The Sinister Soliciting of Sackhead Seb: The Undead Head was our big final for Cinematography II. We had to combine all 3 previous projects, Action Sequence, Lighting for Mood, and Scene Mimicry, into one, big, short. Nick, Jalen, and I knew each other pretty well at this point so we knew how to work. We had a great flow during the shoot, time went by so fast, rehearsing set us up for success.
Jalen came up with the concept, title, and designed his awesome Trick’r Treat mask light saber trenchcoat demon character. Nick filmed the opening sequence on his camcorder, and ran from my digicam. He made the film defining contribution of the $20 hotshoe light from Amazon, we wouldn’t have the same film without it. The neon glow blasting from the cam gave this movie its entire look. I storyboarded, plotted the route to run across campus, rolled camera in the chase, and put together my hot topic twink fit. For the Scene Mimicry aspect of the project, I wanted the film to have a 2000s horror game kind of vibe. I want to make more movies that experiment with the camera as a character in the film. Professor Keith suggested I have my hand on screen and scream directions at Nick to make it feel more like a let’s play. This made my role feel more like a real character instead of just shaky camerawork. I wanted more out of this project since it would be my last short (or so I thought) before my thesis, Gracious Boy. I also didn't want to make just another chase sequence. So I decided to compose an original soundtrack for the chase. As a child, I took piano lessons for several years. I used to make apple-loop techno on my gen1 MacBook, that was the last DAW I touched. In my sound design course I took the previous spring, we learned how to use ProTools, but AVID sucks ass. My prof told me about a free alternative called REAPER so I installed that along with some classic synth VSTs. I didn’t have anything good by the time the deadline snuck up on me, so I called my friend Xurb to produce some hardcore beats.
He fuckin delivered. We listen to a lot of random ass Gabber albums together and he’s a Garage Band wizard so the vision was there. The drumming and production was Xurb, I just contributed the synth stuff and the final mix/mastering. That breakdown after the elevator???? Legendary. for the summoning music I was going for a Shin Megami Tensei thing with some Krautrock vibes but it kinda just sounded like indie game fake NES music. I’m still proud of the ambient stuff, I was playing through Silent Hill 2 at the time and you can so hear it in the mannequin room sequence.
That final shot with all of us on the stairs is still the hardest shit anyone’s ever filmed.
Exported on December 13th, 2024.