THE LEGEND OF SIX FINGERS: Development and Day One

I love monsters, which is why I do what I do.  These damned jump-from-the-shadows creatures have teased and inspired me all my life.   It's why I love the work of Don Dohler.   Of my original three films, only Slime City could be considered a monster movie; Undying Love is a deconstruction of of vampire mythology, and Naked Fear was a psycho thriller.  But I worked on I Was a Teenage Zombie, Plutonium Baby and Brain Damage, and those were all monster movies.  I suppose Frank Henenlotter's Aylmer is the closest I've come to working with a creature from the greater pantheon (I got to puppet the little sucker's eyebrows in the infamous hotel sequence).  Making Slime City Massacre was an opportunity for me to return to a more imaginative realm of horror, and because I believed it would be the last movie I'd ever make, I threw in science fiction as well - everything including the kitchen sink.

In my novels, I've created many monsters because I've never had to worry about budget.  Johnny Gruesome is a talking zombie with a slasher film obsession; the Wolves in The Frenzy Way and The Frenzy War (and The Frenzy Wolves next year) allowed me to put my own spin on werewolf mythology; and Jake Helman has battled ghosts, demons, angels, voodoo "zonbies" and what is probably my favorite creation, Avademe, the giant mutant octopus god who is equal parts Christian mythology and Cthulhu Mythos; and Carnage Love was my love letter to the zombies of John Russo and George Romero.  At the end of this year, The Julian Year deals with worldwide demonic possession.

After SCM, I was all set to hang up my filmmaking hat and concentrate on my fiction and Buffalo Screams Horror Film Festival (now Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival).  Then Sam Qualiana, who won the FIlmmaker to Watch award at Buffalo Screams, posted a teaser trailer of a shark fin gliding through the snow.  He was already shooting what he intended to be a short film reboot of a short film he'd made years earlier when I met with him to discuss turning the project into a feature.  He had already directed several scenes and cast several parts, so that footage needed to be incorporated into the proposed feature.  Winters are long in Western New York, but they aren't everlasting, so he was under the gun to to complete a feature film script on the weekdays while shooting what had already been written.  There was a very Roger Corman-like aspect to the whole endeavor - "We have to make this now or never!"  My involvement included bringing in investors, some additional special effects artists, editors and a composer who could cope with our miniscule budget, and finding a distributor.  Alternative Cinema released Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast on DVD in February; you can find it for rent in many Family Video locations, and all over Canada.  It's a success story, and one that I'm proud of.  I produced the film for three reasons: Sam is more focused on becoming a better filmmaker than being famous in our little pond here in the Buffalo-Niagara region; the concept was great and marketable; and I loved that frigging snow shark - what a cool monster.

Since Snow Shark, Sam and I worked together on Debbie Rochon's Model Hunger and Chris Olen Ray's Battledogs (werewolves), and I recommended him to be 1st AD on Return to Nuke 'Em High.  I also hired him to be the Director of Photography on Dry Bones, a succubus film which I wrote and co-directed/co-produced with Michael O'Hear, which I just wrapped (one day of pickup shots this Saturday).  It was on the set of this film that Sam mentioned he had another project in development, a super low budget "found footage" film based on a Native American legend about a Bigfoot-like creature called "Six Fingers" because it's supposed to have three fingers on each hand.  Most people would have balked at the budget Sam had in mind, but I knew he could pull it off,  Found footage movies consist of handheld master takes, and editing them together is easy.  He said he could shoot the film over the equivalent of one week, and I knew editing masters together would be a snap.  Here's a valuable piece of information for indie filmmakers: the safest way to make a profit on a micro-budget film is to complete it for a maximum of $5,000.  At this point in my semi-professional career, I have no interest in directing a film for so little, because the people I wish to work with are professionals who need to be paid.  But I'm happy to produce such a project, and Sam is up to the task of directing one.  Best of all, his concept - two documentary filmmakers searching for a legendary creature in the woods - is tailor made for such restrictions. Sam will play one of the leads, a cameraman who is off screen for much of the film, so he'll be acting, shooting, and recording sound all at the same time!  And so The Legend of Six Fingers was born...or at least conceived.

As a producer, I immediately think about what will make a project appealing to potential investors.  They don't care about locations, and The Legend of Six Fingers is basically a Bigfoot film about a monster who isn't Bigfoot.  Since I knew Debbie Rochon would already be in town for her co-starring role in Dry Bones, we cast her in a small part consisting of three scenes.  After working with Lynn Lowry on Debbie's Model Hunger last year, I wanted to work with her again - she's incredible in that - so Sam performed a sex change operation on one of the characters so she can play it.  And there's a third big genre actress I want in the film - "player to be named" - and she's agreed to do it.  We expect to have three top notch actresses in our little film, which is amazing in itself.  RJ Sevin whipped together the cool poster you see, and Julia Sevin did the typography for it.

I read the first half of Sam's script - all that was written at that point because he was busy on Dry Bones - and found it much more sophisticated than the one he wrote for Snow Shark because he developed it and wrote it at his own pace, without the race against the weather we had on the previous film.  The script has solid characters, clever dialogue, an interesting mythology, and best of all, a genuinely good structure.  Snow Shark had a ton of characters in it, and it's debatable who the main character was.  The Legend of Six FIngers has two likable leads, and the form of a "found footage" movie dictates that everything is from their point of view (POV).  I showed what we had to a distributor, who offered encouraging feedback.

The next order of business was our monster.  Who should make it?  Rod Durick and Arick Szymecki are my local go-to guys for special effects, but Rod is taking a break (or retiring altogether) from this area of filmmaking; he and Arick have full time jobs; and both are still busy working on the "money shot" effect for Dry Bones.  My good friend Craig Lindberg, a NYC based effects artist who worked on Undying Love and Naked Fear before becoming a top notch makeup/special effects artist on countless big Hollywood projects, offered to help with Dry Bones, but I already had my team on that.  He's currently working on the TV show The Royal Pains (all those grisly wounds are his doing), and he's busy as hell, but I remembered he had created a Bigfoot for the old rag World Weekly News, so I approached him to see if he'd be willing to create a great monster with a non-existent budget.  Like I said, Craig is a good friend, and now I know we're going to have a very cool, very sophisticated "Six Fingers" mask/appliance.  Now we just need a body.

Because Debbie consented to play the role of "Melissa," the clock was ticking on our first day of shooting.  There was still a lot of casting to be done, but we needed to concentrate on the scenes with Debbie, who plays one of the residents our protagonists interview.  The biggest role to be cast was "Neil," one of the two filmmakers.  Because he isn't off camera like "Drew," Sam's character, Neil is actually the lead of the film.  There were a few local candidates, but Sam and I settled on Andrew Elias, who played the nerdy cryptozoologist in Snow Shark.  Like many of the locals, Andrew is more of a hobbyist than a trained actor, but he showed how committed to a project he can be on SS, and has a genuinely endearing presence.  We wrapped on Dry Bones on a Wednesday, Sam had Thursday to prepare, and we shot the first three scenes of the film on a Friday.

Like Snow Shark, The Legend of Six FIngers will be shot primarily on 100 acres of woodland owned by Sam's family out in Royalton, New York (near Lockport).  I drove Debbie and her friend David Marancik out to the house where Sam lives, which he shared with his grandmother until her recent passing.  Diane Rybacki was a huge supporter of Sam's career, and had passed away just a week earlier, and the house was filled with her presence.  Sam rehearsed Debbie and Andrew several times, than shot the first scene on the front porch.  We did many takes, primarily because the traffic noise is so loud on Akron Road.  Then we moved inside, where Chris Rados of Western New York Grip and Electric helped with the lighting and boom.  Chris is a great guy, and I'm glad I got to work with him on Dry Bones as well.  Found footage films require a certain naturalism in performance, and Sam and the actors worked the scene several times before everything gelled.  Then we broke for lunch at a Chinese buffet and I took off.  Sam shot an unscripted scene with Debbie for later in the film, and some interview footage, and a promo piece for a film I hope to do next year.  He and Andrew also shot a scene of their characters talking in a car, for which they used Chris's Go Pro, a wide angle, portable camera which they mounted on the dashboard, giving Sam some screen time.

We offered the role of Six Fingers to Tim O'Hearn, a muscular drummer and actor from Batavia, and he quickly said yes.  I explained that he will be running around the woods covered head to toe in August, and he still said yes.  Tim has a small role in Dry Bones, and I predict he'll get some of the biggest laughs.  I took an impression of his teeth and sent them to Craig to use in creating the mask, and now the challenge is figuring out how to do the body.  His physique was a key factor in casting him, but may prove to difficult to clothe in a generic fur suit.  This is the kind of challenge I enjoy as a producer.  For the immediate future, our priority is raising money.  We've raised ten percent of our $4,000 budget on IndieGoGo, and need to pull in more fast to gain momentum.  If interested, please visit the page and consider helping us out; you can donate as little as $25, or for $250 you can be listed as an Associate Producer: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-legend-of-six-fingers/x/78828

Casting continues!