The Terror (in 3-D)
The video embedded here is actually not the 3-D film, since it was 27 minutes long and assumably most people don't have 3-D glasses lying readily next to their computer. So you'll have to take my word for it: the film was in 3-D. It really was. What you'll see here instead is the trailer for the film, which we used to promote our showing of the event the Sunday before it aired.
While I've been using this space on each video page to explain the roots of all of these project, there's simply no way I could tell you the full story of how I ended up making a half-hour 3-D horror spoof for a church function in a few paragraphs. So let me sum up.
It occurred to someone (not me) that it would be very cool if, during our Halloween series, we had a 3-D horror movie that played instead of the sermon. Everyone agreed the idea of everyone wearing a set 3-D glasses staring at the screen sounded awesome. So it was decided that I would write and direct a half-hour horror spoof that could work instead of a sermon, and figure out a way to make it 3-D.
Oh, boy.
The long and short of it was this: I did it. I did some research and worked with our chief engineer, Stephen Peters, to build a 2-camera rig that would let me make 3-D footage, which I then tore apart and rebuilt again, and again, and again, until I had it perfectly. I wrote a script, worked with my friend and drama expert Dori Barber to cast actors, shot hours and hours of hi-def footage, spent hours and hours importing the tapes, and then spent what turned out to be a very long month editing the footage into a finished movie, finishing the whole odyssey with a 100-hour-straight edit-a-thon to get the movie ready for opening night.
In the spirit of absolute disclosure, I have to admit: I don't think the movie was everything it could have been. It never succeeded in finding a steady balance between engaging drama and spoofy joking, it either wasn't quite campy enough or not quite scary enough, it's hard to say where it missed. It was a disappointment to me - people laughed and enjoyed themselves and were quite complimentary afterwards, but it didn't blow anyone away liked I'd hoped it would.
But it some sense, the achievement was in accomplishing something this gigantic: I wrote, shot, directed, produced, and edited a half-hour movie, then converted the whole thing to 3-D, and all for about $75 (we didn't even use new tapes for the movie, we just taped over old ones). Our celebration dinner after the movie played cost significantly more than the whole movie did.
While I've spent most of this story talking about myself, I really couldn't have finished this thing without a lot of help. I've already mentioned Stephen and Dori's work on this (and I haven't said nearly enough about Dori, who walked with me every step of the way on the project), but I'd also like to give credit to Emily Bell, who was our lead actress in this project and donated huge chunks of time to the project for no money at all. Also to Brett Marko, who turned out to be one of the scariest dead Southern preachers I've ever met.