chiller blog

At 9 p.m. EST/PST on Halloween night, Chiller unveils the spooky-freaky-eerie winners of Dare 2 Direct 2.

You gotta love a short film contest whose categories include Creepiest Character, Scariest Makeup, and Best Picture. Last year’s winner, Dan McClure’s Rita, has one of those titles that’s perversely amusing to constantly repeat to yourself when no one’s watching you. Go ahead. “Rita.”

Keep going. You’ll get it after a while.

Rita’s a really inventive, compellingly-produced short film – parts Japanese horror, parts post-production effects bake. I hope it serves Dan well. I don’t know if he did it on Final Cut Pro in his garage or with edit-in HD cams “borrowed” from a friend’s TV station late shift (I don’t Dan, I’m only speculating). But he did it.

When Chiller began Dare 2 Direct, the execs thought a call for entries might yield a couple boxfuls. Instead, hundreds submitted. This year, you can take that sum and take the calculator out of the desk drawer.

Fans making movies: it’s the ultimate self-reflexive, fueled by affordable technology. What’s goofing off with a Sony 8mm and posting on YouTube to some is a passion project to others. Not that there’s anything unhealthy about goofing off with visions of your own mortality.

Back in the day, Siskel & Ebert predicted that an obscure fourteen year-old would create a masterpiece on her parents’ video camera. Now the odds for those who can reach for their visions – but may live in a small town in a Right to Work state, minus film and television infrastructure -- have certainly upped. Throw in deferments, call in favors, sign a SAG Low Budget Agreement and you’re suddenly working in the circumstances that bred The Blair Witch Project and Open Water.

For those who keep reaching, that initial short film is a virtual business card.

When a development exec or industry vet views an aspiring filmmaker’s short film, she or he is essentially saying, “I assume what you’re going to show me is the very best you can do. I assume the images you create are both reflections of your talents and your particular voice.”

And underneath that?

“Pleeeeeease, pleeeeease, pleeeeeease be good. I’m sick of wading through @#$%. Show me a great, fresh, simple concept with atypical writing choices. Don’t just manipulate or shock your audience; invoke them. Direct actors – not your friends – to be natural. And do it while respecting our taste, intelligence, and sensibility. Because somewhere down the line, I’ve got a project. I’ve got to get that project right because so much money and, yes, my job and – ohhhhh, yes – future career are all on the line. There’s no room for error. I’ve been searching for that right someone whose instincts are similar to what we’re going for…”

If you knew all that and dreamed you were a production company’s solution, would you risk putting your name on some hack job that involved Karo syrup and red food coloring, not to mention the old “knife-in-the-armpit” death trick?

Many play. A special few ascend. It’s never a game, but it pays to know the rules. And what’s come before – genre trends, cycles, archetypes. You can’t make the next Citizen Kane if you’ve never seen Citizen Kane.

The short was the original form of the modern motion picture. It’s relevance has morphed from nickelodeons to cliffhanger serials (hello, Indiana Jones) to wartime newsreels to Bugs Bunny to student films to portfolio/thesis films. Even anthology pieces. Still other features first began as shorts. Guess what movie was yielded by “Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade.”

Many careers had their birth in short films. Charlie Chaplin escaped from Mack Sennett’s nickelodeon drivel to help elevate silent pictures into art. Years before directing studio tentpoles, Tim Burton landed on the radar with a little number called “Frankenweenie.” “South Park” – reeeeeally an acquired taste -- began as a short called “The Spirit of Christmas.”

Established stars even utilize the form for passion projects or as calling cards to direct. Jodie Foster and Christine Lahti each had a definite hand in separate Oscar-winning shorts.

So you’re in good company. Except if you’re with that creepy character from last year’s Dare 2 Direct entrant: the Mary Poppins-ish nanny who killed people with her umbrella. Now THAT was funny.