Behind the Scenes of SLASH! (1/2)
Musings of a murderous game show
TAKE A SEAT, FOLKS!
Or don’t. I’m not the boss of you. But if you’d like to stick around as I unpack the entire process of making a slasher horror comedy game show short film, you may want to get comfy. Cause I got quite the yarn to spin.
You good? Relaxed? Got some snacks? Cool cool cool.
Let’s dig in…
THE IDEA
Ideas can come from just about anywhere. A movie. A comic. A song. A shower. A walk around campus…
This one came from my wall.
Three-ish years ago, I bought these four (technically five, if you count the unpictured purple monkey one) vintage masks at Spirit Halloween on the basis of which I make most of my purchase decisions—I thought they looked cool.
Jump to a few months ago, and I’m walking around campus, mentally fishing for an idea to pitch to Greenlight Creative Productions. I set three criteria for myself:
It’s gotta be cool.
It’s gotta be fun.
It’s gotta be doable with little to no money.
After many laps around the south oval, I drew a blank. I came home, flopped into my desk chair, and opened a doc. The caret blinked at me for a long time before I finally locked eyes with one of the masks. Then another. And another. And quickly, the solutions to my criteria came to mind…
Slashers are cool. Multiple slashers—a TEAM of slashers—would be even cooler…
Game shows are fun. Maybe a killer game show…a crazy host…a weird announcer…
I already have masks. We have access to a studio at OU. And my house…
I mixed it all together, baked it at 350° for 22 minutes, and I had a logline:
“A maniacal game show host sends slashers into a drunkard’s house to kill him in front of a live audience…”
I was off to the races and had a rough draft of the script done the next day. Here’s a taste:
THE PITCH
At this point, I didn’t have the title yet, so I pitched it as Slasher Gameshow—very on the nose, I know. I put all the sauce into a google slides presentation, complete with animations, graphic design, and a healthy sprinkle of mood pics from pinterest.
Here's a link to the FULL PRESENTATION if you’d like to check ‘er out!
The pitch went great. I could feel the buzz for it. As my sound mixer and editor extraordinaire Zach put it…I mogged.
A week or two later, it was chosen, and I retitled it…
(Bonus: I actually pitched a second short film, Bonehead, which was also chosen as a side project. The story is a spinoff/prequel to Slash! that features one of the killers. Basically, I made a baby horror cinematic universe. You can read about Bonehead here!)
PRE-PRODUCTION
I was a new director, and with a project of this size, I figured it’d be wise to share the load. I asked for my friend Anna to help, who had a lot more technical knowledge than me. And sure enough, we became the perfect pair of co-directors!
One of our first orders of business was casting. We put out a call:
With the help of our wonderful casting directors, JJ and Chris, we held auditions at OU with a pretty sweet turnout. Many were drama students and local actors, with a few tapes from all over the place.
The moment Anna and I saw Brent’s tape, we knew he was going to be our Roger—the lead character and slashee.
After a few rounds, we had our cast: Brent Longmire as Roger Donnelly, Malachi Campbell as our crazy game show host Jerry Graves, and Xander Cole as his weird henchman/announcer Iggy.
While that was going on, together with our cinematographer Becca, we churned out 21 PAGES (125 individual images) of storyboards. I put my illustration background to good use here. I mean, basically, we had the whole story as a comic book before it was a movie!
I also threw down some righteous character designs. Here’s how I imagined some of the slashers…
As you can see here, one of the slashers was meant to be… well… big. I wanted him to be a lumbering klutz towering over everyone. But in the pool of actors who auditioned, nobody really fit the bill.
Solution? I called by 6’6” bodybuilder of a cousin and asked if he’d play Big Frank.
His response? “Yeah dude! Do I need to put on any more size?”
We but some boots and heel inserts on him, boosted him to about 6’8”, and he was ready to rock.
They were ALL ready to rock 😈
Our slasher cast: Lucas Booth reprising Bonehead, Taylor Stephens as The Demon, Camden Colaw as Big Frank, and Rhegan Burkart as Black Cat.
We put together our crew. We nailed down our locations. Hired some graphic designers. Battened down the hatches. Hoisted the main sails.
And it was time to embark on…
PRODUCTION
Okay, Substack is telling me I’m nearing the length limit here. So I’m gonna split this sucka into two parts.
Thank you for reading, and don’t touch that remote! 📺🔪🩸🩸🩸
This was such a treat to read as a comic artist and huge slasher fan. Looking forward to part 2!