Fangoria.com has the first exclusive clip from my new movie, FAIRVIEW FALLS.

FAIRVIEW FALLS premieres for FREE on November 5th in Poughkeepsie, NY.

Click here to check out the clip on Fangoria.com.

It’s hard to believe that ten years ago today my first movie premiered at a local film festival. In fact, it was a double feature that weekend.  My short film, The Family Tree, also premiered and neither film made their debut unscathed.

The Family Tree was unsettling to quite a few audience participants due to it’s dark portrayal of a dysfunctional family.  I recall how a man left the viewing in tears and confessed to me how the movie had struck home with him reminding him of his own family. Fear of the Dark was certainly the more controversial of the two films though.

Production for Fear began in August 2000 and wrapped in late winter 2001.  I had heard about a local film festival that following summer and raced to complete post production on the movie to enter it into the festival.  Fearing that I would not meet the festival submission deadline in time, we shot The Family Tree.  As it turned out, we met the deadline with two entries.

Fear of the Dark caused quite a stir in the local arts community due to excessive nudity and gratuitous violence.  Maryann Arrien, who has since become a close friend, was the director of the festival and worked closely with the arts committee’s executive board.  Upon screening the movie, the board had decided that the only possible way that it could be screened publicly was if it were cut and screened as a midnight showing.  Maryann declared that she would resign from the festival if the movie did not premiere uncut.  Strong opposition to the movie arose calling for an emergency Sunday afternoon board meeting.

I received a call from Maryann the night before the meeting and she explained the situation to me.  Concerned that the movie wouldn’t premiere at all, I agreed to make the edits to the movie much to the cast’s dismay.  Maryann, concerned with how the movie was being censored, reluctantly relayed my concession to the board the next day. Two board members, including the chair, resigned over the issue.  Despite their resignations, the board approved the edited screening.

Word spread in the community and the midnight showing had the largest attendance of any of the films in the festival.  Just a few minutes before midnight, having noticed the crowd’s excitement rising in anticipation of the premiere, the new chair elect turned to me and said “it’s too bad that you don’t have the uncut version with you to show.”  I reached into my pocket and withdrew a tape containing the uncut version.  With a Cheshire grin I exclaimed, “I just happen to have it right here.”  The chair faltered and said “I don’t understand.  You seem like such a nice guy.  Why do you write about such horrible things?”  I laughed and said “I write about what scares me the most.” And with that, Fear of the Dark premiered on October 6, 2001.

The movie was followed by a Q&A that concluded with the Black Rose Killer appearing from behind me and disemboweling me as the audience cheered him on.

Over the past ten years, the Black Rose Killer became the staple villain of the Light & Dark universe and has appeared in all of my movies and short films to date.  The killer originally played by Mark Yonick was later recast when the mask was finally pulled back and the killer’s identity was revealed in the prequel, The Tenement.

Joe Lauria went on to play both father and son (Ethan Fernier and Alec Woodrow) in the flashback driven sequel, Sins of the Father.  Sins ended the trilogy but left open possibilities for a sequel/prequel, Fairview Falls.  Sadly, Joe passed away in 2009 before Sins of the Father was released to DVD.  Today is Joe’s birthday. He would have been 34.

Fairview Falls will bring closure to everything that has happened since Fear of the Dark both personally and creatively on-screen and off.

It was a challenge getting the movie off the ground.  I had gone to broadcasting school but never film school so I was mostly self-taught.  It was at a movie night at my house when the idea of making a movie was first proposed.  We would watch and often critique the plots or lack thereof of blockbuster and b-movies.  I exclaimed how I could make a better movie as I often did and finally after hearing it one too many times, a friend encouraged me to do so.

To test the waters, I decided to write a screenplay and shop it around first instead of making a movie.  My first screenplay was entitled The Crier, based on a Spanish myth about a banshee called La Llorona.  In 1999, Full Moon Pictures (best known for the Puppet Master and Subspecies movies) launched a new subdivision handling urban entertainment called Alchemy Entertainment.  I thought the screenplay would be a perfect fit.  I approached Subspecies star, Denise Duff, at a Chiller Theatre convention.  She was kind enough to put me in contact with Subspecies director, Ted Nicolau.  Ted’s connections to Full Moon opened the door for me at Alchemy Entertainment.

Alchemy was very fond of my screenplay but ultimately passed on it in favor of Nicolau’s The Horrible Dr. Bones.  Alchemy’s positive comments were enough to spur me on to write and direct my own project.  I wrote Fear of the Dark on a non-existent budget.  The movie was ultimately funded with my savings and a helpful heaping of credit card debt.

Fear of the Dark was inspired by Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (the Del Toro remake premiered this year) and Alice Sweet Alice.  While originally intended to be a creature movie, the story took a completely new direction due to the lack of budget.  It later took its inspiration from Halloween.  I wanted to have a villain that people feared and didn’t know much about.  I wanted him to be able to blend in and out of shadows like “The Shape” (Michael Meyers) did in Halloween.

Principal photography for Fear was completed in 2 weeks, an experience I’ll never forget.  There were long shooting schedules many consisting of 14 hour shoot days that had us running from one end of the Hudson Valley (NY) to the other.  I packed as many shooting locations and scenes as possible in a given day.

Working on a micro budget means that you really have to think outside the box.  Some location shoots just can’t be shot guerilla style.  We were turned away by dozens of churches as soon as they heard that the project was a horror movie and we had no money.  Finally, we found a church that was looking to replace their old cross.  We built a cross in exchange for shooting in the church.  The cross still hangs there in the church to this day.

My favorite day of shooting was when we shot the funeral scene.  We received all of the funeral arrangements for free in exchange for website promotion of the flower shop and a credit in the film.  Just as it was difficult to find a church to shoot in, it was even harder to find a funeral home.  The last place I approached was located right across the street from where I worked.

By chance, the owner of Maher Funeral Home was very sympathetic to the arts.  His son was, at the time, a struggling actor who had just received what was supposed to be his first big break.  He was cast to star in what became a short-lived pilot for a series called Rookie: Year One.  Sean Maher later went on to star in Josh Whedon’s Firefly and the movie spin-off, Serenity.

In the weeks that led up to the shoot, Saxon Henry, a freelance reporter for the New York Times, happened to see a help wanted ad for the movie in the local PennySaver.  She pitched the story to the Times and the funeral scene shoot was covered.  The article opened doors for me.  A manager of my local Suncoast Motion Picture Video store took notice of the article and talked to me about it one day when I was in his store.  He invited me to a movie night where I met and became friends with Fangoria’s managing editor, Michael Gingold.

Mike and I immediately hit it off and I invited him for a set visit and offered him a speaking role as a coroner.  Mike has been the only recurring character in all of my movies.  He was impressed with my ingenuity as a grassroots filmmaker shooting on a z-grade budget and eventually approached me about writing a Notes from the Underground article in Fangoria magazine.

The doors continued to open from there.  Brian Spears (Stake Land, I Sell the Dead) took notice of what I was doing and was very receptive to me.  I enlisted his services as a makeup artist on The Tenement and creative consultant for later films though if he had any inkling at the time as to just how crazy I am when working on set he might have considered otherwise.

The prestige of appearing in Fangoria helped land me a distribution deal for The Tenement in 2004.  Due to the success of The Tenement, Brain Damage Films offered to release Fear of the Dark.  In 2005, a new director’s cut of my previously self-distributed movie was released on DVD.

I have been blessed with good friends that have helped me along the way.  Their names are too many to mention here.  These are the people that I consider my second family, the Light & Dark family.  They have all had to endure my rants and lunatic ravings but most have stuck by my side over the years and we have had a bond that can’t be broken.  We served together in the trenches of b-movie culture.  We avoided arrest on many occasions while guerilla filmmaking.  We grinned and bared it when some of the critics bashed us.  For the most part, our reviews have always been positive usually ending with “Baisley shows promise and we’d like to see what he could do with a real budget.”  I’d like to see that too.

It’s been a fun ride.  It’s been ten years.  Film school couldn’t have taught me the lessons I’ve learned over the years.  I always rejected the term “do it yourself filmmaker” because it sounded demeaning but I have learned to embrace it.  I understand it now.  I did what many said I couldn’t do years ago.  I made a movie – by myself.  Of course I had help.  I couldn’t do it alone but I had no financial backers or partners, very little guidance at all.  Some would say it shows in the quality of the movies but I still see it as an accomplishment.  I put my heart and soul into my work and i think it shows.  At least I hope so.  You can’t fault someone for having passion and I’m very passionate about what I do.

So for better or for worse, it’s been ten years.  Raise a glass in celebration that we make it another ten years.  If I never make another movie I can rest happy knowing that I left some kind of a mark behind whether it be light or dark.

Mark Yonick and Danielle Russo (The Tenement)

On set at the Beechmont Tavern (favorite hangout of Don McLean and referenced as “the levy” in the lyrics of his son American Pie)

Anthony Eikner does Harmony Nichol’s makeup for one of the movie’s “boo scares”.

Promoting at our first Fangoria Weekend of Horrors
(Left to Right) Ed Shelinsky (The Tenement, Fairview Falls), Mike Gingold, Me, my wife Diana and Rosemary Gore (Sins of the Father)

The Black Rose Killer appeared many times at conventions.
He strikes a pose with Tom Atkins (The Fog, Creepshow, Halloween III)

Danielle Harris (Stake Land, Halloween 4 and 5) and Mike Lane (Fairview Falls, The Tenement, The Blood Shed)

Rosemary Gore

New Times article covering the funeral scene shoot.

HAPPY 10TH ANNIVERSARY!

Click here to read the article.

It’s been 7 long years since I worked on Fairview Falls and chaos has happened at every turn in the road preventing me from finishing the movie.  But it’s FINALLY f#cking done!!!  Fairview Falls will premiere on Saturday, November 5th at 11 PM at the Silver Cinema South Hills 8 in Poughkeepsie, NY.

This will be a FREE public screening so seats are limited.  You can RSVP to attend the screening at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=230034727043738.   You must be a registered Facebook user to RSVP.

You can join our official Facebook fan page at www.facebook.com/FairviewFalls and find out more about the movie here.

IFC Center is running limited screenings right now but you can also catch it on IFC Midnight video on demand.  I can’t wait to plant my ass on my couch and check it out over the weekend.

You can also get your Glass Eye Pix fix on with issue # 303 of Fangoria magazine.  It features a 3 page spread with an exclusive interview with Light & Dark alumni, Brian Spears, a brilliant talent whose touch has left an indelible mark on my movies.   Fangoria issue # 303 is on sale now.

Fessenden has been releasing the short films to show character moments leading up to the film.  Check out the other short films below.

I reviewed the excellent PluralEyes plug-in last year that integrates with Final Cut Pro, Media Composer, Premiere Pro and Vegas Pro.  Singular Software has taken their signature software a step further by introducing DualEyes for users who have NLE systems not supported by PluralEyes.  As it’s name suggests, the stand-alone DualEyes is focused on the dual-system audio workflow of automatically synchronizing audio/replace audio and not video-to-video sync like you would need for a multi-camera shoot.  That being said, you’ll want to choose your version based on your NLE system and your project needs.

DualEyes is just as easy to use as its more robust cousin.  DualEyes allows users to correct drift in situations where there are timing differences between audio and video.

DualEyes also includes features such as “Try Really Hard” which uses more processing power and take a little longer to work on difficult sync problems.  This worked well in my test where there was a lot of ambient noise.

“Infer Chronological Order” assumes that the names of the media files, when sorted alphabetically, are in the same order that the recordings were made enabling the sync to go a little faster and more reliably.

“Level Audio” does exactly what it’s named for.  It levels out audio for scenarios where one audio source is louder than another perhaps because one of the microphones was closer to the subject.

One of the best features is the ability to replace audio without having to re-render the entire video clip which maintains the original quality of the clip.  This is done by creating a new file which contains the video from the original clip and the synced audio from MOV or AVI files.

PluralEyes is your best choice if you have any of the supported NLE systems but you can’t go wrong with DualEyes if you don’t have one.  DualEyes can be purchased from Singular Software’s online store for $149.

Who needs the Oscars when we have The Fangoria Chainsaw Awards?  Sure good old Oscar finally made a nod to the genre last year but there’s still no horror category.  Thankfully, it’s that time of year again when the fans can show their appreciation and support for the genre by voting in the Chainsaw Awards.  You can get the jump on voting by picking up Fangoria Magazine Issue #301.

I also want to give a shout out to Brian Spears and Pete Gerner of G & S Effects who were nominated for Best Special FX for I SELL THE DEAD.  I’ve seen first hand how hard working and dedicated they are to their craft and it’s a nomination that’s well deserved.  They certainly have my vote!