Movies You Made: “Dark Origins”
March is Movies You Made month at Go Into The Story where we feature the work of independent filmmakers. Today: Dark Origins. Some background on the movie from its writer-director Evan Randall Green:
DARK ORIGINS is an award winning short horror film about a psychologist who discovers that the terrifying trauma haunting her young patient may in fact lurk beyond the girl’s fractured mind. Starring Rosie Keogh and Jane Barry. Written, Directed & Produced by Evan Randall Green, Co-Produced by Richard C. Bell, Cinematography by Richard C. Bell, Edited by James Miller, Sound Design by Joel Hodgkinson & Seth Jackson at Soul Sound Design.
Here is the 12 minute horror film Dark Origins:
I ask each of the Movies You Made participants to answer this question: What is it about this particular story that inspired you to make your movie? Here is Evan’s response:
Before I wrote DARK ORIGINS, I’d always wanted to write a film that focused on two strong-willed female characters. I’d also wanted to write a film where the characters were in each of their own minds the protagonist of the same story, yet neither be seen as the antagonist in the audience’s eyes.
In the film, the character of Kay is determined to disprove her patient Ella’s crazy delusions of a dark presence involved with her supposed haunting, yet it is Ella who is determined to prove to Kay that her delusions are in fact real and that she isn’t in fact psychotic.
The story came to me during a meeting with my co-producer and cinematographer, Richard Bell. We wanted to make a film before he departed Australia for the UK. The moment I pitched him the idea, we were plotting our plans to crowdfund the film and so we did, which I must say was an enormous help. Including festival and contributor costs, we came in well short of $10k.
The fact most of the film was contained in one room made it logistically pleasant, though it still retained limitations to work through as we could only obtain our primary location for 48 hours. Certain shots we planned for didn’t at times meet our expectations, though that was largely my fault for thinking at with an overly ambitious mindset compared to our tiny budget. We loved the idea that the actual antagonist was never seen until the closing seconds of the film and this allowed us to utilise our blocking of the scenes and performances to create the atmosphere to support it. As a screenwriter, it was a brilliant exercise, if somewhat expensive, to explore the after effects of what we write on the page and what actually ends up on the screen.
The cast and crew we assembled were great and there is little that I’d change given the chance to travel back in time and do so. I’m very grateful that it was as well received on the genre festival circuit. We made it for an audience.
Twitter: @DarkOriginsFilm.
Monday: One final entry in this year’s Movies You Made series.