“Meat that dies happy, dies tender.” Last summer I posted about She-Wolf Of The Woods, an indie horror short created by Adriana Polito and her team on a tiny budget, with beautiful / scary / funny / NSFW results. Now She-Wolf is available to watch for free on YouTube!
From the press release:
The film, made in association with Koozlick Media, is an experimental taster, linked to its intended feature film follow-up, She-Wolf Of The Woods: Hunger.
Filmed in the small remote village of Dalavich, Scotland, with help from some of its local residents there, the short film gives us a glimpse into the life of one of the feature film’s main characters, Amy Shields.
Amy is a menacing and beautiful She-Wolf apprentice, bound to her master through an ancient curse. She spends her days scouting the Scottish Highlands for victims so that the She-Wolf can have her feed and fulfilling her ritualistic duties in the ways of the hunt.
I re-watched it this morning and was delighted all over again. It’s dark, funny, pulpy, scary and a clear demonstration of Adriana’s talent. An engaging 30-minute short with lovely cinematography, stellar sound design, a great score, and a sustained creature FX shot… all on a budget equivalent to less than $5,000 USD? I can’t tell you how many Kickstarter campaigns I’ve seen that asked for five or ten times that amount, and produced short films half as good.
I don’t normally copy-paste press releases, but there’s a lot of really interesting details about the production and Adriana’s future plans in it. I’m really looking forward to the feature film follow-up.
ON THE SHORT
The film was written, directed and produced by Adriana Polito, in association with the filmmaking prowess of Paul-John Ross from Koozlick Media, who shot, edited and provided all the Visual Effects on the film. Adriana’s cast and crew was made up of 13 people, including Scottish actresses Toni Benedetti and Tyne Roberts in the leading female roles, and English actor Jamie Evans and Scottish actor Jason Harvey in the male leading roles. The cast and crew were made up of professional and non-professional filmmakers and artists from Glasgow and Liverpool.
Of the short film, Adriana had this to say,
“It was a bit of an experimental approach, the short film doesn’t have much to do with the feature film at all, other than just introduce us to one element of its world, and one of its main characters as they go about their day to day business. In the feature film, the landscape widens and we meet many more characters, and more worlds.”
ON THE FUNDING
In keeping with the experimental approach, Stay Curious Productions have decided against the crowd-funding model as a finance option for the feature film.
“Crowd-funding is an incredibly powerful and life-changing tool for many people, we’re definitely in support of it and we know that it works, but we want to try something different this time. We have done more than our fair share of asking people for things, favours, time, blood, sweat, tears…and as much as crowd-funding does give individual contributors ownership of something they want to see come alive (and the guarantee of payment for those hard-working filmmakers out there!), we’d really like to try and source this money ourselves this time, and in other ways.
We want to sweat and fight for the funding, like all those freelancers and filmmakers did for us, in the past, when they worked on our projects for no fee. We’re doing this so that we can secure them a fair fee in the future, and make this movie knowing that we bled for it, cos we’re also a bit masochistic that way.”
Adriana is currently going down more traditional fundraising routes, such as approaching corporate and private investors with business plans and applying for grants.
“Only time will tell if I can pull that off,” says Adriana. “I was heavily inspired by Sam Raimi’s method of fundraising for The Evil Dead. He made Within The Woods first, then went out, in person, door to door almost, using the short as a prototype platform on which to try and secure private investment. There’s something admirable about that, when a filmmaker goes out, in person, and hunts for funding in that way.” But Adriana’s quick to show that she’s not ruling anything out. “I may eat my words and go down the crowdfunding route eventually! That said, in a market saturated with great projects, all looking for crowdfunding, I just really want to try something different first.”
ON THE FEATURE
And if the money does come through, what can we expect from the feature film, She-Wolf Of The Woods: Hunger?
“Imagine watching two different films at the same time. One is a campy meta-horror which has a Teen Wolfesque love story at its core, parodying of a lot of 80s film & TV, the other is a David Lynch inspired blood-gore fest with a Euro-Horror Gothic love story running through its veins.
Now imagine a crossover point, where the first film invades the other. That’s our framework. It’s risky and ambitious, but it gives us potential for some great stylistic choices, both visually and for the soundtrack. Plus, I can’t see me making this movie any other way.”
ON SUPPORT
Lastly, of the short film, Adriana had this to say, “We hope people enjoy the short. It was my directorial debut, so an excuse to learn a lot on set, but that it looks and sounds so beautiful and professional is a testament to every individual who put their mark on it. I had an incredible team by my side all the way through, an awesome wolf pack.
We don’t wanna ask people for anything, but if you enjoy the movie, then a kind word or two on our Facebook or Twitter page would be much appreciated and go a long way.”
You can listen to a Podcast interview Adriana did with HowlOut Podcast here, where she talks about the origins of She-Wolf, behind-the-scenes action on the making of the short film as well as plans going forward.
SHORT FILM LINKS
@shewolfmovie
Facebook/shewolfofthewoodsFEATURE FILM LINKS