ZOMBIE ZOMBIE: Driving This Road Until Death Sets You Free (2008)
First non-official video clip made for Zombie Zombie, the electrifying French duo of Etienne Jaumet and Cosmic Neman. Directed by Simon Gesrel and Xavier Ehretsmann thanks to their favourite toys… the GI Joes! The video is an hommage to the director AND soundtrack composer John Carpenter, especially one of his masterpieces: THE THING.

• DN EP 106: ZOMBIE ZOMBIE: Driving Clip - Simon Gesrel & Xavier Ehretsmann
• Moros Eros: On My Side - Jesse Ewles
• 8 - Benjamin Ducroz
• _grau - Robert Seidel
• What We’ve Found Out About Stem Cells - Richard Fenwick

Update: ‘Edited’ highlights of the Q&A with James Watkins are now available.

I’ve literally stepped out of the Eden Lake screening 10 minutes ago and instead of a relaxing train ride back to Brighton with my TV choice de jour, the blistering rage whirling around my brain is preventing me from any other distraction until I fully vent.

OK, so with an opening like that there’s little ambiguity as to the direction I’m about to head, but I just want to pull back for a second to make a few things clear, lest you believe this outburst comes from a place of anti-horror prudish disgust. I like horror films. I’m not adverse to violence or blood or terror. In fact whilst I wouldn’t call myself a horror aficionado, I do genuinely enjoy being petrified and subsequently running round the house flicking on lights and checking locks. So I’m always up for a good scare, especially when the premise relies on the fundamental fact that people are just plain wrong to each other whenever the opportunity arises.

My main problems with Eden Lake are twofold - the first is laced throughout the film itself and the second came after in the Q&A with writer/director James Watkins. Anyone who has watched even a handful of horror films, unless they’ve been astoundingly luckily in their viewing choices, has come across the cardinal sin that turns tension to exasperation - stupid characters. Characters who just don’t know when to pack up their shit and get the hell out. Protagonists Jenny (Kelly Reilly) & Steve (Michael Fassbender) are firmly in that camp. There are more than a couple of occasions when things are yet to escalate to their full grim potential that they blindly continue on their crash and (literally) burn course when anyone with the slightest modicum of sense would have chosen to leave and live to fight another day. With films such as [Rec] or The Descent (as a side note Watkins is the writer of The Descent: Part 2 which I admit I’m already unfairly pre-judging as a pointless cash in) it was starting to look like filmmakers had grasped the concept that your characters don’t have to be blind to the escalating situations around them to be placed in harms way. If I spend most of the film throwing my hands up, tutting or rolling my eyes then I’m not rooting for the leads to get out safe, I’m hoping they’ll end up as heads on pikes preferably sooner than later.

And it’s not just Jenny and Steve who are ineffectual, the hounding gang - with a completely wasted Thomas Turgoose as Cooper - seem to alternate from bloodthirsty psychos to a lacklustre gaggle trailing behind on a school cross country run whenever Watkins wants them to chase, but not yet catch Jenny - bikes versus running anyone? Even when they do catch her all it takes is a handy petrol can to create a wall of fire so immense she can skip off into the forest again ready for the next set piece. I really do have to apologise to the poor guy sat next me whose Eden Lake experience was punctuated by my barely contained outbursts.

Now whilst the film didn’t overly impress I think it was the Q&A session that really tipped me over the edge. I was perplexed that some of the largely press audience were praising Eden Lake as a shocking, tense thriller with underlying social commentary, but coupled with the fact that Watkins believes he’s somehow broken the horror mould made it all almost too much to bare. At one point a critic picked him up on his assertion that the film was crafted to highlight the moral ambiguity of Jenny’s attempts to defend herself by causing harm to the gang when she encounters Cooper alone, but to me the lingering scene was yet another misstep almost as egregious as the ill conceived proposal scene.

I realise there’s a certain amount of buzz around Eden Lake and early reviews have been fairly positive but I don’t care. Anything that infuriates me enough to actually write whilst frothing from the mouth can’t be good!

• The Host with the Most
• Overnight
• Ashes of Time Redux - Wong Kar Wai
• ZOMBIE ZOMBIE: Driving Clip - Simon Gesrel & Xavier Ehretsmann
• We’ve been ‘P.A.P. Smeared’

It’s with complete unashamedness that I admit we discovered this week’s guest Dan Schneidkraut from our well mined source of the Filmstock Film Festival when El Vez spotted Daddy’s Time, Part two of Dan’s Seeking Wellness: Suffering Through Four Movements quadrilogy of films. My interest in the films only grew when all four parts arrived and I discovered that it was going to take some work on my part to fully engage with their themes. Dan joins us to discuss challenging cinema, the strengths of video and a lifetime ban from the 48hr Film Challenge.

Seeking Wellness: Suffering Through Four Movements Materials
Production Stills
Cup of Friendship, Shrine of Scars Treatment
Daddy’s Time Shooting Schedule
Final Project Shooting Schedule
Malignant Love Shooting Schedule

Showlinks
Seeking Wellness: Our Suffering In Four Movements
Water Passing Through Weeds
Filmstock
Stan Brakhage
Yasujiro Ozu
Chris Mars
Earth
Sunn O)))
Pachelbel’s Canon
Lasse Marhaug

• Seeking Wellness - Dan Schneidkraut
• Filmstock #8
• DN EP 094: Das Dores - Gabriel Tupinamba
• DN EP 069: Somewhere, Anywhere - Chris Dundon
• DN EP 067: Four Eyed Monsters - Arin Crumley & Susan Buice

Seeking Wellness: Suffering Through Four Movements (2007)
A series of conceptual video projects exploring ideas relating to victimization, recovery and empathy.

Part One: Cup of Friendship, Shrine of Scars
Part Two: Daddy’s Time
Part Three: Malignant Love
Part Four: Final Project

• DN EP 098: Seeking Wellness - Dan Schneidkraut
• Now You See Me, Now You Don’t - Attila Szasz
• Four Eyed Monsters - Arin Crumley & Susan Buice
• Dead Bird - Brek Taylor & Clare Tinsley
• And the Colors Are Like Summer & Das Dores - Gabriel Tupinamba

Today I’m joined by Dan Gitsham to discuss his dark comedy, horror, Film Eight which is quite fitting as I’m recording this on Friday the 13th. Dan describes Film Eight as a run, hide, run, film which I suppose categorises the coming section as chat in the talk, chat, talk structure of Directors Notes.

Film Eight Materials
Stills

Showlinks
Sketchbook Pictures MySpace
15 Must-Have Freeware Programs for Filmmakers
Bang! Short Film Festival
EM Media
The Decent
Sony DSR PD-150
Simon Ellis - Bubtowers
Joost
Halloween Short Film Festival
Soft For Digging
Primer

• Film Eight - Dan Gitsham
• Filmstock #8
• The Ten Steps - Brendan Muldowney
• DN Festival: Birds Eye View 2007
• DN EP 106: ZOMBIE ZOMBIE: Driving Clip - Simon Gesrel & Xavier Ehretsmann

Film Eight (2006)
One man’s incredible ability to make every wrong decision you could possibly imagine and then some! A black and blue comedy where anything goes!

• DN EP 044: Film Eight - Dan Gitsham
• ZOMBIE ZOMBIE: Driving Clip - Simon Gesrel & Xavier Ehretsmann
• SotW: I Love Sarah Jane
• Seeking Wellness - Dan Schneidkraut
• Now You See Me, Now You Don’t - Attila Szasz

Making counting to ten one of the creepiest things ever shown on screen, Brendan Muldowney’s The 10 Steps will have you going to bed with the lights on for the foreseeable future. Shot in Dublin over three days, The Ten Steps uses the horror movie staples of a haunted house, lone baby sitter and unreliable fuse box located in the cellar (where else!) to great effect, steadily building the tension to a nerve-jangling high.

Muldowney approached The Ten Steps with the regular horror clichés close at hand, but tempered with a conscious determination to execute them in a ‘less is more’ style that taps into and exploits the power of an audience’s mind to create suspense, tension and terror. “The idea was to begin in a well acknowledged and accepted way for a horror film, with lots of clichés such as the old house and the baby sitter, with a big scare at the beginning followed by some humour to lull an audience into certain expectations. The film then follows the well travelled path of other haunted house films with the back story of the Devil and the “don’t go into the cellar” narrative. The point was to set up an expectation for the end by building the tension to the max and then delivering a non-visual, but cerebral ending that makes the audience think, rather than showing them ‘the monster’.”

To realise this, photographers Michael O’Donovan and Tom Comerford shot the haunted house sequences on super 16mm, using a combination of slow fluid movements and plush lighting to create tension in the opening scene, giving way to a handheld camera style that ramps up the edginess once the heroine finds herself plunged into darkness. Steadicam was used exclusively for the POV shots, spawning the idea of an evil presence creeping round the house, evocative of Sam Raimi’s ‘evil cam’ in the Evil Dead trilogy. Deep breaths and voices were added on the soundtrack to further build character for these shots. As over half of The Ten Steps was lit by candlelight alone, extensive stock test were performed before the combination of double-wick candles and Kodak 200 stock captured the correct level of light and shadow.

Contrast was added and the colours enriched during the grade at Screen Scene. In a direct nod to Robert Wise’s The Haunting, a matte was drawn around the house with a bright rim picking out its silhouette against the night sky, intensifying the purple / indigo colours. The other major effect work was a veneer / oval-shaped mask placed over the restaurant and kitchen scenes, darkening the edges of frame subtly to draw the eye into the centre of the picture. The music score was composed by top Irish composer Steven McKeon with live musicians following his abstract ideas influenced by György Ligeti, whose music is based on texture and sound density. McKeon also used knives on piano strings and hammers on the keys to create a violent atmosphere

The 10 Steps was funded under the Galway Film Centre / RTE short film awards with a budget of €9500, and money for a 35mm blow-up was provided by The Irish Film Board after hearing of its selection to the London Film Festival. Brendan Muldowney has written and directed eight short films since graduating and is currently developing three features (Death, Savage and The Dark and Stormy Life of Jonathan Scales) with long time producer Conor Barry through SP Films.

- Originally published in Showreel, Issue 6 (Winter 2004)

• The Darkside - Shane Sheils
• Remote - John Burns
• Mercy - Candida Scott Knight
• DN Special: Screen South - Digital Shorts 2007
• DN EP 078: Garage - Lenny Abrahamson