0:10  

hopefully you can see and hear me okay, it's pouring rain here in Southern Maine so you know, no internet.


0:17  

Goodness. Yeah. Fingers crossed. Yeah. All right. So run us through this whole process like explain to me, why Scream?


0:28  

Yeah. Oh wow okay well thanks so much for playing and for selecting it! you know I've been a fan of the franchise since the very first film. I was around 10 years old when I saw it and I immediately fell in love with how scary and funny and realistic the first film and really I think many of the sequels work really well, but I felt like even though I was 10 and they were you know, in their early 20s on screen, I saw myself in those characters, people who love scary movies, love talking about them poking fun at them. And I just always loved the movies. So a few years ago was around 2016 already right around this time summer 2016. I woke up in the middle of the night with a great idea for a new because this is before the latest. The fifth film came out in theaters earlier this year. And I just like really thought about it for a while and then finally started writing it. And I even have a long feature film outline this short 25 years afterwards was sort of like the opening of that longer idea. But so this is sort of my own version of Scream five, you know, so yeah,


1:37  

Okay. Okay. Wonderful, wonderful. So when you actually, I guess, chose the the actresses where they are, maybe it's just me. Did you actually base their works according to the characters in the past? Because I'm seeing that girl with like a fantastic jawline.


1:57  

Oh, that's so funny. I love that. You know, um, that's a good question. You know, casting here in New England. It's a smaller market. I moved from New York a couple years ago during the start of COVID. And so living in New England is great, but there are a ton of great actors, you know, it's a smaller market. So it was sort of like I was open to anything. I mean, ideally, I would love it like I would have loved like a redhead. Because there aren't too many redhead women at all in the screen franchise. So I was thinking of course people of color, but again, it's it's very hard. In New England, there's, you know, sadly, a lot of white people, so I didn't have any specific look, you know, but I was very happy with Hallie and Jen and their look because it does fit very well in the Scream franchise. A lot of strong brunette, you know, women. So yeah, that's so funny. Yeah, Holly is gorgeous, that great jawline, beautiful, long, dark hair. And I knew all along that I wanted to kind of do what the third screen film did, but maybe a little bit better because that film is the making of the I don't know if you're familiar, but that was the third film is that is onset of stab three. So there's the stab movies within the screen movies, you know, and so I thought nowadays, we you know, we're seeing lots of reboots still all the time, but we're seeing a lot of TV you know, horror TV so that that's the next wave is now they're making a stab TV show. So I always wanted to kind of play with expectations with is it going to be the younger you know, the assistant, who was our lead or is it the older kind of bossy executive, because we didn't see that many women of that age kind of middle age in the screen franchise, you know, they pop up here and there but they're more kind of side characters. So I kind of wanted to spotlight an older woman who were really following in the opening, you know,


3:44  

Wonderful, Wonderful. And what I noticed you're working with a small space. How was working with the lighting?


3:52  

Yeah, great. Question. Yeah, so this location, even though I loved it, it was an awesome location. This was our backup because two days before the shoot another location, got cold feet and backed out. So that's why if you see in the credits, I did what Wes Craven did with the very first film because the first film had location issues a few days before shooting as well. In the first film, it says no thanks whatsoever to the Santa Rosa, school board, something like that. And so how crazy it was a weird twist of fate that two days before I got this voicemail and I knew as soon as I got the voicemail was like, oh boy, something's up. You know you just can tell. And so the first choice completely backed out. They realized they had appointments in the office all day and just never told me it was so frustrating. But thank God for this office. It's a shared co working space called oHive in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. They came through and we were able to use that whole area as you could see on a snowy Saturday, in December about seven months ago. And you know, with lighting, we didn't really use any extra lights. We just used that natural office lighting. That's kind of how I am as a filmmaker. I don't really, you know, when when horror films look so beautiful, it's great. You know, don't get me wrong, but sometimes it takes me out of it. And I wanted this like with my other horror films to feel as realistic and kind of raw as possible. So I really wanted us all to kind of be in that typical office setting. Because as you probably know, a lot of production offices and film and TV are not all that glamorous, a lot of them a lot of times they're kind of being rented temporarily. It's sort of thrown together, you know, so it worked out so great. And some of the lights we really couldn't figure out how to turn on. So when you know one of our actresses Hallie who plays a lot of what she's walking down the hallway to get the food and how it's kind of spooky, dark. We couldn't really figure out a way to turn it on and we thought this is brilliant. It's okay if it looks a little grainy because of lack of light. It that made it sell that it's a late night in the office, you know, lots of offices turn off some lights once it's like eight o'clock at night. So yeah, I was super happy with how it turned out. But yeah, we didn't we didn't play around with any lighting. We just use what was available to us. And my great DP Bodie just made it work. And that way we were able to shoot it all in one day. About 10 hours 11 hours on a during a snowstorm.


6:14  

Oh my goodness.


6:17  

Yeah, I ad I'm a first ad on a few different shoots here and there so I usually don't really have an ad I'm kind of director, producer and ad all in one which sometimes is really hard but on a you know shoot like this where it was very small cast very small crew. I think there were maybe maybe like 10 of us total. It's easy to sort of push along and you know, we cut some things when we needed to. But pretty much everything you see was in the script 10 page script.


6:47  

You see I'm here in Los Angeles and it's like almost never heard of before actors to memorize their lines. So you let me know that you probably did not work with cue cards, and you got that time constraint quite well!


7:03  

Yeah, thank you. I mean, yeah, actor. They all were amazing. And Jen who plays our lead, she's Melanie, the, you know, the kind of bossy executive. She was cast just a few days before because that role, as you can imagine, was very hard to cast. It's a hard age to cast because, and I get a lot of actresses that age, you know, they're usually playing either moms or a teacher or a lawyer. Very rarely do they get to be like the boss of a TV show and, and it's sort of set in New York without letting it be known. It's New York, I kind of wanted it to just feel like kind of any city. And it's funny because now the new official scream film takes place in New York, so I'm like, quit copying me. Or at least like give me some money. But yeah, so she was I met with her you know, I was able to see her self tape like literally a week before we got on Zoom for just a quick little read through rehearsal together maybe like that Tuesday night and then we shot on Saturday so she and that's amazing. I should really post on my Instagram she she wrote all of her lines down was like doodling and coming up with like, key words to memorize. I mean, such a proud she also teaches acting so she knows how to do it, you know, really,


8:09  

really. So that makes totally amazing sense that we can't I love the you know, I love how you actually finished with the stream like you obviously know horror should ever go without a scream queen. You know like at that doing sound did nothing peak like you know what, how did you actually level that


8:36  

tone? Oh my gosh, because I also edited this and Nora and I edit social media videos for work you know, so I'm used to I've been editing for years, but I usually don't edit my own shorts because I think I'm a good editor but I'm not an excellent editor. But because this was a fan film there was no way I could really get to many festivals you know, not many festivals like yours. You know even take fan films. Right? So I did it all myself. While I had COVID That was pretty tough. And while I wanted to get it out before the official scream five, or else it would kind of feel a little weird. So I was pushing myself around the holidays. But yeah, some of the sound great sound guy Keegan, who I hired, I've worked with him before. And he let me know like, oh, yeah, that's like it's peeking a little bit. So we did a couple times and he just kept changing some settings. And luckily, the way it worked out because I wanted it to kind of, you know, end with that scream. Because very rarely, again, if you remember the movies very rarely, the first film you have a Drew Barrymore's mother is screaming and then it cuts to her body, you know, but usually the scream is the victim. It's not like another person who finds the body so I wanted to bring it back to that. So yeah, we just did it a few times. And I was able to kind of start having our song creep in as the scream was still going on. So if it did get a little clippy and a little distorted, the music was able to just sort of cover that, you know,


10:02  

that's really helped us with the screenwriting process. I know you mentioned earlier just like how you know your actress would actually added words like be able to kind of refugees What Are there any difficulties in actually developing the script to do actually reads and all that such?


10:24  

Yeah, yeah, I you know, I've written every short that I've, like, directed I've written myself and I've written for other people. So I love writing. The hardest thing about writing is just make like, making time for it, you know, since we all work, other jobs and everything. So that was the trickiest thing. Because like I said, I had this idea of starting in 2016. But I didn't actually like sit down and really start writing it until at least maybe 2019. And then once the news of the official film started coming out as Oh, crap, okay, I really got to like push myself and I want to shoot this, you know, so yeah, the hardest thing was really just trying to get it down to 10 pages Exactly. Because I knew I knew known from experience the most I've ever been able to shoot in one day is 11 pages, you know, because a lot of my work is is dialogue heavy, and that flows pretty well as long as your actors, you know, are prepared and can can memorize and I'm also not like, you know, my work is not the Bible. So I tell every actor I work with, like if you need to tweak a line or two if you if there's a word that really doesn't feel right, change it and I'll let you know if it's a word I really need you to say. You're gonna do it, but it's not set in stone. I'm more than happy to switch things around a little bit. Anything that feels more real to them, since they have to be the ones to convey the reality of it. I'm totally fine. You know? But yeah, the biggest issue was when the location back the first location packed out two days before the ending the death of Melanie was going to be a little different. There was more hallway action. So that was just I don't even think I actually, I just told the crew casting crew like hey, the ending is going to be slightly different now. So we'll just have to figure it out. Because I didn't have time to really rewrite the script. I was buying like clothes for the actresses the night before. So that was I'd say the biggest hurdle is once you write for a location and then that location, you know, vanishes. How do you quickly re kind of worked it in your mind? So you know, so did you ever


12:22  

have to work with wardrobe? Eventually, usually, you know, office settings, everybody has clothes. Yeah. So


12:30  

yeah, so uh, yeah, and it's funny because I just shot another office set, horror film and idea I've had for years based on my experience as a casting director, and that time with 12 actors Note to self I don't recommend having 12 actors and no wardrobe person because I bought a whole bunch of clothes and I couldn't always catch all the continuity and everything. But with this film, it was totally fine. I just had Steven who played the kind of creepy male coworker he was able to just buy a white shirt and I just reimbursed I only really had to buy clothes for jet as Melanie and I just got a couple different options. You know, some that were more business see I kind of liked her in that like kind of bright pink. sweater. It just sort of felt bold, and we could still see the red blood on it. So I just want to luckily I live right near a popular outlet like you know, shopping center so I just went to a bunch of different stores and presented her new clothes as I try them on. See what works for you. I'm open. But yeah, it is nice. To have a wardrobe person. Luckily, I had a great special effects makeup artist, Jordan, who was able to apply great blood on the knife and the knife I bought on Etsy and apply it to her shirt. You don't have to buy copies of everything just in case. So that was also you know, so I was doing the wardrobe as well myself. That time it was Okay this next time with more actors. I don't recommend that. You try to just even if you need it because I also I know your previous filmmaker said, you know he likes to pay everyone I always pay everyone and if I can't pay you, or you know there's no payment I do a barter like on my last short a couple of crew. I couldn't pay them. I didn't I didn't think I really needed them but actually I really did but it wasn't in my budget. So I happily I'm casting their work for free as a trade you know. So yeah, no matter what when you work with me, you are going to get some sort of payment. But even if you can't pay the wardrobe person, when you have a certain kind of cast an amount or there's changes or there's blood just to have that extra set of eyes and figure out some sort of trade, you know,


14:35  

that's fantastic. Well, thank you moving forward with the next film, but yeah, where can we get well, where can we find more of your work? You have a website?


14:47  

Sure. Thank you. Yeah, so So yeah, you can look up MJ p dash p o v.com. I'm on Instagram, Facebook. I really update social media more than my website which I feel like we all probably do now. Right? But you can see some previous horror shorts that I've made. Family history. I'm really proud of that one that's on Amazon Prime and Vimeo on demand and on reverie TV I'm pretty sure it's still free to watch on reverie which is an LGBTQ service for films. There's that there sticks on Amazon Prime. My other short film twin is still on the festival circuit, all whore some of them with a LGBTQ angle. Just because I like to merge those worlds because there are so many queer people that love horror, you know? So yeah, there's a few of that of course this film is on on YouTube. It's my most popular video on on YouTube. So make fan films because it's a genius way to just interact with art with a community that's already there, you know? So there's that and then my new film casting kill. That's the other office set one so that we're entering post production on that. So you'll hopefully see that on the film festival circuit and I think I'm going to do another fan film. Maybe I'll send it your way. That'll be a continuation of I Know What You Did Last Summer another 90s slasher, so we'll see I have some ideas. I might shoot that soon.


16:10  

Please add it into the chat. You're up to actually able to share it with everybody here.


16:16  

Yeah. I'll send you my my Instagram. Go for it. Not everything's there. So thank you very much.


16:28  

Thank you. Enjoy the festival