| It starts with a name. Images after Midnight, representing
the world of nightmare, the images which run through our heads when sleep
overcomes us all, and sweet dreams are nowhere to be found. |
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I chose my talent carefully, three beautiful young women, one blonde(Melina), one
brunette (Jen), one redhead (Andrea), all young and full of life. |
| Then I chose my setting, a small house in which these young ladies would
live while going to school. A simple place with nothing spectacular about it
but a cheap rent, and two bedrooms. It was so mundane it could be the house
next door. I felt the girls should be friendly, but not connected to one
another, that the house would be the connection. And then I added the books... |
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At the end of the first night, Jen Jarret finds a set of old
books in the top of a closet. Bringing them to the living room and forgetting
about them on the bookshelves, she joins in a friendly boardgame, which is
only ended when Melina calls it a night, but takes the books back to her room
with her. |
| Obviously, H. P. Lovecraft is a heavy influence on my work anyway, but
this time, I tried to invoke the spirit more heavily than I normally do.
We were trying for a cross between Lovecraft and Dario Argento
(Suspiria is a strong influence here as well). |
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We shot the bulk of the movie over a week in a cramped little house in Oklahoma,
cut it together as a short, and put it out into the world. It did well, was
described as "Nightmarish", which is good, and "Incoherent", which is not so good. |
| I went back and watched it, over and over again, trying to find
what the flaw was, what made the movie so hard to follow, even if it
was really effective. |
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I asked my wife to watch it with me, to see if
she could point it out. As always, she hit it right away. The girls,
caught up in their own nightmares and isolation, don't talk about what
is happening to them, how it is affecting them, in other words, what's going on...
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| The Images are what I was most interested in providing for the
audience, glimpses into my own nightmares, and those of friends I have
spoken with on the subject. But, my wife was right, there was very
little narrative in the short. I pulled it from distribution
(a benefit of running a small company which puts out its own product)
while I went back to the original story, the base idea, to figure it out. |
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The script is finished, and the story really rocks. We have
introduced a knew wrinkle to the story, added more mystery, and kept
all of the original nightmare. |
| This summer, we will be shooting the
new footage, re-editing the movie, and I swear, the audience will
be going home to crawl reluctantly into their beds, to experience
the real nightmares of Images after Midnight |
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