So for the last 2 years my friend Brian Lashchuk at BeyondTheGraveProductions.com, and I have been talking about doing our own Michael Myers movie. I love John Carpenters classic film and I’ve always thought it would be fun to do a tribute to it. I know everybody and their brother has already done one but what would one more hurt? Besides we felt like we could put some time and effort into it and come up with somehing decent. Early on I decided that doing an actual short film would be too complicated and be too hard to develop into a coherent storyline. So we settled on doing a faux movie trailer that would take more of a “best of” approach, basically creating iconic scenes and cool ideas and putting them together into a trailer.
Last November we started working on this project in Dearborn Michigan. Amazingly Brian and his wife Trisha were able to get many kids in their neighborhood to be trick or treaters. Their neighbors took down there Xmas and Thanksgiving decorations and put back up their Halloween decorations. Just so we could get some shots of trick or treaters. Oh and it was raining why we did all of this! I was amazed by how cooperative everyone was and how eager they were to help! Over the course of that weekend and 2 more weekends we were able to get some iconic scenes and have a lot of fun creating our own Myers opus!
When it came to choosing someone to play the Loomis character we debated and tried finding a man for the part. Brian then mentioned having a woman play the part instead. The crazy part was I had thought about that before but didn’t mention it because I thought it might be to sacrilegious to suggest a woman playing Loomis. But with it on the table and in the open it sounded like a cool idea and something that would make it stand out a bit. Luckily Brian had just the right person to play the part, an actual Psychologist, with intense eyes and a real strength about her. Sandra fit the part better than I could have hoped and with really no acting experience she delivered a strong performance. I wish we could have shown more of her in the trailer!
Like most things I film I always see things I’d do differently if I were doing it today. Each project is a learning experience and this ones no different. But, enough talk, enjoy our tribute to Halloween below and please let us know what you think by commenting on here, Youtube or Facebook!
