A new twist on an old favorite…

So, I had every intention of shooting a short film that would tie in with the feature film Dark of Winter, almost like a companion piece.

But then, inspiration struck, that dirty bitch, and, as always, I started to think about actually re-working the opening of the film so as to include the short as a part of it.

Thus, the “prologue” was born.

So we shot it and I started re-thinking the structure of the feature.  Would this work?  I knew that I would have to establish something in the new opening that would carry through to the original film so that the new prologue would fit and not be a distraction.  So I found breaks that were already in  the picture and added “Chapters” to them.  Executive producer Andrew C. Schwabe suggested we go one further and add quotes from well known people under the chapter headings.  Excellent idea!

So now we have a prologue, two chapters, and an epilogue.

But does it work?

I like to think so.  The tone of the film is still the same.  The big difference is now that some of the motivations have changed.  It’s an interesting exploration into the bizarro world that we’ve created, and I think it also opens things up for further exploration.  And that excites me as an artist.

The BIG screen…

Our film in lights!

Last night we screened Dark of Winter in it’s newest cut just south of downtown Pittsburgh at the Hollywood Theater in Dormont.  The turnout was good and we got some great feedback from the audience members at the Q&A that followed.

More importantly (for me, anyway), it was the first time that I got to watch the entire film put together since the last cut (I don’t recommend doing this).  The closest I came was a couple of days prior, when I was still making changes and waiting to grab a close up shot of a gun that Executive Producer Andrew C. Schwabe owns.  Just to note: Andrew also suggested a close up shot of a watch that would solve a transition problem that we were having.  I got the shot and cut it into the film somewhere around 12:30 AM the day of the premiere (I don’t recommend doing this, either).

Anyway, despite my nerves (which were in overdrive for some odd reason) I thought the film came together nicely.  It’s an entirely different animal now.  Still ambiguous?  Yes.  Still odd?  Definitely.  Still a mindf–k of a mystery?  Wouldn’t have it any other way.

What we did add was more information hinting at how much further that entire thing can go.  The biggest problem with the earlier, original cut of the film was that it was too easy to dismiss everything that happens as a result of insanity.  Which is fine, if that’s all that you want to bring to the table.  But that’s also boring as shit and too easy.  Dark of Winter can be many things, but it shouldn’t be easy.

It was great, as always, to see the film in a theater.  It was nerve wracking to see it in a theater with a paying audience.  But we had some fantastic comments and theories given to us at the end of the screening, so I know that we did alright with our crazy little psychological horror thriller.

Expanding the universe…

I’m currently writing a short film script that will expand upon the universe we get a glimpse of in Dark of Winter.  It will tie in to the feature in certain respects and, hopefully, refer back to and answer some lingering questions.  Possibly.

Part of the beauty of Dark of Winter is the fact that a good deal of the details are totally open to interpretation.  It’s a dream like film in that you bring your own baggage to the table, so to speak, and imprint part of yourself on what the picture is about.  Make sense?  Okay!

So in writing this short film, I’m trying to provide some new clues as to whatI think is going on, but not necessarily what actuallyis going on.  So it gets a little bit confusing.

But that’s okay, you know, because it wouldn’t be interesting any other way.  Am I right?

Exactly.

ICON 31 AND SHOWING DARK OF WINTER TO AN ACTUAL AUDIENCE

Matt Porter, Kyle Jason, and David C. Snyder outside of the screening room at the end of Icon 31

This past weekend, actors Kyle Jason and Matt Porter, Executive Producer Kim Garnett, and I took Dark of Winter to ICON 31, a science fiction convention held at Stony Brook University in New York.  We were the last minute addition (many thanks to Ken Deep!) to their screening schedule and it was exciting to get to show the film to an audience that really had no idea as to what to expect.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that we were the last minute addition, the film wasn’t as prominently featured in the press materials as some of the other events.  However, a little leg work and some informative promotional materials got us a few extra viewers added to those people who had already tracked us down on the schedule and wanted to check out our very particular psychological horror film.

Saturday night’s premiere had anywhere from 20-30 people show up.  We screened the film from a DVD I had prepared for the event and, due to the set up, it looked like garbage.  I told the audience during the Q&A afterwards that the film did indeed look better than what they saw and they completely understood.

Some people walked out, which was to be expected, and I had hoped more people would’ve stayed for the Q&A.  But the people that did stay gave us great feedback, asked questions, and really seemed receptive to the film.  There was even a Michael Bay joke for good measure.  This reaffirmed to me that we do indeed have an audience for the film, which is an issue that crosses every filmmaker’s mind at one point or another during the making of a picture.

On Sunday we screened the film from a hi-def file on my laptop and, although a little bit dark, it was a much more accurate presentation.  The down side was that we only had a couple of people come through for the screening (including one guy from the night before!) and Q&A.  I’m not really broken up about it, though, because it was the last day of the Con and people were just trying to get in as much as they could as everything shut down and thinned out.  The upside was that one of the audience members said that the film had shades of Donnie Darko, Richard Kelly’s celebrated cult film from 2001, a reference that I hadn’t thought of before.  I love Donnie Darko, so I’ll take that any day.

Was it a success?  Was it worth it?  Hell yes.  As nerve wracking as it is to screen your film for an audience, that’s the whole point, and it gives you pointers and feedback as to what works and what doesn’t.  It’s a valuable part of the editing process as long as you use it for what it’s worth.  I know that a lot of directors loathe the test screening process because of the way the studios handle it.  But if you screen your film for your intended audience, then it can be an extremely useful tool.

But it is still nerve wracking…

DARK OF WINTER and the Influence of David Lynch’s LOST HIGHWAY

The gestation period of Dark of Winter was a short one.  The film came about very quickly once I was able to nail down which direction we were headed in.  It actually started out as something altogether different, but I was having some problems figuring out the details of the narrative for my original idea, and so I decided to concentrate on one storyline instead of the three that I was trying to write.  That’s right around the time that it started to become the psychological horror film that it is today.

When I decided to go in the new direction, I found that my influences changed as well.  I started to think about the work of David Lynch, specifically his 1997 film Lost Highway.  A “neo-noir”, as it has been called, Lost Highway is typical Lynch and one of my favorite films in his oeuvre.  Filled with unsolvable mysteries, riddles, and striking imagery, Lost Highway can get under your skin if you let it.  But what has always fascinated me most about the film is its very unique structure.

The film circles back upon itself, a kind of cinematic moebius strip.  As frustrating as an idea it is, displacing time in the narrative, it always struck me as something incredible and it turned out to be one of my favorite things about the picture.  As I began to write Dark of Winter I realized that I wanted to attempt my own take at this structure and see where the story could go within those confines.

I also did some research to see if there were any other films that were designed the same way and I fortuitously discovered Milcho Manchevski’s 1994 film Before the Rain.  I had heard about the movie as it had been released on DVD by The Criterion Collection (a bit of an obsession of mine) but I had never seen it.  So I dropped it in my Netflix queue and it arrived the day before we began principle photography.

Before the Rain was a revelation for me.  The cinematography is gorgeous (Criterion should seriously upgrade it to Blu Ray) and the performances are fantastic (I actually did a shot in Dark of Winter as an homage to Before the Rain, but I’ll leave you in the audience to figure out which one it is!).  And just as I suspected, the film circles back upon itself, similar to Lost Highway, but not nearly as bizarre.

Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not big on horror films.  They also know that I am big on circumventing classic cinematic tropes and forms by putting my own take on them.  Dark of Winter began as a dramatic character piece that eventually morphed into a psychological horror movie.  I didn’t set out to do that; it just happened.  I’m not even sure exactly how it happened, but as it took on its own life (as films often do) it just headed in that direction.  And as we started shooting, another film lodged itself in the back of my mind.

But I’ll save that one for another day…