RAISING THORN : Why I'm Glad my 1st Feature was My 3rd Feature.

4 years ago today I handed over the first draft of a script to my producer and partner Anna, I had been working on it since I was about 15 and on 29th of February 2012 I finally finished it. The date was important, I had set it as a deadline almost four years earlier, because the films story took place on February 29th, it seemed fitting. 

In all honesty I always thought Legacy of Thorn (Known as Thorn then) would be my first low budget feature, but as fate would have it, it was my third. Looking back now at all the delays and mishaps that led to the film taking almost 10 years to get off the ground it all seems like a blessing in disguise. The film happening when it did was great for a lot of reasons, the main one being, that, until that point, I hadn't really been ready to make it.

I had come up with the story when I was pretty young, initially starting life as a Halloween fan film idea of sorts, I quickly went a different direction, taking the elements from my idea that were factual and therefore I could use them with out a law suit (mainly the nordic rune elements that inspired Halloweens later sequels) and then starting with everything else from scratch. Overall it was a pretty simple concept, Kind of Halloween meets The Terminator (Two films which I always felt went hand in hand in terms of tone) but told between two time zones that ran against each other. 

The problem I always had with the traditional 'Slasher' set up, was that they always have a strong opening and then 40 minutes of downtime before they got to the 'good stuff'. The solution I eventually came to was to think of it as two films. One set on February 29th 2008 and one on February 29th 2012, the first playing backwards and the second forward. This way, not only could I break up the downtime, but I could essentially conceal important elements in the story that would feel otherwise mundane. Of course, 15 year old me would have been able to understand any of that. 

So as I tried to get the project off the ground, It never seemed to work quite how I imagined it, over the years I would try and make it work, but at the time didn't have the correct understanding of screenwriting and story structure to do so and so I focused my attention on other things. I was disheartened, because I'd always imagined it would be my first 'proper' feature. Another disguised Blessing.  

Eventually, over 10 years later, after making a butt load of horrible short films and some ok ones, I felt a little more confident that I had the filmmaking tools to make it work. By this time I was in preproduction on my actual first feature 'Creepsville' that I had started to develop with another writer after we graduated. Of course, I still wasn't sure I was ready and so I decided to makes another short film to help us get our heads round using the gear we'd be shooting on. 

I dusted off the old script for short film version of Thorn I'd written (Essentially a scene taken from the bigger movie), another writer friend of mine asked if he could polish it up, and then we shot it in an evening in my friends garage, we put it out there and people dug it, it even won first prize in the Scary or Die competition in 2009 against some pretty amazing entries. It was at that point that I started to feel like 'Thorn' should have been my first feature, and again I felt disheartened. Once again, it was a blessing in disguise. 

Creepsville came and went, It was a tough shoot and that was for a relatively simple concept. We got to the end, but the shoot had been a huge mess, After graduating University a year before, that was still a shoot that I've always considered my 'True Film School'. The film suffered in a lot of ways from my lack of experience. I thought to myself, this could have been 'Thorn', I could have fucked that up, and I felt less disheartened.

In 2009 Post on Creepsville was underway and taking a long time (I was fairly hand offs with it) and rather than sit around waiting I started working on the idea for my next film. "This time" I thought "It's sure to be Thorn". 

Then out of the blue I got wind of two films that were in production that sounded scarily similar to my 2005 feature script 'Slasher House'. I panicked, SH was one of the best ideas I'd ever had (make of that what you will) and it was a pretty low budget screenplay. One location, small cast. I realised it was now or never and I polished up the script and moved the film into preproduction in a bid to 'Get there first'. (Ironically the two film never even went under the lens). 

Thorn ended up on the back burner, but this time it felt a little better. See I had planned for Slasher House to be an ensemble movie and the 4th in a series. Thorn being 1 of 3 leading up to it, The other 2 being Hollower and Cleaver : Killer Clown. This would mean that I would have to change my whole series structure, but the upside was, Thorn played a big part in the Slasher House script. I decided that Slasher House would serve better as an introduction to these characters and we could tell their stories later on. Which we did.

Legacy of Thorn (2014)

Slasher House was shot in 2010/2011 and locked picture in 2012, the day after the Premier I receive dozens of calls and messages asking of there was was going to be a Thorn movie. By the time it came out on DVD in my homeland (The UK) Thorn was already an audience favourite. Now I felt like if there was a time for the Thorn movie, it was now, but whilst making the film, I'd had an inkling this would be the case.

Like I said at the beginning, a few months earlier on February 29th I had handed the first draft of a script to Anna and during this time I had been working on getting the final script ready. The script was HUGE and there was no way that I, as an inexperienced filmmaker, could have made it as a first feature, I mean the finale features a goddam Helicopter for crying out loud. 

The true blessing was that the film allowed itself to be ready before it would allow me to make it and I'm glad it did. Legacy of Thorn is one my proudest filmmaking achievements and had I made it earlier I'm not sure I'd be able to say that.

In February 2013 we started preproduction of Legacy of Thorn and one year later it Premiered in London on February 28th. Of course there was a whole adventure along the way, but that is another story for another Leap Year.

MJ

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LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION : Getting The Most Out Of Your Set

READ THIS** Ok once again, this is just my approach to filmmaking, its not here to cause offence or tell you you're doing it wrong or that i'm doing it right, its just here to share my approach to the process. There is no right way, if this all seems to basic for you then maybe you don't need to read it, or it might serves as a nice refresher for you, it purpose however is to help people who don't know where to begin. But once again this is just how I do things and you don't have to listen to it. 

Locations are extremely important when working on any film. However if you're working on a low budget movie, it can make or break your film. I've lost count of the amount of films I've seen filmed in someone's mom's kitchen, living room, back yard, the field out the back of thier house. I'm not judging, you have to work with what you've got, I mean the sheer amount of movies I shot as a teenager in these kinds of environments is staggering, But it really helped me learn many filmmaking lessons, the most important one being, a good location is everything. 

FINDING LOCATIONS

When I was writing Creepsville, I spend a good few weeks wondering around at night, To judge what the locations would actually look like after dark. It would amaze you the amount of sets I've been on where people have done a recce during the day and then been surprised to find that it was completely unusable after dark. So I waited till the environments were how I would want to use them and then wandered around finding interesting locations to shoot in, places that were well lit or just looked interesting. Then I looked at which of those we could shoot legally (without a permit) and then chose my locations around that. 

For one of the films set pieces I knew that I wanted to use a garage space that they had at the university. I'd used it in my short film Before The Dawn (2006) and it had added incredible production value to my little low budget short and knowing I had access to it in the evenings, I wrote it in. We spent about 4 nights shooting one night inside and then 3 nights on the exterior before our lead took ill for a couple of weeks, knocking us back and behind schedule. 

LOSING LOCATIONS

The Original Garage Scene from Creepsville

About a week later I was wandering past the garage on my way to the University and noticed that the garage looked exteremly light inside. I got closer, only to find that they had completely removed the roof. I was in a panic as we still had about 4 more interior shots to tie the whole inside and outside scenes together. The next day I returned to find that the whole building had just gone, just like that. No warning, no nothing. We couldn't complain, as they had been kind enough to let us use it for free. But we did lose one of the biggest, most expensive looking scenes in the movie. Which was down to some solid acting by two of our actors and of course the huge expansive realism of the location.

The less ideal Reshoot Scene set in House

Luckily one of the most important things about shooting movies is 'Always have a back up', especially when it comes to Locations. We had to re shoot the scene in an abandoned house (which we had looked at for choice when scouting) about a month later, it still worked, but not on the same scale. We also lost our only real stunt sequence in the movie because of it. But more on that another time.

The biggest loss, was that the garage was a working garage during the day, and boy did it look like it. That added so much production value that we just couldn't have put in ourselves building it as a set, there were old fridges, trees cuttings mattresses, two large pick up trucks and oil and dirt everywhere,  it was incredible and it felt, well, real. Because it was.

USING LOCATIONS AS A CHARACTER

EXT. SLASHER HOUSE

INT. SLASHER HOUSE

When we came to shooting Slasher House, we began to struggle finding a building that was run down enough, yet safe enough to let us shoot in throughout the UK. We sat down and started to talk about building the set, as a bunch of interchangeable panels. It wouldn't be ideal and we would lose the realism that I wanted for the film. In my eyes the house had always been a character in the film, an ominous presence and I felt that bulding it on a set would see us lose that. 

Luckily, thanks to our leading man Adam Williams, we found an abandoned prison on the Isle Of Man, who, after a bit of persuasion, allowed us to shoot there for a small price. Of course we had to get our cast and crew out to an isle off the coast of England, but, once again, thats a whole other story. The location was everything I was looking for, it had a character all of its own, that we couldn't have artificially created in a million years. It may have cost us about a third of our budget, but hell, it worth it. 

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DOUBLING UP LOCATIONS

When it came to finding locations for Legacy. Of Thorn, we had to be a bit smarter. It was written around 2 main locations, but in reality was probably about 5 or 6. The trick we had to employ here was finding an existing location that served as a potential production base whilst also bring production value to the film whilst at the same time encompassing all the other locations that we needed throughout the film. A warehouse, a hospital ward, a rooftop and some kind of medium sized cabin. A lot to ask, but essential in making a low budget film like Legacy of Thorn work. Boy did we get lucky.

The school that doubled as Avondale High

Our producer Anna managed to get us into an abandoned school complex that housed all but 2 of our locations. It was kind of incredible and, of course, there's nothing that looks more like a school than a school. However because of the size of the complex the other locations, 'the warehouse', 'the rooftop', 'the abandoned outhouse'. They were all there too and they had all been used and then abandoned, and looked horrible, which made them perfect for our movie. 

The school, we had to clean up, as it needed to look operational, which also included us re flooring the gym, whilst also trying to shoot scenes (not fun for sound). 

But everything else was gritty and dirty and perfect for the look of the movie. If we had tried to turn a set into this kind of thing, we would have been well over budget by the end of it and still would have had nowhere near the realism that we wanted. The warehouse room doubled for the store room with some clever shelf movement, but still leaving us with that used looked we wanted.

The Gym we had to refloor for the Cheerleader Massacre

I think when finding locations when you are on a shoe string budget, you have to try and be efficient. If we have one main location, I always try and make sure that we can also house the cast and crew there if possible. This also saves travel headaches, and keeps your head in the game. It also means that you have your actors with you at all times (as long as they are scheduled to be there for a few days) when it comes to quick retakes or ADR or anything like that. 

I understand that getting a location to shoot your movie seems very obvious, but by being meticulous and getting the right location will change everything about your film. It will add expense and style and most of all it will really help your actors get into scene and character and all of this will improve the final product immensely. Or maybe your film takes place in your mom's kitchen, in which case ignore all of the above.

MJ

IF YOU FIND THIS BLOG USEFUL. PLEASE SHARE. You can keep up to date with our filming goings on at our FACEBOOK PAGE :)

ALSO IF YOU'RE BASED IN UK, MICROBUDGET MASSACRE AND THE MILTON KEYNES FILM NETWORK ARE HOSTING THE FIRST OF THIS YEARS SPECIAL 'MYCHO MICROBUDGET MASSACRE MASTERCLASS' LIVE SHOWS ON TUESDAY 8TH MARCH.  

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