![]() Ogopogo was so personal to me, and that made its way into the movie. Looking through them, there was a teddy bear that felt very personal to me and my sister it was Ogopogo, a sea monster in British Columbia that’s Canada’s version of the Loch Ness Monster. We looked through all these toys, which were intrinsically personal. My mom had preserved a bunch of childhood toys that we were going to use as props for the movie. It just flowed, and I found more and more that I didn’t have to do that work, because I set the architecture of it from the beginning to work in my favor. I don’t have to work at trying to make it personal, because that’s already built in.” I didn’t need to consciously think about what parts of the house scare me. Going into it, I thought, “I know the house. Once I started writing, because I had these rules in place, I actually found it freeing to be working within a set framework. I set these rules in place before I even got the script going, just so that I would have a to build on. Even if, at the beginning, you see windows and doors in the house, the blinds are always shut, so we never get a view of the outside world. Whatever dialogue is delivered is always delivered off-screen. We avoid showing people on screen for too long. I set rules in place that I wasn't allowed to break. And, after a while, I thought, “Maybe I could do a feature like this…” So, instead of showing actors, I was doing point-of-view shots or filming different parts of the room while we had audio off-screen. Through doing my YouTube series, I developed a technique of filming by implication, instead of showing. How did your experiences growing up there, especially your memories of being alone at night, inform your approach to the film’s interior architecture? You’ve referred to “Skinamarink” as an “extremely personal” film, which makes sense given that you shot at your childhood home. ![]() Ahead of “Skinamarink” hitting theaters, Ball discussed his lo-fi approach to horror filmmaking and the Internet’s role in crafting his experiential-nightmare debut. Thankfully, official distribution soon followed, with IFC Midnight and Shudder teaming up for a nationwide theatrical release and subsequent streaming debut. ![]() A technical issue with one at-home viewing platform, however, allowed the film to be pirated as this illegal copy circulated online, “Skinamarink” went viral on TikTok, with users declaring it to be the scariest film they’ve ever seen, and Reddit, which exploded with all manner of fan theories. “Skinamarink” premiered to strong word-of-mouth at the Fantasia International Film Festival, and other festival slots followed. Shooting for seven days with a small crew, including assistant director Joshua Bookhalter-who died during post-production, and to whom the film is dedicated-Ball found that micro-budget limitations fueled his creative vision, necessitating all manner of trick photography and unconventional angles to mimic a child’s-eye view. Most of the film’s budget materialized through crowdfunding Ball also borrowed equipment from the Film and Video Arts Society of Alberta. Taking its gibberish title from a turn-of-the-century children’s song (which is not heard in the film), “Skinamarink” cost only $15,000 to make, with Ball filming inside his childhood home in Edmonton, Alberta, where his parents still live. Everyone, I think, has versions of this dream.”īall first recreated it as “Heck,” a 30-minute proof-of-concept short, before expanding to feature length. It’s a common, intrinsic part of humanity. ![]() That’s probably why the dream kept coming up in people. “Around that age is when we’re first having to deal with the world without our parents’ help, in a very powerful way. “People kept commenting on my videos with the exact same dream that they had: ‘I’m between the ages of six and 10, I’m at my house, my parents are either dead or missing, and there’s a monster,’” Ball says. Soliciting submissions from viewers, Ball began noticing patterns in the experiences they shared. Such unsettling sensations are something of a specialty for the Canadian writer/director/editor, who got his start with a YouTube channel dedicated to filming people’s nightmares.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |