Do be alarmed: there’s only one chance to catch the latest horror offering from two Dunedin film-makers,writes Tom McKinlay.
Frightful Dunedin friends Harley Neville and Guy Pigden are at it again, though just for eight minutes this time.
The serial horror creators who filmed the feature-length I Survived A Zombie Holocaust in Dunedin in 2011 with a local cast of hundreds have a shocking new short, which screens tomorrow at Rialto.
Paranoid slasher No Caller ID, running time about eight minutes, screens as part of the Show Me Shorts short-film festival showcase, alongside another seven concise pieces of cinema from around the world.
No Caller ID had its world premiere in Auckland earlier this month and stops in Dunedin before taking off around the globe, first to the Screamfest
Horror Film Festival in Hollywood later this month.That’s not bad for a side project made in a night for $200, as part of the process of putting together the pair’s second feature film, Older.
"In our second feature film, our protagonist is a film-maker who made a commerically successful but critically panned movie.
In order to portray that, we shot a separate film, a short film called No Caller ID, and that’s what we used to insert into Older,’’ Neville explains.
There didn’t seem much point in just shooting a few scenes to insert in the longer film when for the same effort they could have a short film, something they could submit to festivals, he says.
So that’s what they did and besides Screamfest, the short is now off to festivals in Barcelona and Sydney.
"For it to go on to be accepted into four festivals so far, and counting, that’s obviously very vindicating and exciting. Maybe we have learned a thing or two over all these years.’’
Deepening the Dunedin connection, No Caller ID stars old school friend Jocelyn Christian, who also headlined in Zombie Holocaust.
In the short film, a young woman begins receiving strange phone calls in the middle of the night and realises she might not be alone.
The idea for the film came from Pigden’s day job in a call centre: he contacts people to check whether alarm activations are the real thing or an accidental "ghost alarm’’.
In the course of doing so, he began to think about all the information held on the lives of those with alarms installed and monitored.
Neville and Pigden, best friends since the age of 13 who attended Logan Park High School together, left Dunedin aged 21, first for Wellington, then Auckland, returning to Dunedin for Zombie Holocaust .
Auckland-based these days, and 33, film-making is still central to their lives, though there are day jobs to finance it.
"We are so far in debt that to go back now would be as bad as going forward,’’ Neville says of their determination to keep film-making.
"We have spent so much on it now, we are in for the long haul.’’
While they don’t make a living from film, there is some money coming in from it now, even if it does get invested straight back into the next project.
Neville produces while Pigden writes and directs, though both sneaked around in front of the camera to appear on screen in Zombie Holocaust and No Caller ID. They do so again in Older, which is undergoing its second cut with a view to getting it out into the world next year, perhaps on the festival circuit.
"So it’s getting reasonably close and it looks really good,’’ Neville says.
There’s nothing to scare the horses this time, as it’s a coming of age drama-romance. But first there’s No Caller ID and a trip to Los Angeles for Neville to promote it there.
"That’s pretty exciting for a couple of guys who started making movies in the Opoho cemetery,’’ he says.
