeah, and I think you're right, Vin, and I think part of, you know, in Benita, too, is just as far as, you know, the community around a discussion like this. I think it's important to continue. I look forward to it in the future. I think you're right. I think our ability to engage in discourse is really difficult, and discourse is difficult. And I think these challenging questions are good, and I think
01:09:10
Speaker
you know, questions about horror and art and all these type of things. I think a lot of us want to kick them around and learn more about it. Vin the Sandy Wampstam films, again, thank you so much for joining the show. And I hope, you know, maybe we can all think of ways
01:09:30
Speaker
to connect going in the future. I know I personally enjoy watching, you know, a film watch party online. Maybe we can comment about things, things of that nature. And just, you know, look forward somehow for us to be able to connect and chat some more about film. Ben DeSandy of Wamstown Films, thank you for joining something rather than nothing. And thank you, Bonita Rancliff, special guest host. Thank you very much.
01:09:58
Speaker
Yeah thanks for having me Ken and Bo thanks for the great questions. Thank you so much. Take care now. This is something rather than nothing.