(The 6th sense poster by Ross Boag)
The Horror Channel on Sky TV have launched a competition inviting people to make a 3 minute horror short film, with only 6 hours to shoot, with a cast of 6 and a crew of 6 (including post-production) as well as only 6 lines of dialogue, to be submitted by the 6th of June at 6pm. The top 6 will be screened on the Horror Channel as well as screened during FrightFest this year and the winning team will win £6,666. A devilishly tempting competition...
When Anne Nicholson (editor of Bloodline, Cameron Stone and One Year Later) told me about the idea I thought "But I can't add anything to the horror genre!" and I quickly realised that wasn't the correct approach. I want to be a writer, I want to write for TV (either my own show aka THE DREAM or for another show aka Doctor Who, the ultimate dream), I need to push myself, go out of my comfort zone (hmm...comfort zone) and see what I'm capable of. Even if it sucked, and I really hope it doesn't, at the very least I've tried something different and it's all good practice to becoming a better writer.
We had just wrapped One Year Later and were busting our guts out (appropriate for a horror, no?) to get post-production finished for the first festival entry on the 24th of May (major kudos to Anne, Sean and Sam for pulling that off!) and once the dust had settled Anne text me and said "We can film in my sister's house this weekend!". That was three days away. I was able to convince dear Anne that the following two weeks would be better, to allow for more prep and she (thankfully) agreed. So I assembled some of the team from One Year Later and on the 28th of May we shot our horror film in 6 hours.
It's my first ever attempt at a horror, I've tried to take a zombie genre and turn it on it's head a little bit, trying to put my own spin on it. I hope it comes across in 3 minutes and I hope you guys appreciate it. It was amazing fun to do and everybody was in high spirits. Sharon Clark is a fantastic makeup artist, seriously stupidly talented. Her work is astounding and it might not all come across in the video I suggest you get over to her Facebook page and check her work out.
Everybody, again, worked their asses off. Thank you.
On Saturday we're shooting a Virgin Media Short called "The Interrogation" with Simon Weir and Rhys Teare-Williams. The rules are the film can only be 2 minutes and 20 seconds. I wrote the script and everybody seems happy with it so once more onto the breach. It'll be my last as writer/director for a while as I'm stepping back into a producing role to assist the team's other short films that they want to make. Also I want to concentrate on my writing, try to get better at it, write a couple of spec scripts of different genres and try to get an agent to represent me and hopefully get my work on to the telly box. That would be lovely...
But of course, the 48 hour film challenge is in October and I won't be able to resist getting the old band back together for another 48 hours of madness...
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