June 30, 2025 • 54 mins
As a couple in life and in filmmaking, Aaron & Victoria Fradkin created Social House Films — a production company almost solely dedicated to horror — under which they’ve made close to 30 horror shorts and a handful of feature films. Tune in to hear all about how they met and got started in horror, some of their short films that have received millions of views, and the inspiration behind their most recent supernatural feature — 2024’s “Beezel.”
“Beezel” is currently available to rent on VOD, watch with an Amazon Prime Video subscription, or stream with ads on Tubi, Pluto TV, the Roku Channel, and Fandango at Home.
“Beezel” is currently available to rent on VOD, watch with an Amazon Prime Video subscription, or stream with ads on Tubi, Pluto TV, the Roku Channel, and Fandango at Home.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hello, and welcome to Happy Horrid Time. My name is
Tim Murdoch.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
And my name is Matt Emmert.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Now today's special guests are couple goals in my book,
because as horror fans, I think we always aspire to
find a partner who shares our passion for the genre.
And these two filmmakers together created Social House Films, a
production company pretty much dedicated to horror. They've made thirty
short films last I checked on YouTube and counted many
with millions of views, and have even expanded into features,
(00:39):
including last year's supernatural flick Beesel. He directs, she produces,
they co write, she stars, and together well they just
scare the hell out of you. Please welcome to the
podcast the dynamic duo behind Social House Films. In twenty
twenty four's Beesel, Aaron and Victoria Fradkin.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Hello, Wow, when.
Speaker 5 (01:01):
Intro thank you was the best intro I've ever heard,
And I would love it if you could, I'll just
like watch this and transcribe it leader because that was
the best intro.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Oh my god, thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
We you know, it's just funny because we we do
these interviews a ton and all when we watch other podcasts.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
They're like, Okay, here's the director, and I'm.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Like, well you got a Well, Matt's a fantastic writer.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
I do write for a living. I work in an
ad agency.
Speaker 5 (01:27):
So it shows show well, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
But okay, so obviously we want to know more about
your horror films and the making of Beesel, but we
would love to start by getting to know a little
bit more about the two of you in your background.
So starting with Aaron, I read on IMDb and you
mentioned that you're originally from Western mass and went to
Boston University's College of Communication.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Crazy coincidence, so did I.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
I was an AD major though, yeah, and I'm older
than you, so we didn't cross paths. But I was like,
oh my god, bu Calm, I know exactly the same
ex experience. But can you kind of take us through
how you first became interested in filmmaking and got your
start in the industry, like before Social House films.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
Or I mean, it probably goes all the way back
to when I was twelve years old and I took
a cross country trip with my parents to California and
we visited some friends who had a video camera. I
don't want to date myself, but this was probably.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Like a year older.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Oh play anything, date anything you date?
Speaker 4 (02:25):
We're like, oh, so, you know, I was about twelve
years old, and that was the first time I held
a camera and I was I loved just filming everything,
to the point where I'd even watch it back and
ask myself, why am I filming all of this boring life?
And that's sort of when I discovered the power of editing.
And it was actually my best friend's mom in like
(02:47):
high school who taught me how to edit, and she
hooked me up with Adobe Premiere Pro. It was a
very intuitive software, and I was just sort of super
ocd about cutting things together and I really just started
making like funny short films with friends. And then I
went to a filmmaking workshop in Rockport, Maine, and that
(03:08):
was the first time where I actually worked with the
crew and we had all of this film equipment at
our disposal and we actually made a horror comedy. It
was called The Long Road to Gary and it was
a mockumentary about a French Canadian filmmaker who wants to
make a zombie movie about love. And that was the
(03:29):
first film I made that went to film festivals, and
then I was just bit by the bug and decided
to go to Boston University, where I ended up moving
out to LA as my final semester, and I did
like a BU and LA internship program, and I've just
been living out here ever since.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Wow, that's awesome.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I saw we were just gonna ask Victoria what her
background was, but I guess we'll skip that and get
right back to you because just so listeners know, the
Fradkins just recently welcomed a new addition to their family
back in December, right.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
Yeah, December sixteenth is her birthday and she's being right now.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Oh well, congratulations, yeah, congratulations on that on and this
is your first child, right her first yess?
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Wow, that is great.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
So I read an article that said you am both
met when Victoria auditioned for one of your films, Aaron,
and then very appropriately, your first kiss was on Halloween night?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Is that correct?
Speaker 4 (04:26):
Because that's a door funny that that information is even
out there somewhere in the world. Yes, I was. I
used to direct music videos and so I was directing
this music video. Victoria came into an audition. The audition
consisted of just dancing and there wasn't even any like
lines to read. It was for a music video and
(04:48):
she did not get the part.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
What kind of dance did she do, by the way,
I need to know.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Well, let me just say it was like a Nigerian
hip hop rap artist.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Oh so easy, easy, yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Very easy and right up Victoria's ally so so yeah.
She you know, she didn't get the part, but she
did reach out because she had this short horror film
script that she had written and she wanted to get
some advice from a filmmaker. I guess as to have
to get that made excuse the dog barking as well
in the background. But we met up and I discovered
(05:26):
very quickly that that Victoria is a very unique, special
person and that she she wasn't just meeting just you know,
for fun. It was she actually had a binder with
a breakdown of production materials and budget planning. And I
just thought to myself, you're a producer, and I just
I was, you know, putting together a short film myself
(05:48):
at the time, and I asked if she wanted to
come on board and help produce it, and I guess
you can take it from here.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Yeah, I want to know also about the Halloween night,
first kiss.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
That's really fun fun.
Speaker 5 (06:02):
Well, I mean at that point we had been pretty
much like working and meeting at cafes to write and
talk about production almost every day for like about a month,
and so I definitely thought this was a completely professional
I wanted more, but I was like, I think this
is just professional.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
What do you mean by more?
Speaker 1 (06:16):
I mean I want what.
Speaker 5 (06:17):
We have now. And so then by like the day
thirty thirty one, October October thirty one, I was like,
all right, we're officially friends, Like this is just a
friend friendship, I guess. But I invited him to a
special event I was hosting because at the time I
was also doing like occasionally am seeing special events in
(06:38):
La So I was doing this for LA Travel magazine
and I was like, ooh, he's going to come see
me be this cool like host on stage and blah
blah blah. When he was suck ind line outside, he
completely missed my entire you know, performance acts speech and
he came in after the whole show was like basically over,
and he's like, oh yeah, I was just stuck outside.
I was like cool, cool, And so then that was
(07:02):
actually the last time I ever did it, so to
this day he's never seen me post or m see.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
I don't really do it anymore. I think she's lying
about it. I don't know photos well.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
And this was on Halloween.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
Halloween night, and so then later we went somewhere else
and I was like, all right, I gotta go. I
just thought the night was over and I was going
to head home, and then he kissed.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Me, and I thought I was waiting for the horror
movie twists, and then he followed me home.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Well, did you guys bond over horror films at all?
Speaker 4 (07:33):
I wouldn't say we bonded over horror films. It's in
a way it was always subconsciously in our blood. Anytime
we would want to make something together, it was always
just we were both intuited. We wanted to do horror
in some way. The first short film that we made
was called shadow Knife Fingers, and we just sort of
made it up as we went along, and I was
(07:54):
just sort of playing with some fun visual effects, and
we shot this in my studio apartment in Hollywood, the first.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Thing in the world.
Speaker 5 (08:01):
It's kind of cute. It's got a little twilight zonie vibe,
like just vibe wise and it's kind of cute, and
then we had no idea what to call it, Like
shadow knife fingers. There that thing on YouTube and no
one watched, and that was that we're.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Both drawn to horror just because it sort of is
able to hit on every part of filmmaking that interests us,
from like visual effects to special effects, cinematography. You can,
you know, get really creative a story. It really just
checks off every box that I want as a filmmaker.
And I think Victoria would agree.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
It's yes, I love that title.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, I know what was it about, Oh, shadow knife fingers?
Speaker 5 (08:38):
Well, the shadow and his fingers were knives.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
You're right there, it is.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
So this question is for both of you something we
ask all our guests at the beginning. I'm growing up,
which horror films had the biggest impact on you or
shaped your love of the genre. If you want to
go first, Victoria, like anything that's stuck with you as
a kid, as a horror film that you know you
never can forget.
Speaker 5 (08:59):
Oh, sure, that's easy. That's Nightmare on Elm Street. I
was way too young to watch it, and it was
really my best friend at the time who had older brother. No,
she was older whatever. She wasn't one of those famili
where they were allowed to watch the scarier movies and
I was not. So I was over with her. They're like,
you got to watch this, I watch I'm watching it.
I'm I don't want to watch it. I'm terrified. I
(09:22):
was such a chicken. So just yeah, I actually didn't
feel brave enough to even watch horror until like a
few years ago, like recent like I you know me,
and now I'm like horror for lunch, watch it. I'll
watch it within my morning coffee. I'm trying to get inspired.
But yeah, definitely Nama on Elm Street, and I will
(09:42):
always remember my friend showing me that way too young
Freddy coming through the bed underneath the bed like always,
I was afraid of my bed for days. I used
to run from the carpet on to like jump onto
the bed because I thought Freddy couldn't get We're talking
like second grade. So I feel like that was pretty pretty.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Poor amazing how about you?
Speaker 4 (10:01):
Aaron?
Speaker 3 (10:02):
For me?
Speaker 4 (10:03):
Hands down, as as cliche as it may be, is
the Sam Raimi Evil Dead movies. When I first saw that,
I don't even think I realized I wanted to pursue
a career in horror until I saw Evil Dead and
Evil Dead Too and an Army of Darkness, and I
was just like, you can do this in a movie.
I like, like, he just broke every rule and it
was just so much fun. And then I felt kind
(10:25):
of cool because I was like, well, I like horror,
like this is really within the horror genre, and I
like this, this isn't scary at all. And that was
kind of, I guess, like the marijuana of horror movies
in a way where it just sort of opened the
door to all of these other fun, fun films, and
you know, then I just sort of went on this
journey of looking for you know, darker, scarier, gorrier and
(10:46):
all that.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
What What are your thoughts on the Evil Dead remake
and the Evil Dead the one that call what is
it called, the one that came out Evil Dead Rise?
Speaker 4 (10:56):
Those? Yeah, we went to a screening of Evil Dead
Rise and I really really enjoyed it kind of capture
the soul of the originals and still added something new.
I think the Fetti Alvarez did the one before that
is that right, the twenty thirteen that one. I enjoyed it,
but it was very much a different kind of film.
It didn't feel like it was like an act, like,
(11:18):
you know, one of the original Evil Dead movies. It
just felt like sort of its own scary thing. It
definitely wasn't very funny, and the horror the comedy is
really what makes Evil Dead evil dead, right.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
I think I laughed like once with you eight Glass.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
It's hilarious indeed.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
So this is the most important question you both will
answer today. Do you prefer the original Halloween or the
original Friday of the thirteenth Because I'm a Fride thirteenth
person and that is a Halloween person.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
So answer wisely, yeah, Personally, personally, I prefer I like
Halloween more.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
I think good Fall.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
We know we're on with great guests today. Now, how
about Victoria, do you know which one she would prefer? Halloween?
Speaker 4 (12:01):
Okay, next question, he also says, Halloween.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Oh, okay, okay.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
So moving on to the kind of like the origins
of social House films. Now, Aaron, when and how was
your production company formed? And was the plan always to
focus on horror? Because I also noticed that your first
feature film was a comedy called Electric Love, So how
did the everything get started with that?
Speaker 4 (12:24):
So the first feature film that Victor and I made
together was called Electric Love, and that was a romantic
comedy about dating apps, and it was sort of like
ensemble cast, and you know, we followed our lead couple
who met on Tinder, and then there was a couple
that met on Grinder, and then we explored Bumble and
all of those and that actually that went to Hulu
(12:45):
and it was really cool and it was, you know,
a successful movie. But it was around the pandemic that
we decided, when we couldn't go out and shoot something else,
let's just stay at home and start making short horror films.
I was very much inspeired by you know, David F. Sandberg,
and I loved his making of videos, and so we
(13:05):
made this one short horror film. I think it was
twenty twenty or maybe like end of twenty twenty or
beginning of twenty twenty one. We made a short horror
film called BedHead.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Yes we saw it, we watched.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
And this was really just meant to be a camera test.
I had just got like a new black Magic camera
and we put that online and it just pretty quickly
got picked up by cryptv and so it was featured
over there, and then it just started accrewing all these views,
and I think it's up to like a few million
views now, and we're like, well, I mean that was
(13:38):
fun and successful, Let's do it again. And so we
made another film. This one was called The ice Cream Man,
and that also got like a million views. And so
we just sort of found our rhythm making these short
horror films and you know, taking chances without too much
risk financially, we could just sort of experiment from home
and work with each other, and so we did that
(13:59):
for I would say about three to four years before
finally moving on to Beezel, which was essentially taking what
everything that we learned since the pandemic working in horror
on our YouTube channel, and consolidating it into one cohesive movie.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Yeah, you know, well, so my next question was gonna
be you kind of answered it because, like I said
in the intro, you guys have I counted thirty different
horror shorts and several of them have millions of views
on him, and I was gonna ask which short would
you say was kind of like the turning point for
the company where you're like, Okay, this really put Social
House Films on the map, But it sounds like your
first short film was.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
That it was. I mean, the first one is sort
of what encouraged us and like pushed us along, like
you can do this, and there's an audience for this,
the first real one. I think I would say that
maybe put us on the map. You could say, would
be the Ballerina that has twenty one million views now.
And I have people that you know, I went to
(15:00):
high school with that, I went to college with that
I haven't even spoken to in many many years, messaging
me on Facebook saying, Hey, I was in the office
and I saw this film and it's wild the reach
of this short film. I had no idea when we
were making it that would be that successful. Obviously, I'm
glad that it is, but that was really I think,
I would say, a turning point for us.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
And do you each have a favorite film in your
catalog of titles short film?
Speaker 4 (15:27):
Yeah? Of the shorts, well, I mean besides the Ballerina,
I would say this is a personal favorite that didn't
get as many views as I would have hoped. I
would say it wasn't as successful. It's called jokes on you.
I was watching The Mask with Jim Carrey. I was
very inspired by I mean, that's one of my favorite
movies growing up, and so I came up with this
(15:48):
idea of a curse of a joke that, when told,
you become possessed with laughter that you cannot stop until
you tell the jokes to somebody else. And so, you know,
I thought it was like a sort of funny, weird,
quirky and potentially disturbing idea. And I'm so proud of
(16:08):
that movie Jokes on You. I wish it were more successful.
But yeah, Victoria has your own answer.
Speaker 5 (16:14):
Little lady might be pulling me away against youoner them later.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
But yes, yes, let me see it. Yes, okay, oh door,
Oh my god, look at her looking at us.
Speaker 5 (16:24):
Okay, Yeah, my answer is death Record. We have a
whole four part series, and I've always just thought that
was so I mean, it's object driven horror, so it's
something that we're familiar with.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
But I thought, how cool.
Speaker 5 (16:36):
Is this, like this sound that can hypnotize you and
make you do these terrible things to yourself and other people.
And so that's something that I'm always like going back
at and being like, how can I, how can we
you know, take this to the next level. And honestly,
one Day. I would love to pitch it as like
a series or a limited runner, a movie of it down,
but yeah, that one has my heart.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
I like that one.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
I must confess, since I've watched that every single night
when I brust my teeth, I think of your film.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
And now for Victoria, since you're here, it's like, I
want to jump into a quick question that only you
can answer, because just a couple of random questions about
some of the shorts, because we did watch a lot
of them, really enjoyed them. One of them that looked
incredibly fun or incredibly nauseating to make was called Happy Birthday.
And I had to ask because you know, in the
in the film, your character makes a wish to look
younger and then she proceeds to eat like a cake
(17:26):
cockroach in all, and I have to ask, did you
really eat that entire cake? And what did you use
for the cockroach? Because that scene was insane.
Speaker 5 (17:36):
Those are great questions. I remember that cake well. It
was a really cheap, like grocery store cake, and I
you know, in the beginning, I was like, hell, yeah,
permission to go crazy on cake. But by like take three,
four or five, You're like, where's the trash can give
me the bucket, and I was tossing out a lot
of that cake from my mouth, much of the the
chagrin of our DP. I think you shook.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
Cakes.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
Yeah, y'all have cake one day. And then the cockroach.
The cockroach, it's a plastic, but I like punch into it. Uh.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
The cockroach was entirely stop motion. So we purchased a
little plastic cockroach, life size and just kept the camera
rolling and frame by frame we just move it along
and it took all of a twenty minutes and then
I just put it all together.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
I used to do that as a kid. Do you
remember Playmobile?
Speaker 4 (18:30):
He's younger, like you're dating yourself.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Now, Playmobile with just like these little character things and
I made them.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Like walk when Tim was growing up during World War two.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Well, it's funny because our next thing, because don't worry,
we're going to jump into Bethel, but we're kind of
making our way. As you see through your career, you
made this great which which Victoria mentioned, this great four
part mini series called Death Record where this cursed final
record kind of causes listeners to kill people and Aaron
of course, and now that you've answered your question. I
know the answer to this, but like we were getting
(19:05):
major Evil Dead vibes from the story just because you know,
the chance and the cabin, So I guess I don't
even need to ask, but was that an inspiration.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
For these Absolutely? Absolutely? I mean you'll I think you'll
see a little bit of Evil Dead and just about
everything I do, especially even in even in Beesel, which
is you know, tonally I think a lot different from
Evil Dead, but you'll also see a little bit of
Sinister in there, a little bit of Barbarian that was
one of one of our favorites from the past, you know,
(19:34):
a few years. So yeah, there's a lot of influences,
but Evil Dead is definitely consistently appearing.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
It totally makes sense.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
And Victoria kind of already answered this, But I guess
you'd make Death Records into a possible series or a movie.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
I mean, is that something, yeah, you ever considered like
a feature film for it all versus absolutely?
Speaker 4 (19:55):
In fact, that's even how it started. Before I even
met Victoria. I wrote a record feature which was totally
different than what it turned out to be online. But
you know, we never got the future off the ground,
and so when we met, she loved the idea, she
loved the title and the concept, so we put together
(20:17):
the web series. However, it does hold a very special
place in our heart, and I wouldn't be surprised if,
you know, one of these days we start writing the
movie or even the TV series. I think it would
be a great series.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Yeah, it's really great again, listeners, if you go to
Social House Films on YouTube, you can watch all these
short films we're talking about and referencing for yourself. We
really enjoyed the Death Record ones. The one thing I
wanted to ask was Part four. I got the feeling
Part four did you film that a couple of years later?
Because it looked like and was Victoria act is really
(20:50):
pregnant and you work that in. So I guess my
question is what made you after Part three decide, hey,
a couple years later, let's go back and add a
part four of this series.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
I think it was just our love for the series.
And you know, when we can't come up with any
new original ideas, we just go into the archives and
we're like, why not make another part to one of
our most popular and favorite series. So it just kind
of makes sense. And we also had a new shooting location,
and when you're working with you know, very little money,
(21:20):
shooting things yourselves online. You know, you're always trying to
write things based on the resources that you have access
to and the locations that you have access to. So
we were like, well, we have this house now in
the middle of the desert, why don't we make a
part four?
Speaker 1 (21:34):
And we're parts one through three filmed in Big Bear.
They were okay because I was like, something's familiar.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Well, and I will say this as horror lovers who
love what we're big slasher fans, big surprise with the
Halloween Friday the thirteenth thing. I liked the character, the
creepy masked character you introduced in part four was really creepy.
Was like a more sinister art the clown in a
weird way.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
And then you mentioned The Ballerina being your most popular
short in terms of like twenty one million views and everything.
Why do you think that one in particulate or in
particular resonated so much with audiences like over some of
the others.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
Maybe I think. I mean, first of all, horror as
a genre is already very popular, and it's sort of
you know, it sort of what's the word that I'm
looking for, permeates any culture, any language, you know. I
think fear is sort of a universal feeling, and whereas
(22:34):
comedy is very subjective. So the fact that there are
there's not a single word of dialogue really helps. And
the fact that it's also dance oriented, which also can
you know, travel the world and isn't really discriminatory to
any one culture or language. So mixed dance, mix horror.
(22:59):
I think I have a feeling that that's why it resonated.
I also think that just thematically, it was one of
our more like, you know, poignant films.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Yeah, and was the lead actress in actual Ballerina she was.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
Yeah, Vlaska is a fantastic actress, and she was she
was a ballerina and so we kind of, you know,
catered it to her.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
So moving on to your most recent horror feature film, Beezel,
which came out just last year, and for listeners, it's
available to rent on vod or you can stream it
for free with ads on the Roku channel or fandango
at home, but rent it. So just want to give
a warning listeners. We always, as we always do, we're
going to discuss plot points with them, and so there
(23:46):
will be spoilers. So if you don't want the movie spoiled,
you know, this is kind of your warning. So, Aaron,
I heard you mention that your childhood home was a
huge inspiration for this film. So how did that setting
inspire the story?
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Exactly?
Speaker 4 (24:02):
When we were writing the movie, we were writing every
scene catered to that house. So you know, I moved
into that house in nineteen ninety four, not by choice,
my parents forced me. I was six years old, but
I just remembered being terrified as a kid actually living
there because it was it's a very, very long house,
(24:22):
and my bedroom was on one side of the house.
My parents' bedroom was all the way on the opposite side,
and so every night when they would like tuck me in,
I would ask them where in the house are you
going to be? Because I just wanted to like know
where they were going to be. And my bedroom was
situated right above the basement where Beesel lives, so you know,
(24:43):
I was it was very easy, I guess, to draw
from all of these nightmares that I just remember having
as a kid, like, well, what if something was living
downstairs and could come through the vents into my bedroom,
or what if something was living downstairs and could pop
up through that laundry shoot in the bathroom that we
featured in the film. That was a scary idea and
(25:03):
we just had to take advantage of it. Even the
crawl space is actually in the house. We did not
build a set for that, so it was I don't
want to say it was easy, but it definitely sort
of putting ourselves in that box of having to tell
a story based on this location that we had access to,
it was hugely helpful.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
So what you're saying is your childhood was filled with
nightmare fuel essentially.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
Yeah. When my parents first heard me say that, they
were like, honey, we had no idea that you were
that scared. And I'm like, well, you know, I wasn't
like terrified every night, but you know when you're.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Spased on a true story.
Speaker 4 (25:41):
Yet, let's go with that.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Well, did you think like your house was haunted or
was it just scary? Like scary? But because I know,
I think every kid, it's like when you hear something
or there there. And now I didn't grow up with
any basements or things, but I can't even imagine living
in a house with a crawl space or a basement.
But did you actually think you're house was haunted or
that was just something you added into the story, you.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
Know, I'm I'm sure a lot of people can relate
to this. I didn't actually think it was haunted, and
I don't think homes even to this day are haunted.
But for some reason, unbeknownst to me, every time I
would walk up those basement stairs, I'd always have like
this vision of like this tall, skinny, gray like witch
(26:24):
just sort of like quickly chasing me up the stairs,
and I'd always have to look over my shoulder, even
though it makes no sense and that I know in
my logic brain that would never happen. I still have
that vision and that fear even to this day.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yeah, I mean I grew up with a basement, and
like anytime you went downstairs, if you're home alone, you'd
always do that, like run up the stairs bolt like
You're like, I don't know why I'm running, but I'm running.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
I'm not running away from anything, But yeah, I used
to feel that way. In I mean, we had a
big scary garage, and because I was obsessed with Halloween, Shocker,
I had all my Halloween decorations year round, just like
placed in a corner. So I was terrified of them
when I would go in the garage.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Little is the.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
Reason why most horror films take place or a lot
of horror films take place in New England, you know,
it's the homes have basements and so that fear is
instilled within us.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
So beesels told in segments to take place over sixty years,
with one through line and a family that connects it all. Now,
something unique about this film is that there's a mix
of found footage and that normal third person filming style.
So what made you decide to use both of these approaches,
aka telling the story across various time periods and switching
(27:38):
between found footage and just regular filming styles.
Speaker 4 (27:41):
Sure, I mean it's a couple things. First of all,
because the film takes place throughout several different decades time periods,
showing the progression of technology was just sort of a
story device, you know. So it starts off in the
sixties where we have eight millimeter film, and then we
(28:02):
moved to the nineties where we have or eighties where
we have vhs, and then early two thousands where we
have like a tape recorder and then we actually end
with like a mini DV camera, so really just for
the story, just to sort of show the progress, the
progression of time. That was one reason. The other reason
is found footage is cheaper, and like I said before,
(28:25):
when you know you're you're shooting a feature length film
with very very little money, the very small budget, we're
constantly asking ourselves, how can we tell this story for
fewer dollars?
Speaker 3 (28:41):
No, I mean but that, But like the thing is
is that I think indie filmmakers in general, they always
have to think that way. But as long as something
is effective.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
It's gotta be tough to come up with creative ways
to be like, because as an audience member, you're like, okay,
now why are they filming? So it's like it lands
really well, Like I was like, oh, I would document
that too.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
Yeah, and we're trying to justify it in the story,
Like I don't like when films just sort of throw
that element in there without it really being justified. But
anytime that we would cut to some sort of found
footage element, it would be off of seeing a character
holding the camera.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah, no, that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
I was also you were talking about the actual the
Witch Beesel, And I was going to ask what inspired
the look of the witch? But is this what you
had always grown up thinking this witch looked like?
Speaker 4 (29:28):
Yeah, I mean it's sort of a combination of envisioning
what it looks like and just what actually scares us,
and then going online and shopping for prosthetics and looking
at makeup and seeing what you know, Victoria was able
to do herself with special effects makeup and putting that
(29:49):
all together and then doing some tests into seeing how
it reads on screen. That's sort of how the look
of Beesel was born.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
It's really scary. And we were actually wondering because and
you see the witch in the shadows and things, was
that an actual costume or that you put together or
because I take it that wasn't like obviously CGI or something.
Was that like a full get up?
Speaker 4 (30:10):
It was essentially mostly it was it was pretty much
a naked human being, a naked human.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Being with like all sorts of makeup and stuff on.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
Yeah, with like with just makeup so that there were
prosthetics and there were and there was just a lot
of body makeup like grease paint and that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Oh wow, Yeah, it was effective.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
I mean we and and the opening scene of Beesel
it was kind of giving me a little bit of
it vibes with the kid being kind of pulled down
into the laundry shoot. So I wanted to ask, did
you model the scene after? Was there ever a childhood
fear that you would get pulled down a laundry shoot
as a kid in this house?
Speaker 4 (30:49):
It's so funny. Obviously, like the comparison to it definitely
occurred to us while we were writing it. We were like,
this is kind of like the opening to it, but
I think it's different enough to still be ours. But really,
that whole moment of this this young boy opening up
this laundry shoot, staring down into this horrifying black abyss
of a basement, that's just that was just me as
(31:10):
a kid, Like that's what I was doing, That's what
I imagined could happen. And so that's sort of how
we came up with the idea independently of it, And
then we were like, well, it was a pretty solid opening,
so I think that this this would be a pretty
solid opening.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
So basically for listeners, if you had scary shit happen
as a kid, or you thought of that you're going
to write and make a really cool horror movie that's.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
Exactly just draw from your own fears.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Right, Oh, it is so true. I mean, I guess
I haven't tapped into him.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
I don't know what it's doing.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
Now you're gonna make Tim recover these memories of the
basement and.
Speaker 4 (31:44):
Then sorry, I'm sorry, Okay, I'll be fine.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
And so the next segment has a really cool decapitation scene.
How did you guys go about doing that?
Speaker 4 (31:55):
So we actually have a making of Diesel documentary on
our channel where we actually show the visuals and go
into great detail on how we accomplished that effect. But
it was really just a team effort of me, our
DP Killen Carruthers, who shot the whole movie, and then
our visual effects supervisor Sam Evenson. We did a test
(32:17):
in La first of Victoria, just ripping off my head
and it came out. It came out pretty well like
it actually looked really good. There was no blood effects
or gore or anything at that time. But what we
did is we I don't know how much detail you
actually want, but we would essentially put tracking marks on
the actor's neck and then we went through the motion
(32:41):
and counted one, two, three, and on three he would
sort of react to being decapitated, and then his body
would just go limp. And then we would shoot separate
elements of a prop head and then a severed neck prosthetic,
and then we would have a syringe with some blood
(33:01):
that we would just sort of drop. All of this
was against a blue screen, of course, so that we
could separate it from the plate, and then we just
composite all of that together and add some motion blur,
and we even brought I think Sam brought on some
help from a three D animator who is credited in
the film as neck flap artist because that was his job.
(33:25):
He literally spent several days just animating the neck flaps
after the head came off the body. I love it,
neck flap artist. I want that title. No, it goes up,
it gets rire, And I mean there's a lot of
physics involved with an effect like that that you don't
even think about, you know, Like like, of course, when
when your head gets ripped off, you know you're going
(33:47):
to have all of this excess skin that's going to
sort of move up and then fall down and bounce
a little bit. So in order to achieve that we
needed to build like a three D model and have
all of these other pctical effects that we were able
to just composit together.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
I mean, every time I rip somebody's head off, it
always no, I never do as well, yeah goes no.
I think we were just really impressed because again, you
you know, you hear Indie horror and you think, okay,
how can they pull off an effect like that? And
it looked good and pulled it off like it really
it really was. We were really impressed, like we actually
looked at each other easy. And also like you know,
(34:25):
you've seen the old Like we were just watching what
was it like Valentine where there's a decapitated head and
it looks so obviously fake and and it kind of
takes you out in the movie.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
And there was nothing that looked fake in this scene.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
So I appreciate that. That's that's the relief to hear.
The other thing to sort of, you know, hide any
potentially shoddy work, you know, or low budgetness, was the
fact that we added a VHS effect to it, so
we kind of downgraded the quality over all of the
of the image, you know, just to I think make
it more realistic, but also it's a little pixelated. It's not,
(35:01):
you know, as precise as it needs to be.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
But it works because because in the segment he's doing
an interview, so there would be a camera. And obviously
you thought that out because.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
I totally recognized from Back to the Future. I was like,
I was like, oh, I noticed this, I know that camera.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
I think you're the first person actually notice.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
That big Back to the Future.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
So the next segment one of this I found one
of the scariest segments, the one with the night nurse
and the crawl space. I mean any crawl space. I mean,
what a perfect setting for a horror movie. And I
know you mentioned in some interviews this was the first
segment that was filmed and then you guys went back
and wrote what happened before and after? Did you ever
consider expanding when you were thinking about, Okay, let's turn
(35:47):
this into a feature film. Did you ever think, hey,
maybe we should just expand this entire night Sirce section
and you know, show what happened to the other nurses
or were you always like, I want to do the
before time period, the after time period and just make
this kind of the center.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
I think we were already always prepared to do an anthology.
We obviously shot the night nurse section first, and I
guess just through enough discussion, we sort of discovered that
what excited us the most, what we thought was a
little bit more original, something that we had never seen before,
and something that allowed us to tell a slightly different
(36:23):
story but still keep it within the same world, would
be to just you know, have this generational tale, this
generational odyssey in the same location over time. So instead
of expanding that that section, you know, I don't not to,
I don't I guess I'm gonna spoil it. She dies,
you know, So there wasn't much that we were able
(36:46):
to do after that because she she's dead. And then
before that, you know, we thought about telling the story about,
you know, the previous nurse before her. That felt a
little bit redundant, and so, I don't know, just with
enough discussion and talking about this script, we went in
this direction.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Yeah, no, no, I think it was great. We were
just so that whole sequence is so terrifying, and just
to fuck with me, Tim continues to text me the
image of missus Weims floating in front of her drooling
like literally over the last week at he's been texting
me because we were getting ready for this interview, and
he knows that I'm terrified of that segment, so he
(37:29):
keeps sending me that visual.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
So thank you for that.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Yeah, right when it was on screen, I was like click.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
And you know, another thing we really liked about them
the movie was the music, just because it's so unnerving
and really kind of contributes to the suspense. We were
just wondering, how did you decide on the music? What
was your thinking behind using that kind of style.
Speaker 4 (37:52):
So the score is all done by Robot Disco Puma,
who also scores all of our short horror films. And
what we'll do is, you know, I'll usually send him
references from other films with music that I like. So
I would send him, you know, I believe I sent
him the soundtrack of Midsommar, the soundtrack of Sinister, and
(38:13):
I was like, can you sort of do something in
this vein? And then I would send him little scenes
and he would send me a whole library of music
and I would say, like, ninety five percent of it
is just fucking amazing, And I will take, you know,
everything that he makes and then sort of just layer
it in where wherever I want. So it's a very
(38:34):
like collaborative kind of process and you sort of discover
what works and what doesn't along the way. It's a
little bit more, it's a little bit less orthodox of
a way of doing it. You know. Usually you would
send in the whole movie and then at least with
a budget, and then you would have like a whole
orchestra just sort of create the score from start to finish.
But we sort of piecemeal it together and that's sort
(38:57):
of our workflow.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Who is your favorite composer?
Speaker 4 (39:00):
Are my favorite composer?
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Or even just like horror score in particular, it's like, oh,
I love Hans Zimber.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
Here, let me actually, I'm going to give you a meam.
So have you ever seen the movie A Serious Man?
Speaker 2 (39:15):
I've heard of it. I don't know if I've seen it.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
So that's scored by Carter Burwell. Yes.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
I think he did Child's Play too.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
One of his highlights. It's a great movie.
Speaker 4 (39:29):
I'm wondering if he works he works with He did
three Billboards, He did Ballot of Butter Scrug so he
does a lot of Cohen Brothers stuff. There's something very
dark and creepy about Carter Burwell's music, and I love
it and when I whenever i'm writing, that's actually one
of the first composers that I go to to listen to.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
I'm always curious because I when growing up, I had
all the tapes like what was that Varses, I had
all the like soundtracks, so like the most random horror movies,
but I loved them.
Speaker 4 (40:04):
I thought they were really really I have a feeling
we're similar in that, like we'll probably be the only
ones going to like the gym or something listening to this,
like orchestral horror music.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Oh my gosh. One that always stuck out to me
was total recall, don't.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Know, always pumps him up. Horror work out right, fantastic.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
We had had some questions for Victoria about her big
segment as Nova. I take it she's still kind of
indisposed right now. Well, but one thing about her segment
when she's at the Nova and the kind of the
climax of it, and sorry, I'm gonna spoil it where
she is show. So basically, Victoria plays Nova and her
husband Lucas they inherited the house because his mom died
(40:44):
missus wims and so at the very end of this
segment again spoiler where she she wakes up and he
and sorry he wakes up and she's stabbing him over
and over to death. You know, just your normal couples exchange.
But what I found really cool about this scene is
that Nova is filming it or possessed Novas, so as
(41:05):
viewers we see it happening through her camcorder and sort
of as just part of the film. And I noticed
that you used a similar shot at the end of
Death Record Part three, So how did you come up
with this technique? And I take it where you like, Oh,
it worked well in the short, and I'm going to
put it into the movie kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
It just it fills my heart with so much joy
to even hear you pick up on that. Yeah, we
shot pretty much this a very similar almost exactly the
same kind of sequence in Death Record, and it was
just so effective. It worked so well. And you know,
like I said earlier, this movie was really really the
(41:43):
best of our shorts, and so we just took everything
that we knew worked and hopefully, you know, we improved
upon it. We did it with a little bit bigger
of a set, you know, more of a story behind
it and just more more moving parts.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
And where did the film first premiere? And what was
it like seeing it on the big screen.
Speaker 4 (42:05):
We premiered this in Hollywood on sunset? Was it Landmark Theater?
At Landmark?
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Oh, that's a great Yeah, we love that theater.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
Yeah, and we we packed the house with like two
d and fifty people. One of the best days of
my life. I mean, it's it's incredible to to like,
I actually get chills thinking about that day because we
were screening this in front of so many people. Obviously, I'm,
you know, pretty pretty nervous about it, but within ten
(42:34):
minutes I knew that, like this we made a terrifying film.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
You know.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
I I guess the the insecurity within me needs that
visceral reaction from people screaming and gasping, and that's what
we got for eighty two minutes NonStop. Just the audience
loved it and it was a very rewarding fun day.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Was it like that?
Speaker 3 (42:55):
I was just going to say, I wish we had
known you guys earlier and would have love, oh my god,
to see us on a big screen. Was it a
film festival premiere or was it just you reading out
the theater or just having it in theaters?
Speaker 4 (43:06):
Yeah, we just rented out the theater. It wasn't part
of a festival or anything, so we just rented out
the theater and then invited you know, two hundred two
undred and fifty like industry people, friends, crew members, and
it was a giant party.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Oh that sounds like a blast actually, because what we
saw was so scary and I haven't been scared, Like
we see a lot of stuff, I haven't been scared
it a long time, So I applaud you.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Yeah, no, I can only imagine.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
Also, like we always talk about on our podcast when
we're reviewing films, like there are certain films that seeing
it on a big screen really will enhance it, and
there's other films when we're like, oh, wait for streaming.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
This is a film.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
Although we watched it on streaming, you know it, I
can just only imagine how enhanced it would be with
an audience on a big screen, sharing in like those
gaps and shrieks and everything.
Speaker 4 (43:55):
So I know, I mean, it's why we do this,
Like I make movies to show it on the big screen.
I'd imagine most filmmakers do it. It's you don't realize
how significant it is to screen in a movie theater
until you do it, and you're like, holy shit, this
is so much better even than I imagined.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
That's so cool.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
So you mentioned in an interview that you and Victoria
wrote a full page of backstory for Beesel The Witch,
and that most of it wasn't explored in this film,
but you were saving it in case you were to
make a sequel. So I think the big question is
are there any plans for a sequel? And if you did,
can you give us just a hint of just like
one thing you might explore in it.
Speaker 4 (44:36):
So, if we were to do any kind of sequel,
we are thinking that this would be a prequel and
would take place many hundreds of years ago, diving into
the origin of Beesel. You know, I actually think that
if we were to do that. First of all, I
love period pieces. I love The Witch, you know, Robert
(44:57):
egger Is The Witch is a great movie. And so
sort of doing that and something along those lines in
our own style that matches the story structure of Beesel
in the world of Beesel would be really really cool,
And I think it might even make people appreciate the
first one more.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Yeah, so do you? I mean, I take it you
haven't decided. Are you leaning toward doing a sequel or not?
Speaker 4 (45:19):
Or we have a lot of projects that we're working
on right now. But that's the beesel. Prequel is definitely
one that's sort of rattling around in our brains that
I'm sure we're going to do eventually. I would say
it's more likely than it's not.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
No, that's great, Well, that's what's going to be.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
Kind of one of our wrap up questions was what's
next for social als films? Like, do you think you'll
make more horror shorts? Do you think you're going to
focus strictly on feature films now or what can you
tell us about that.
Speaker 4 (45:45):
We're definitely going to do both. I don't think we're
ever going to stop making short horror films. It's something
you know, I still admire about David F. Samdberg. He's
doing big, big budget studio films Shazam, and I'll still
find some time to make short films with his wife.
I just think it's, uh, it's fun, it's what this
is all about. It's what it's what we want to do.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
And when when you post stuff on YouTube, do you
read the comments?
Speaker 4 (46:12):
I do? I shouldn't.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
I mean, I would like you, like, download it, put
it out there, and then like so many people can
watch and see it. I'd be so curious, Like what
if people think of.
Speaker 4 (46:23):
Yeah, no, no, I do. I mean I read. I
even read like most of the Beesel reviews, you know,
for better or worse. But uh, it's hard not to,
you know, yeah, yeah, I probably shouldn't, but it's it's
just hard not to do.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
I like that you honestly answered that, because it'd be
so easy to.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Be like, I don't read any comment.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
I put up a TikTok, and I'm like, who's saying what?
Speaker 4 (46:44):
I'm not proud of it, you know. I wish I
could just, you know, uh, turn that part of my
curiosity off and just focus on writing the next one,
because this is already in the can this is out
there in the world. It can't change anything. But but
the good thing is that like eight percent of what
I read is like neutral or positive.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
And also it's like and we anybody who puts any
sort of art out there for public consumption knows you
can't impress every single person. Well, and I can't, well,
yes Tim can, Tim can. But like if you put
out something, if you know, if one person doesn't like
one thing about that'll be the thing that another person
loves about it. So it's like if you start making
(47:26):
changes to you know, a piece one person, then you've
pissed off another person. So you do what makes you
happy and if people like it, great and they keep
it going. And I think you guys have so much
out there that is very impressive. That's why we're so
and I'm excited that you said you're going to be
doing more short films because it's kind of like, I know,
it takes a while obviously to make a film, a
full film, so like having these little like bite sized
(47:49):
horror bits out there are really fun and I'm glad.
I think other people would be like, oh, we've done
a feature, it found some success, we don't need to
do shorts anymore. So I'm glad that you're going to
do shorts.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
I mean just recently since we watched your film, Like People,
a lot of my family members always like, oh, well,
tell me what's scary. I'm definitely recommending your movie Diesel,
because you genuinely leaves you with an eerie feeling, like
when I left Matt's house and I got in my car,
I was like, I feel funny.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
I love that. That's the reactually went, I feel funny.
Speaker 3 (48:17):
Well, we have one final question for you. We're going
to ask It kind of puts you on the spot,
but we asked this to everyone we interview. What is
one thing that you can tell us about your experience
working on Diesel that you've never told in any other interview, publication,
podcast or whatever. You've never told Victoria No, one thing,
(48:41):
Just one thing about your experience working on the film.
And it doesn't have to be salacious and gossiping unless
you want it to be. But something that you've just
never told in an interview about your experience working on Diesel.
Speaker 4 (48:51):
I need a phone a friend for this.
Speaker 3 (48:55):
Part.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
Thanks for really getting here. You're in the basement.
Speaker 5 (48:58):
You didn't think you were going to get it.
Speaker 4 (49:00):
Was that during the head rip shot? Yeah, there was, Yeah,
I guess there was. Oh no, it actually wasn't during
the head rip shot. There was a moment when we
were even shooting the first segment with the nurse where
we were so behind schedule, and I remember we were
(49:24):
going to lose all of our film equipment the next day,
just because like the we were renting everything from a
local rental house and what was that. Yeah, and everybody
was flying out. All of our actors their planes were booked,
the crew members their planes were booked. So if we
didn't get this done, we weren't going to be able
(49:44):
to finish the movie. And I actually, in my mind,
I kid you not, I had this moment where I
was like, I just I don't know if I can
do this anymore, Like I just don't know if if
I have it in me to put this kind of
stress on myself as an independent filmmaker, because I just
wasn't sure if we were going to get it and
it was so so stressful. But as a as a director,
(50:08):
you know, it's important that you don't show that doubt.
You kind of have to keep moving. So it's obviously
it's a good lesson for life, I suppose. But obviously
we we managed to do it somehow, and uh, and
it's done.
Speaker 3 (50:24):
But you're yeah, and that's great because you're also a
human being. So like everyone who has and this is
why we asked this question. We love hearing things like
that because people you know, obviously you've done a ton
of interviews on Beesel, and of course you're gonna, you know,
talk about all the polished good things and stuff, and
we want to hear all the nitty gray easy. Yeah,
Like I don't want to hear that. I know it's
not easy. I know it's it's it's we're very much
(50:46):
in mind.
Speaker 1 (50:46):
Helping up until like people are getting in their ubers
to go to the airport.
Speaker 4 (50:50):
We pretty much I mean we were filming up until
like you know, one o'clock in the morning and someone
had like a five am flight and we still had
to get them to the airport that you know, brad International,
and like at like four, like just a few hours
and then and then they weren't going to get any sleep,
and it was just very stressful. Like I already have
gray hairs now, probably.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
Over that movie. Now, you know, come to my world.
Speaker 3 (51:14):
Another off the cuff question I just thought of because
I you know, I saw and you've mentioned that you
filmed at the childhood home right before your parents were
selling it. I take it have they sold it? And
do you know who bought the house? Because if they
watch Beesel And now I'm just wondering, like send them
a cop Like if they watch this movie and they're like,
oh my god, we just moved into this house and
obviously it's not true, but it's like it's just crazy
(51:36):
that like new owners build it and there's a whole.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
Movie about like a house thing.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
Ill a return outdress. Send them a copy and just
be like play.
Speaker 3 (51:43):
Do you know who bought the house and do they
have it now? And have they seen beesel.
Speaker 4 (51:46):
I've never met the people that bought the house, but
I do know that it was a couple bought the
house just a few months after we wrapped, and they
are fully aware that a horror movie was filmed there.
For a number of reasons. First of all, the neighbor
is all new when we were filming, even a couple
of neighbors were in the film, and we left a
few bloodstains on the basement floor.
Speaker 2 (52:10):
They didn't wash out.
Speaker 4 (52:11):
They we tried bleach. She was like trying to wash
away a murder scene. We could not do it there.
It's still there, and so they actually dubbed the house
the murder House. And there there are some there are
kids that will walk by now because it's just known
in the neighborhood as the murder House. I was told
that one kid asked their mom like, does a witch
(52:33):
really live there?
Speaker 3 (52:34):
Oh my god, that's awesome. I would have left like
a fake body part in the crawl space, like diesels
face and here's your housewarming gift. No, that's so cool. Well,
you know, well, first off, thank you so much for
taking the time. I feel bad we didn't get to
talk as much with Victoria. But Victoria, we loved your
performance in the movie. We loved seeing you in all
of the shorts. Like we got to a point where
(52:56):
we were watching so many shorts where she's always terrorized
that we're like, this is a like does she never
do every closet and bedroom that she's in something awful happens.
But yeah, we really enjoy.
Speaker 4 (53:08):
On though you know she's going to live on until
the next one, yes, exactly.
Speaker 3 (53:12):
But and we hope death Record you do more with
that because we really enjoyed that. But yeah, we thank
you so much for your time. We can't wait to
see what you guys do next.
Speaker 4 (53:21):
Amazing. No, thank you for having us, and Victorious is
thank you.
Speaker 3 (53:24):
If you can't hear, thank you, well, take care. We'll
hope to stay in touch, and yeah, we wish you nothing.
Speaker 2 (53:29):
But the best.
Speaker 4 (53:29):
Yes, absolutely, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (53:31):
Okay, take care, bye bye bye.
Speaker 1 (53:39):
Thanks for listening to another episode of Happy Horror Time.
Speaker 3 (53:42):
If you'd like to support the podcast, please sign up
to be a patron at www dot patreon dot com
slash Happy Horror Time. As a patron, you get access
to all our bonus content, which now includes two new
bonus episodes every month, a monthly after show mini episode,
access to our Discord community so you can chat with
(54:02):
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us in one of our bonus episodes.
Speaker 1 (54:08):
Patrons also get all our regular episodes, ad free and
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Speaker 2 (54:18):
I'm Matt Emmerts and I'm Tim Murdoch, and we hope
you have a Happy Horror Time.
Hello, and welcome to Happy Horrid Time. My name is
Tim Murdoch.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
And my name is Matt Emmert.
Speaker 3 (00:15):
Now today's special guests are couple goals in my book,
because as horror fans, I think we always aspire to
find a partner who shares our passion for the genre.
And these two filmmakers together created Social House Films, a
production company pretty much dedicated to horror. They've made thirty
short films last I checked on YouTube and counted many
with millions of views, and have even expanded into features,
(00:39):
including last year's supernatural flick Beesel. He directs, she produces,
they co write, she stars, and together well they just
scare the hell out of you. Please welcome to the
podcast the dynamic duo behind Social House Films. In twenty
twenty four's Beesel, Aaron and Victoria Fradkin.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Hello, Wow, when.
Speaker 5 (01:01):
Intro thank you was the best intro I've ever heard,
And I would love it if you could, I'll just
like watch this and transcribe it leader because that was
the best intro.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Oh my god, thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
We you know, it's just funny because we we do
these interviews a ton and all when we watch other podcasts.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
They're like, Okay, here's the director, and I'm.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Like, well you got a Well, Matt's a fantastic writer.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
I do write for a living. I work in an
ad agency.
Speaker 5 (01:27):
So it shows show well, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
But okay, so obviously we want to know more about
your horror films and the making of Beesel, but we
would love to start by getting to know a little
bit more about the two of you in your background.
So starting with Aaron, I read on IMDb and you
mentioned that you're originally from Western mass and went to
Boston University's College of Communication.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Crazy coincidence, so did I.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
I was an AD major though, yeah, and I'm older
than you, so we didn't cross paths. But I was like,
oh my god, bu Calm, I know exactly the same
ex experience. But can you kind of take us through
how you first became interested in filmmaking and got your
start in the industry, like before Social House films.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
Or I mean, it probably goes all the way back
to when I was twelve years old and I took
a cross country trip with my parents to California and
we visited some friends who had a video camera. I
don't want to date myself, but this was probably.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Like a year older.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Oh play anything, date anything you date?
Speaker 4 (02:25):
We're like, oh, so, you know, I was about twelve
years old, and that was the first time I held
a camera and I was I loved just filming everything,
to the point where I'd even watch it back and
ask myself, why am I filming all of this boring life?
And that's sort of when I discovered the power of editing.
And it was actually my best friend's mom in like
(02:47):
high school who taught me how to edit, and she
hooked me up with Adobe Premiere Pro. It was a
very intuitive software, and I was just sort of super
ocd about cutting things together and I really just started
making like funny short films with friends. And then I
went to a filmmaking workshop in Rockport, Maine, and that
(03:08):
was the first time where I actually worked with the
crew and we had all of this film equipment at
our disposal and we actually made a horror comedy. It
was called The Long Road to Gary and it was
a mockumentary about a French Canadian filmmaker who wants to
make a zombie movie about love. And that was the
(03:29):
first film I made that went to film festivals, and
then I was just bit by the bug and decided
to go to Boston University, where I ended up moving
out to LA as my final semester, and I did
like a BU and LA internship program, and I've just
been living out here ever since.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
Wow, that's awesome.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
I saw we were just gonna ask Victoria what her
background was, but I guess we'll skip that and get
right back to you because just so listeners know, the
Fradkins just recently welcomed a new addition to their family
back in December, right.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
Yeah, December sixteenth is her birthday and she's being right now.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Oh well, congratulations, yeah, congratulations on that on and this
is your first child, right her first yess?
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Wow, that is great.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
So I read an article that said you am both
met when Victoria auditioned for one of your films, Aaron,
and then very appropriately, your first kiss was on Halloween night?
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Is that correct?
Speaker 4 (04:26):
Because that's a door funny that that information is even
out there somewhere in the world. Yes, I was. I
used to direct music videos and so I was directing
this music video. Victoria came into an audition. The audition
consisted of just dancing and there wasn't even any like
lines to read. It was for a music video and
(04:48):
she did not get the part.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
What kind of dance did she do, by the way,
I need to know.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
Well, let me just say it was like a Nigerian
hip hop rap artist.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Oh so easy, easy, yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Very easy and right up Victoria's ally so so yeah.
She you know, she didn't get the part, but she
did reach out because she had this short horror film
script that she had written and she wanted to get
some advice from a filmmaker. I guess as to have
to get that made excuse the dog barking as well
in the background. But we met up and I discovered
(05:26):
very quickly that that Victoria is a very unique, special
person and that she she wasn't just meeting just you know,
for fun. It was she actually had a binder with
a breakdown of production materials and budget planning. And I
just thought to myself, you're a producer, and I just
I was, you know, putting together a short film myself
(05:48):
at the time, and I asked if she wanted to
come on board and help produce it, and I guess
you can take it from here.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Yeah, I want to know also about the Halloween night,
first kiss.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
That's really fun fun.
Speaker 5 (06:02):
Well, I mean at that point we had been pretty
much like working and meeting at cafes to write and
talk about production almost every day for like about a month,
and so I definitely thought this was a completely professional
I wanted more, but I was like, I think this
is just professional.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
What do you mean by more?
Speaker 1 (06:16):
I mean I want what.
Speaker 5 (06:17):
We have now. And so then by like the day
thirty thirty one, October October thirty one, I was like,
all right, we're officially friends, Like this is just a
friend friendship, I guess. But I invited him to a
special event I was hosting because at the time I
was also doing like occasionally am seeing special events in
(06:38):
La So I was doing this for LA Travel magazine
and I was like, ooh, he's going to come see
me be this cool like host on stage and blah
blah blah. When he was suck ind line outside, he
completely missed my entire you know, performance acts speech and
he came in after the whole show was like basically over,
and he's like, oh yeah, I was just stuck outside.
I was like cool, cool, And so then that was
(07:02):
actually the last time I ever did it, so to
this day he's never seen me post or m see.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
I don't really do it anymore. I think she's lying
about it. I don't know photos well.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
And this was on Halloween.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
Halloween night, and so then later we went somewhere else
and I was like, all right, I gotta go. I
just thought the night was over and I was going
to head home, and then he kissed.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Me, and I thought I was waiting for the horror
movie twists, and then he followed me home.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
Well, did you guys bond over horror films at all?
Speaker 4 (07:33):
I wouldn't say we bonded over horror films. It's in
a way it was always subconsciously in our blood. Anytime
we would want to make something together, it was always
just we were both intuited. We wanted to do horror
in some way. The first short film that we made
was called shadow Knife Fingers, and we just sort of
made it up as we went along, and I was
(07:54):
just sort of playing with some fun visual effects, and
we shot this in my studio apartment in Hollywood, the first.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Thing in the world.
Speaker 5 (08:01):
It's kind of cute. It's got a little twilight zonie vibe,
like just vibe wise and it's kind of cute, and
then we had no idea what to call it, Like
shadow knife fingers. There that thing on YouTube and no
one watched, and that was that we're.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Both drawn to horror just because it sort of is
able to hit on every part of filmmaking that interests us,
from like visual effects to special effects, cinematography. You can,
you know, get really creative a story. It really just
checks off every box that I want as a filmmaker.
And I think Victoria would agree.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
It's yes, I love that title.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Yeah, I know what was it about, Oh, shadow knife fingers?
Speaker 5 (08:38):
Well, the shadow and his fingers were knives.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
You're right there, it is.
Speaker 3 (08:41):
So this question is for both of you something we
ask all our guests at the beginning. I'm growing up,
which horror films had the biggest impact on you or
shaped your love of the genre. If you want to
go first, Victoria, like anything that's stuck with you as
a kid, as a horror film that you know you
never can forget.
Speaker 5 (08:59):
Oh, sure, that's easy. That's Nightmare on Elm Street. I
was way too young to watch it, and it was
really my best friend at the time who had older brother. No,
she was older whatever. She wasn't one of those famili
where they were allowed to watch the scarier movies and
I was not. So I was over with her. They're like,
you got to watch this, I watch I'm watching it.
I'm I don't want to watch it. I'm terrified. I
(09:22):
was such a chicken. So just yeah, I actually didn't
feel brave enough to even watch horror until like a
few years ago, like recent like I you know me,
and now I'm like horror for lunch, watch it. I'll
watch it within my morning coffee. I'm trying to get inspired.
But yeah, definitely Nama on Elm Street, and I will
(09:42):
always remember my friend showing me that way too young
Freddy coming through the bed underneath the bed like always,
I was afraid of my bed for days. I used
to run from the carpet on to like jump onto
the bed because I thought Freddy couldn't get We're talking
like second grade. So I feel like that was pretty pretty.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Poor amazing how about you?
Speaker 4 (10:01):
Aaron?
Speaker 3 (10:02):
For me?
Speaker 4 (10:03):
Hands down, as as cliche as it may be, is
the Sam Raimi Evil Dead movies. When I first saw that,
I don't even think I realized I wanted to pursue
a career in horror until I saw Evil Dead and
Evil Dead Too and an Army of Darkness, and I
was just like, you can do this in a movie.
I like, like, he just broke every rule and it
was just so much fun. And then I felt kind
(10:25):
of cool because I was like, well, I like horror,
like this is really within the horror genre, and I
like this, this isn't scary at all. And that was
kind of, I guess, like the marijuana of horror movies
in a way where it just sort of opened the
door to all of these other fun, fun films, and
you know, then I just sort of went on this
journey of looking for you know, darker, scarier, gorrier and
(10:46):
all that.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
What What are your thoughts on the Evil Dead remake
and the Evil Dead the one that call what is
it called, the one that came out Evil Dead Rise?
Speaker 4 (10:56):
Those? Yeah, we went to a screening of Evil Dead
Rise and I really really enjoyed it kind of capture
the soul of the originals and still added something new.
I think the Fetti Alvarez did the one before that
is that right, the twenty thirteen that one. I enjoyed it,
but it was very much a different kind of film.
It didn't feel like it was like an act, like,
(11:18):
you know, one of the original Evil Dead movies. It
just felt like sort of its own scary thing. It
definitely wasn't very funny, and the horror the comedy is
really what makes Evil Dead evil dead, right.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
I think I laughed like once with you eight Glass.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
It's hilarious indeed.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
So this is the most important question you both will
answer today. Do you prefer the original Halloween or the
original Friday of the thirteenth Because I'm a Fride thirteenth
person and that is a Halloween person.
Speaker 4 (11:49):
So answer wisely, yeah, Personally, personally, I prefer I like
Halloween more.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
I think good Fall.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
We know we're on with great guests today. Now, how
about Victoria, do you know which one she would prefer? Halloween?
Speaker 4 (12:01):
Okay, next question, he also says, Halloween.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Oh, okay, okay.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
So moving on to the kind of like the origins
of social House films. Now, Aaron, when and how was
your production company formed? And was the plan always to
focus on horror? Because I also noticed that your first
feature film was a comedy called Electric Love, So how
did the everything get started with that?
Speaker 4 (12:24):
So the first feature film that Victor and I made
together was called Electric Love, and that was a romantic
comedy about dating apps, and it was sort of like
ensemble cast, and you know, we followed our lead couple
who met on Tinder, and then there was a couple
that met on Grinder, and then we explored Bumble and
all of those and that actually that went to Hulu
(12:45):
and it was really cool and it was, you know,
a successful movie. But it was around the pandemic that
we decided, when we couldn't go out and shoot something else,
let's just stay at home and start making short horror films.
I was very much inspeired by you know, David F. Sandberg,
and I loved his making of videos, and so we
(13:05):
made this one short horror film. I think it was
twenty twenty or maybe like end of twenty twenty or
beginning of twenty twenty one. We made a short horror
film called BedHead.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Yes we saw it, we watched.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
And this was really just meant to be a camera test.
I had just got like a new black Magic camera
and we put that online and it just pretty quickly
got picked up by cryptv and so it was featured
over there, and then it just started accrewing all these views,
and I think it's up to like a few million
views now, and we're like, well, I mean that was
(13:38):
fun and successful, Let's do it again. And so we
made another film. This one was called The ice Cream Man,
and that also got like a million views. And so
we just sort of found our rhythm making these short
horror films and you know, taking chances without too much
risk financially, we could just sort of experiment from home
and work with each other, and so we did that
(13:59):
for I would say about three to four years before
finally moving on to Beezel, which was essentially taking what
everything that we learned since the pandemic working in horror
on our YouTube channel, and consolidating it into one cohesive movie.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Yeah, you know, well, so my next question was gonna
be you kind of answered it because, like I said
in the intro, you guys have I counted thirty different
horror shorts and several of them have millions of views
on him, and I was gonna ask which short would
you say was kind of like the turning point for
the company where you're like, Okay, this really put Social
House Films on the map, But it sounds like your
first short film was.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
That it was. I mean, the first one is sort
of what encouraged us and like pushed us along, like
you can do this, and there's an audience for this,
the first real one. I think I would say that
maybe put us on the map. You could say, would
be the Ballerina that has twenty one million views now.
And I have people that you know, I went to
(15:00):
high school with that, I went to college with that
I haven't even spoken to in many many years, messaging
me on Facebook saying, Hey, I was in the office
and I saw this film and it's wild the reach
of this short film. I had no idea when we
were making it that would be that successful. Obviously, I'm
glad that it is, but that was really I think,
I would say, a turning point for us.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
And do you each have a favorite film in your
catalog of titles short film?
Speaker 4 (15:27):
Yeah? Of the shorts, well, I mean besides the Ballerina,
I would say this is a personal favorite that didn't
get as many views as I would have hoped. I
would say it wasn't as successful. It's called jokes on you.
I was watching The Mask with Jim Carrey. I was
very inspired by I mean, that's one of my favorite
movies growing up, and so I came up with this
(15:48):
idea of a curse of a joke that, when told,
you become possessed with laughter that you cannot stop until
you tell the jokes to somebody else. And so, you know,
I thought it was like a sort of funny, weird,
quirky and potentially disturbing idea. And I'm so proud of
(16:08):
that movie Jokes on You. I wish it were more successful.
But yeah, Victoria has your own answer.
Speaker 5 (16:14):
Little lady might be pulling me away against youoner them later.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
But yes, yes, let me see it. Yes, okay, oh door,
Oh my god, look at her looking at us.
Speaker 5 (16:24):
Okay, Yeah, my answer is death Record. We have a
whole four part series, and I've always just thought that
was so I mean, it's object driven horror, so it's
something that we're familiar with.
Speaker 4 (16:35):
But I thought, how cool.
Speaker 5 (16:36):
Is this, like this sound that can hypnotize you and
make you do these terrible things to yourself and other people.
And so that's something that I'm always like going back
at and being like, how can I, how can we
you know, take this to the next level. And honestly,
one Day. I would love to pitch it as like
a series or a limited runner, a movie of it down,
but yeah, that one has my heart.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
I like that one.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
I must confess, since I've watched that every single night
when I brust my teeth, I think of your film.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
And now for Victoria, since you're here, it's like, I
want to jump into a quick question that only you
can answer, because just a couple of random questions about
some of the shorts, because we did watch a lot
of them, really enjoyed them. One of them that looked
incredibly fun or incredibly nauseating to make was called Happy Birthday.
And I had to ask because you know, in the
in the film, your character makes a wish to look
younger and then she proceeds to eat like a cake
(17:26):
cockroach in all, and I have to ask, did you
really eat that entire cake? And what did you use
for the cockroach? Because that scene was insane.
Speaker 5 (17:36):
Those are great questions. I remember that cake well. It
was a really cheap, like grocery store cake, and I
you know, in the beginning, I was like, hell, yeah,
permission to go crazy on cake. But by like take three,
four or five, You're like, where's the trash can give
me the bucket, and I was tossing out a lot
of that cake from my mouth, much of the the
chagrin of our DP. I think you shook.
Speaker 4 (17:59):
Cakes.
Speaker 5 (18:00):
Yeah, y'all have cake one day. And then the cockroach.
The cockroach, it's a plastic, but I like punch into it. Uh.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
The cockroach was entirely stop motion. So we purchased a
little plastic cockroach, life size and just kept the camera
rolling and frame by frame we just move it along
and it took all of a twenty minutes and then
I just put it all together.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
I used to do that as a kid. Do you
remember Playmobile?
Speaker 4 (18:30):
He's younger, like you're dating yourself.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
Now, Playmobile with just like these little character things and
I made them.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Like walk when Tim was growing up during World War two.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Well, it's funny because our next thing, because don't worry,
we're going to jump into Bethel, but we're kind of
making our way. As you see through your career, you
made this great which which Victoria mentioned, this great four
part mini series called Death Record where this cursed final
record kind of causes listeners to kill people and Aaron
of course, and now that you've answered your question. I
know the answer to this, but like we were getting
(19:05):
major Evil Dead vibes from the story just because you know,
the chance and the cabin, So I guess I don't
even need to ask, but was that an inspiration.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
For these Absolutely? Absolutely? I mean you'll I think you'll
see a little bit of Evil Dead and just about
everything I do, especially even in even in Beesel, which
is you know, tonally I think a lot different from
Evil Dead, but you'll also see a little bit of
Sinister in there, a little bit of Barbarian that was
one of one of our favorites from the past, you know,
(19:34):
a few years. So yeah, there's a lot of influences,
but Evil Dead is definitely consistently appearing.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
It totally makes sense.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
And Victoria kind of already answered this, But I guess
you'd make Death Records into a possible series or a movie.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
I mean, is that something, yeah, you ever considered like
a feature film for it all versus absolutely?
Speaker 4 (19:55):
In fact, that's even how it started. Before I even
met Victoria. I wrote a record feature which was totally
different than what it turned out to be online. But
you know, we never got the future off the ground,
and so when we met, she loved the idea, she
loved the title and the concept, so we put together
(20:17):
the web series. However, it does hold a very special
place in our heart, and I wouldn't be surprised if,
you know, one of these days we start writing the
movie or even the TV series. I think it would
be a great series.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Yeah, it's really great again, listeners, if you go to
Social House Films on YouTube, you can watch all these
short films we're talking about and referencing for yourself. We
really enjoyed the Death Record ones. The one thing I
wanted to ask was Part four. I got the feeling
Part four did you film that a couple of years later?
Because it looked like and was Victoria act is really
(20:50):
pregnant and you work that in. So I guess my
question is what made you after Part three decide, hey,
a couple years later, let's go back and add a
part four of this series.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
I think it was just our love for the series.
And you know, when we can't come up with any
new original ideas, we just go into the archives and
we're like, why not make another part to one of
our most popular and favorite series. So it just kind
of makes sense. And we also had a new shooting location,
and when you're working with you know, very little money,
(21:20):
shooting things yourselves online. You know, you're always trying to
write things based on the resources that you have access
to and the locations that you have access to. So
we were like, well, we have this house now in
the middle of the desert, why don't we make a
part four?
Speaker 1 (21:34):
And we're parts one through three filmed in Big Bear.
They were okay because I was like, something's familiar.
Speaker 3 (21:41):
Well, and I will say this as horror lovers who
love what we're big slasher fans, big surprise with the
Halloween Friday the thirteenth thing. I liked the character, the
creepy masked character you introduced in part four was really creepy.
Was like a more sinister art the clown in a
weird way.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:00):
And then you mentioned The Ballerina being your most popular
short in terms of like twenty one million views and everything.
Why do you think that one in particulate or in
particular resonated so much with audiences like over some of
the others.
Speaker 4 (22:14):
Maybe I think. I mean, first of all, horror as
a genre is already very popular, and it's sort of
you know, it sort of what's the word that I'm
looking for, permeates any culture, any language, you know. I
think fear is sort of a universal feeling, and whereas
(22:34):
comedy is very subjective. So the fact that there are
there's not a single word of dialogue really helps. And
the fact that it's also dance oriented, which also can
you know, travel the world and isn't really discriminatory to
any one culture or language. So mixed dance, mix horror.
(22:59):
I think I have a feeling that that's why it resonated.
I also think that just thematically, it was one of
our more like, you know, poignant films.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Yeah, and was the lead actress in actual Ballerina she was.
Speaker 4 (23:14):
Yeah, Vlaska is a fantastic actress, and she was she
was a ballerina and so we kind of, you know,
catered it to her.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:24):
So moving on to your most recent horror feature film, Beezel,
which came out just last year, and for listeners, it's
available to rent on vod or you can stream it
for free with ads on the Roku channel or fandango
at home, but rent it. So just want to give
a warning listeners. We always, as we always do, we're
going to discuss plot points with them, and so there
(23:46):
will be spoilers. So if you don't want the movie spoiled,
you know, this is kind of your warning. So, Aaron,
I heard you mention that your childhood home was a
huge inspiration for this film. So how did that setting
inspire the story?
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Exactly?
Speaker 4 (24:02):
When we were writing the movie, we were writing every
scene catered to that house. So you know, I moved
into that house in nineteen ninety four, not by choice,
my parents forced me. I was six years old, but
I just remembered being terrified as a kid actually living
there because it was it's a very, very long house,
(24:22):
and my bedroom was on one side of the house.
My parents' bedroom was all the way on the opposite side,
and so every night when they would like tuck me in,
I would ask them where in the house are you
going to be? Because I just wanted to like know
where they were going to be. And my bedroom was
situated right above the basement where Beesel lives, so you know,
(24:43):
I was it was very easy, I guess, to draw
from all of these nightmares that I just remember having
as a kid, like, well, what if something was living
downstairs and could come through the vents into my bedroom,
or what if something was living downstairs and could pop
up through that laundry shoot in the bathroom that we
featured in the film. That was a scary idea and
(25:03):
we just had to take advantage of it. Even the
crawl space is actually in the house. We did not
build a set for that, so it was I don't
want to say it was easy, but it definitely sort
of putting ourselves in that box of having to tell
a story based on this location that we had access to,
it was hugely helpful.
Speaker 3 (25:25):
So what you're saying is your childhood was filled with
nightmare fuel essentially.
Speaker 4 (25:29):
Yeah. When my parents first heard me say that, they
were like, honey, we had no idea that you were
that scared. And I'm like, well, you know, I wasn't
like terrified every night, but you know when you're.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Spased on a true story.
Speaker 4 (25:41):
Yet, let's go with that.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
Well, did you think like your house was haunted or
was it just scary? Like scary? But because I know,
I think every kid, it's like when you hear something
or there there. And now I didn't grow up with
any basements or things, but I can't even imagine living
in a house with a crawl space or a basement.
But did you actually think you're house was haunted or
that was just something you added into the story, you.
Speaker 4 (26:02):
Know, I'm I'm sure a lot of people can relate
to this. I didn't actually think it was haunted, and
I don't think homes even to this day are haunted.
But for some reason, unbeknownst to me, every time I
would walk up those basement stairs, I'd always have like
this vision of like this tall, skinny, gray like witch
(26:24):
just sort of like quickly chasing me up the stairs,
and I'd always have to look over my shoulder, even
though it makes no sense and that I know in
my logic brain that would never happen. I still have
that vision and that fear even to this day.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Yeah, I mean I grew up with a basement, and
like anytime you went downstairs, if you're home alone, you'd
always do that, like run up the stairs bolt like
You're like, I don't know why I'm running, but I'm running.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
I'm not running away from anything, But yeah, I used
to feel that way. In I mean, we had a
big scary garage, and because I was obsessed with Halloween, Shocker,
I had all my Halloween decorations year round, just like
placed in a corner. So I was terrified of them
when I would go in the garage.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
Little is the.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
Reason why most horror films take place or a lot
of horror films take place in New England, you know,
it's the homes have basements and so that fear is
instilled within us.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:16):
So beesels told in segments to take place over sixty years,
with one through line and a family that connects it all. Now,
something unique about this film is that there's a mix
of found footage and that normal third person filming style.
So what made you decide to use both of these approaches,
aka telling the story across various time periods and switching
(27:38):
between found footage and just regular filming styles.
Speaker 4 (27:41):
Sure, I mean it's a couple things. First of all,
because the film takes place throughout several different decades time periods,
showing the progression of technology was just sort of a
story device, you know. So it starts off in the
sixties where we have eight millimeter film, and then we
(28:02):
moved to the nineties where we have or eighties where
we have vhs, and then early two thousands where we
have like a tape recorder and then we actually end
with like a mini DV camera, so really just for
the story, just to sort of show the progress, the
progression of time. That was one reason. The other reason
is found footage is cheaper, and like I said before,
(28:25):
when you know you're you're shooting a feature length film
with very very little money, the very small budget, we're
constantly asking ourselves, how can we tell this story for
fewer dollars?
Speaker 3 (28:41):
No, I mean but that, But like the thing is
is that I think indie filmmakers in general, they always
have to think that way. But as long as something
is effective.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
It's gotta be tough to come up with creative ways
to be like, because as an audience member, you're like, okay,
now why are they filming? So it's like it lands
really well, Like I was like, oh, I would document
that too.
Speaker 4 (29:00):
Yeah, and we're trying to justify it in the story,
Like I don't like when films just sort of throw
that element in there without it really being justified. But
anytime that we would cut to some sort of found
footage element, it would be off of seeing a character
holding the camera.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah, no, that makes sense.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
I was also you were talking about the actual the
Witch Beesel, And I was going to ask what inspired
the look of the witch? But is this what you
had always grown up thinking this witch looked like?
Speaker 4 (29:28):
Yeah, I mean it's sort of a combination of envisioning
what it looks like and just what actually scares us,
and then going online and shopping for prosthetics and looking
at makeup and seeing what you know, Victoria was able
to do herself with special effects makeup and putting that
(29:49):
all together and then doing some tests into seeing how
it reads on screen. That's sort of how the look
of Beesel was born.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
It's really scary. And we were actually wondering because and
you see the witch in the shadows and things, was
that an actual costume or that you put together or
because I take it that wasn't like obviously CGI or something.
Was that like a full get up?
Speaker 4 (30:10):
It was essentially mostly it was it was pretty much
a naked human being, a naked human.
Speaker 2 (30:19):
Being with like all sorts of makeup and stuff on.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
Yeah, with like with just makeup so that there were
prosthetics and there were and there was just a lot
of body makeup like grease paint and that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Oh wow, Yeah, it was effective.
Speaker 3 (30:32):
I mean we and and the opening scene of Beesel
it was kind of giving me a little bit of
it vibes with the kid being kind of pulled down
into the laundry shoot. So I wanted to ask, did
you model the scene after? Was there ever a childhood
fear that you would get pulled down a laundry shoot
as a kid in this house?
Speaker 4 (30:49):
It's so funny. Obviously, like the comparison to it definitely
occurred to us while we were writing it. We were like,
this is kind of like the opening to it, but
I think it's different enough to still be ours. But really,
that whole moment of this this young boy opening up
this laundry shoot, staring down into this horrifying black abyss
of a basement, that's just that was just me as
(31:10):
a kid, Like that's what I was doing, That's what
I imagined could happen. And so that's sort of how
we came up with the idea independently of it, And
then we were like, well, it was a pretty solid opening,
so I think that this this would be a pretty
solid opening.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
So basically for listeners, if you had scary shit happen
as a kid, or you thought of that you're going
to write and make a really cool horror movie that's.
Speaker 4 (31:35):
Exactly just draw from your own fears.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Right, Oh, it is so true. I mean, I guess
I haven't tapped into him.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
I don't know what it's doing.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
Now you're gonna make Tim recover these memories of the
basement and.
Speaker 4 (31:44):
Then sorry, I'm sorry, Okay, I'll be fine.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
And so the next segment has a really cool decapitation scene.
How did you guys go about doing that?
Speaker 4 (31:55):
So we actually have a making of Diesel documentary on
our channel where we actually show the visuals and go
into great detail on how we accomplished that effect. But
it was really just a team effort of me, our
DP Killen Carruthers, who shot the whole movie, and then
our visual effects supervisor Sam Evenson. We did a test
(32:17):
in La first of Victoria, just ripping off my head
and it came out. It came out pretty well like
it actually looked really good. There was no blood effects
or gore or anything at that time. But what we
did is we I don't know how much detail you
actually want, but we would essentially put tracking marks on
the actor's neck and then we went through the motion
(32:41):
and counted one, two, three, and on three he would
sort of react to being decapitated, and then his body
would just go limp. And then we would shoot separate
elements of a prop head and then a severed neck prosthetic,
and then we would have a syringe with some blood
(33:01):
that we would just sort of drop. All of this
was against a blue screen, of course, so that we
could separate it from the plate, and then we just
composite all of that together and add some motion blur,
and we even brought I think Sam brought on some
help from a three D animator who is credited in
the film as neck flap artist because that was his job.
(33:25):
He literally spent several days just animating the neck flaps
after the head came off the body. I love it,
neck flap artist. I want that title. No, it goes up,
it gets rire, And I mean there's a lot of
physics involved with an effect like that that you don't
even think about, you know, Like like, of course, when
when your head gets ripped off, you know you're going
(33:47):
to have all of this excess skin that's going to
sort of move up and then fall down and bounce
a little bit. So in order to achieve that we
needed to build like a three D model and have
all of these other pctical effects that we were able
to just composit together.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
I mean, every time I rip somebody's head off, it
always no, I never do as well, yeah goes no.
I think we were just really impressed because again, you
you know, you hear Indie horror and you think, okay,
how can they pull off an effect like that? And
it looked good and pulled it off like it really
it really was. We were really impressed, like we actually
looked at each other easy. And also like you know,
(34:25):
you've seen the old Like we were just watching what
was it like Valentine where there's a decapitated head and
it looks so obviously fake and and it kind of
takes you out in the movie.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
And there was nothing that looked fake in this scene.
Speaker 4 (34:37):
So I appreciate that. That's that's the relief to hear.
The other thing to sort of, you know, hide any
potentially shoddy work, you know, or low budgetness, was the
fact that we added a VHS effect to it, so
we kind of downgraded the quality over all of the
of the image, you know, just to I think make
it more realistic, but also it's a little pixelated. It's not,
(35:01):
you know, as precise as it needs to be.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
But it works because because in the segment he's doing
an interview, so there would be a camera. And obviously
you thought that out because.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
I totally recognized from Back to the Future. I was like,
I was like, oh, I noticed this, I know that camera.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
I think you're the first person actually notice.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
That big Back to the Future.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (35:26):
So the next segment one of this I found one
of the scariest segments, the one with the night nurse
and the crawl space. I mean any crawl space. I mean,
what a perfect setting for a horror movie. And I
know you mentioned in some interviews this was the first
segment that was filmed and then you guys went back
and wrote what happened before and after? Did you ever
consider expanding when you were thinking about, Okay, let's turn
(35:47):
this into a feature film. Did you ever think, hey,
maybe we should just expand this entire night Sirce section
and you know, show what happened to the other nurses
or were you always like, I want to do the
before time period, the after time period and just make
this kind of the center.
Speaker 4 (36:00):
I think we were already always prepared to do an anthology.
We obviously shot the night nurse section first, and I
guess just through enough discussion, we sort of discovered that
what excited us the most, what we thought was a
little bit more original, something that we had never seen before,
and something that allowed us to tell a slightly different
(36:23):
story but still keep it within the same world, would
be to just you know, have this generational tale, this
generational odyssey in the same location over time. So instead
of expanding that that section, you know, I don't not to,
I don't I guess I'm gonna spoil it. She dies,
you know, So there wasn't much that we were able
(36:46):
to do after that because she she's dead. And then
before that, you know, we thought about telling the story about,
you know, the previous nurse before her. That felt a
little bit redundant, and so, I don't know, just with
enough discussion and talking about this script, we went in
this direction.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Yeah, no, no, I think it was great. We were
just so that whole sequence is so terrifying, and just
to fuck with me, Tim continues to text me the
image of missus Weims floating in front of her drooling
like literally over the last week at he's been texting
me because we were getting ready for this interview, and
he knows that I'm terrified of that segment, so he
(37:29):
keeps sending me that visual.
Speaker 2 (37:30):
So thank you for that.
Speaker 1 (37:31):
Yeah, right when it was on screen, I was like click.
Speaker 3 (37:36):
And you know, another thing we really liked about them
the movie was the music, just because it's so unnerving
and really kind of contributes to the suspense. We were
just wondering, how did you decide on the music? What
was your thinking behind using that kind of style.
Speaker 4 (37:52):
So the score is all done by Robot Disco Puma,
who also scores all of our short horror films. And
what we'll do is, you know, I'll usually send him
references from other films with music that I like. So
I would send him, you know, I believe I sent
him the soundtrack of Midsommar, the soundtrack of Sinister, and
(38:13):
I was like, can you sort of do something in
this vein? And then I would send him little scenes
and he would send me a whole library of music
and I would say, like, ninety five percent of it
is just fucking amazing, And I will take, you know,
everything that he makes and then sort of just layer
it in where wherever I want. So it's a very
(38:34):
like collaborative kind of process and you sort of discover
what works and what doesn't along the way. It's a
little bit more, it's a little bit less orthodox of
a way of doing it. You know. Usually you would
send in the whole movie and then at least with
a budget, and then you would have like a whole
orchestra just sort of create the score from start to finish.
But we sort of piecemeal it together and that's sort
(38:57):
of our workflow.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Who is your favorite composer?
Speaker 4 (39:00):
Are my favorite composer?
Speaker 1 (39:02):
Or even just like horror score in particular, it's like, oh,
I love Hans Zimber.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
Here, let me actually, I'm going to give you a meam.
So have you ever seen the movie A Serious Man?
Speaker 2 (39:15):
I've heard of it. I don't know if I've seen it.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
So that's scored by Carter Burwell. Yes.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
I think he did Child's Play too.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
One of his highlights. It's a great movie.
Speaker 4 (39:29):
I'm wondering if he works he works with He did
three Billboards, He did Ballot of Butter Scrug so he
does a lot of Cohen Brothers stuff. There's something very
dark and creepy about Carter Burwell's music, and I love
it and when I whenever i'm writing, that's actually one
of the first composers that I go to to listen to.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Nice.
Speaker 1 (39:53):
I'm always curious because I when growing up, I had
all the tapes like what was that Varses, I had
all the like soundtracks, so like the most random horror movies,
but I loved them.
Speaker 4 (40:04):
I thought they were really really I have a feeling
we're similar in that, like we'll probably be the only
ones going to like the gym or something listening to this,
like orchestral horror music.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Oh my gosh. One that always stuck out to me
was total recall, don't.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Know, always pumps him up. Horror work out right, fantastic.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
We had had some questions for Victoria about her big
segment as Nova. I take it she's still kind of
indisposed right now. Well, but one thing about her segment
when she's at the Nova and the kind of the
climax of it, and sorry, I'm gonna spoil it where
she is show. So basically, Victoria plays Nova and her
husband Lucas they inherited the house because his mom died
(40:44):
missus wims and so at the very end of this
segment again spoiler where she she wakes up and he
and sorry he wakes up and she's stabbing him over
and over to death. You know, just your normal couples exchange.
But what I found really cool about this scene is
that Nova is filming it or possessed Novas, so as
(41:05):
viewers we see it happening through her camcorder and sort
of as just part of the film. And I noticed
that you used a similar shot at the end of
Death Record Part three, So how did you come up
with this technique? And I take it where you like, Oh,
it worked well in the short, and I'm going to
put it into the movie kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
It just it fills my heart with so much joy
to even hear you pick up on that. Yeah, we
shot pretty much this a very similar almost exactly the
same kind of sequence in Death Record, and it was
just so effective. It worked so well. And you know,
like I said earlier, this movie was really really the
(41:43):
best of our shorts, and so we just took everything
that we knew worked and hopefully, you know, we improved
upon it. We did it with a little bit bigger
of a set, you know, more of a story behind
it and just more more moving parts.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
And where did the film first premiere? And what was
it like seeing it on the big screen.
Speaker 4 (42:05):
We premiered this in Hollywood on sunset? Was it Landmark Theater?
At Landmark?
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Oh, that's a great Yeah, we love that theater.
Speaker 4 (42:12):
Yeah, and we we packed the house with like two
d and fifty people. One of the best days of
my life. I mean, it's it's incredible to to like,
I actually get chills thinking about that day because we
were screening this in front of so many people. Obviously, I'm,
you know, pretty pretty nervous about it, but within ten
(42:34):
minutes I knew that, like this we made a terrifying film.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
You know.
Speaker 4 (42:38):
I I guess the the insecurity within me needs that
visceral reaction from people screaming and gasping, and that's what
we got for eighty two minutes NonStop. Just the audience
loved it and it was a very rewarding fun day.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
Was it like that?
Speaker 3 (42:55):
I was just going to say, I wish we had
known you guys earlier and would have love, oh my god,
to see us on a big screen. Was it a
film festival premiere or was it just you reading out
the theater or just having it in theaters?
Speaker 4 (43:06):
Yeah, we just rented out the theater. It wasn't part
of a festival or anything, so we just rented out
the theater and then invited you know, two hundred two
undred and fifty like industry people, friends, crew members, and
it was a giant party.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Oh that sounds like a blast actually, because what we
saw was so scary and I haven't been scared, Like
we see a lot of stuff, I haven't been scared
it a long time, So I applaud you.
Speaker 2 (43:32):
Yeah, no, I can only imagine.
Speaker 3 (43:33):
Also, like we always talk about on our podcast when
we're reviewing films, like there are certain films that seeing
it on a big screen really will enhance it, and
there's other films when we're like, oh, wait for streaming.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
This is a film.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
Although we watched it on streaming, you know it, I
can just only imagine how enhanced it would be with
an audience on a big screen, sharing in like those
gaps and shrieks and everything.
Speaker 4 (43:55):
So I know, I mean, it's why we do this,
Like I make movies to show it on the big screen.
I'd imagine most filmmakers do it. It's you don't realize
how significant it is to screen in a movie theater
until you do it, and you're like, holy shit, this
is so much better even than I imagined.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
That's so cool.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
So you mentioned in an interview that you and Victoria
wrote a full page of backstory for Beesel The Witch,
and that most of it wasn't explored in this film,
but you were saving it in case you were to
make a sequel. So I think the big question is
are there any plans for a sequel? And if you did,
can you give us just a hint of just like
one thing you might explore in it.
Speaker 4 (44:36):
So, if we were to do any kind of sequel,
we are thinking that this would be a prequel and
would take place many hundreds of years ago, diving into
the origin of Beesel. You know, I actually think that
if we were to do that. First of all, I
love period pieces. I love The Witch, you know, Robert
(44:57):
egger Is The Witch is a great movie. And so
sort of doing that and something along those lines in
our own style that matches the story structure of Beesel
in the world of Beesel would be really really cool,
And I think it might even make people appreciate the
first one more.
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Yeah, so do you? I mean, I take it you
haven't decided. Are you leaning toward doing a sequel or not?
Speaker 4 (45:19):
Or we have a lot of projects that we're working
on right now. But that's the beesel. Prequel is definitely
one that's sort of rattling around in our brains that
I'm sure we're going to do eventually. I would say
it's more likely than it's not.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
No, that's great, Well, that's what's going to be.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
Kind of one of our wrap up questions was what's
next for social als films? Like, do you think you'll
make more horror shorts? Do you think you're going to
focus strictly on feature films now or what can you
tell us about that.
Speaker 4 (45:45):
We're definitely going to do both. I don't think we're
ever going to stop making short horror films. It's something
you know, I still admire about David F. Samdberg. He's
doing big, big budget studio films Shazam, and I'll still
find some time to make short films with his wife.
I just think it's, uh, it's fun, it's what this
is all about. It's what it's what we want to do.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
And when when you post stuff on YouTube, do you
read the comments?
Speaker 4 (46:12):
I do? I shouldn't.
Speaker 1 (46:15):
I mean, I would like you, like, download it, put
it out there, and then like so many people can
watch and see it. I'd be so curious, Like what
if people think of.
Speaker 4 (46:23):
Yeah, no, no, I do. I mean I read. I
even read like most of the Beesel reviews, you know,
for better or worse. But uh, it's hard not to,
you know, yeah, yeah, I probably shouldn't, but it's it's
just hard not to do.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
I like that you honestly answered that, because it'd be
so easy to.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Be like, I don't read any comment.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
I put up a TikTok, and I'm like, who's saying what?
Speaker 4 (46:44):
I'm not proud of it, you know. I wish I
could just, you know, uh, turn that part of my
curiosity off and just focus on writing the next one,
because this is already in the can this is out
there in the world. It can't change anything. But but
the good thing is that like eight percent of what
I read is like neutral or positive.
Speaker 2 (47:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
And also it's like and we anybody who puts any
sort of art out there for public consumption knows you
can't impress every single person. Well, and I can't, well,
yes Tim can, Tim can. But like if you put
out something, if you know, if one person doesn't like
one thing about that'll be the thing that another person
loves about it. So it's like if you start making
(47:26):
changes to you know, a piece one person, then you've
pissed off another person. So you do what makes you
happy and if people like it, great and they keep
it going. And I think you guys have so much
out there that is very impressive. That's why we're so
and I'm excited that you said you're going to be
doing more short films because it's kind of like, I know,
it takes a while obviously to make a film, a
full film, so like having these little like bite sized
(47:49):
horror bits out there are really fun and I'm glad.
I think other people would be like, oh, we've done
a feature, it found some success, we don't need to
do shorts anymore. So I'm glad that you're going to
do shorts.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
I mean just recently since we watched your film, Like People,
a lot of my family members always like, oh, well,
tell me what's scary. I'm definitely recommending your movie Diesel,
because you genuinely leaves you with an eerie feeling, like
when I left Matt's house and I got in my car,
I was like, I feel funny.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
I love that. That's the reactually went, I feel funny.
Speaker 3 (48:17):
Well, we have one final question for you. We're going
to ask It kind of puts you on the spot,
but we asked this to everyone we interview. What is
one thing that you can tell us about your experience
working on Diesel that you've never told in any other interview, publication,
podcast or whatever. You've never told Victoria No, one thing,
(48:41):
Just one thing about your experience working on the film.
And it doesn't have to be salacious and gossiping unless
you want it to be. But something that you've just
never told in an interview about your experience working on Diesel.
Speaker 4 (48:51):
I need a phone a friend for this.
Speaker 3 (48:55):
Part.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
Thanks for really getting here. You're in the basement.
Speaker 5 (48:58):
You didn't think you were going to get it.
Speaker 4 (49:00):
Was that during the head rip shot? Yeah, there was, Yeah,
I guess there was. Oh no, it actually wasn't during
the head rip shot. There was a moment when we
were even shooting the first segment with the nurse where
we were so behind schedule, and I remember we were
(49:24):
going to lose all of our film equipment the next day,
just because like the we were renting everything from a
local rental house and what was that. Yeah, and everybody
was flying out. All of our actors their planes were booked,
the crew members their planes were booked. So if we
didn't get this done, we weren't going to be able
(49:44):
to finish the movie. And I actually, in my mind,
I kid you not, I had this moment where I
was like, I just I don't know if I can
do this anymore, Like I just don't know if if
I have it in me to put this kind of
stress on myself as an independent filmmaker, because I just
wasn't sure if we were going to get it and
it was so so stressful. But as a as a director,
(50:08):
you know, it's important that you don't show that doubt.
You kind of have to keep moving. So it's obviously
it's a good lesson for life, I suppose. But obviously
we we managed to do it somehow, and uh, and
it's done.
Speaker 3 (50:24):
But you're yeah, and that's great because you're also a
human being. So like everyone who has and this is
why we asked this question. We love hearing things like
that because people you know, obviously you've done a ton
of interviews on Beesel, and of course you're gonna, you know,
talk about all the polished good things and stuff, and
we want to hear all the nitty gray easy. Yeah,
Like I don't want to hear that. I know it's
not easy. I know it's it's it's we're very much
(50:46):
in mind.
Speaker 1 (50:46):
Helping up until like people are getting in their ubers
to go to the airport.
Speaker 4 (50:50):
We pretty much I mean we were filming up until
like you know, one o'clock in the morning and someone
had like a five am flight and we still had
to get them to the airport that you know, brad International,
and like at like four, like just a few hours
and then and then they weren't going to get any sleep,
and it was just very stressful. Like I already have
gray hairs now, probably.
Speaker 2 (51:11):
Over that movie. Now, you know, come to my world.
Speaker 3 (51:14):
Another off the cuff question I just thought of because
I you know, I saw and you've mentioned that you
filmed at the childhood home right before your parents were
selling it. I take it have they sold it? And
do you know who bought the house? Because if they
watch Beesel And now I'm just wondering, like send them
a cop Like if they watch this movie and they're like,
oh my god, we just moved into this house and
obviously it's not true, but it's like it's just crazy
(51:36):
that like new owners build it and there's a whole.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
Movie about like a house thing.
Speaker 1 (51:40):
Ill a return outdress. Send them a copy and just
be like play.
Speaker 3 (51:43):
Do you know who bought the house and do they
have it now? And have they seen beesel.
Speaker 4 (51:46):
I've never met the people that bought the house, but
I do know that it was a couple bought the
house just a few months after we wrapped, and they
are fully aware that a horror movie was filmed there.
For a number of reasons. First of all, the neighbor
is all new when we were filming, even a couple
of neighbors were in the film, and we left a
few bloodstains on the basement floor.
Speaker 2 (52:10):
They didn't wash out.
Speaker 4 (52:11):
They we tried bleach. She was like trying to wash
away a murder scene. We could not do it there.
It's still there, and so they actually dubbed the house
the murder House. And there there are some there are
kids that will walk by now because it's just known
in the neighborhood as the murder House. I was told
that one kid asked their mom like, does a witch
(52:33):
really live there?
Speaker 3 (52:34):
Oh my god, that's awesome. I would have left like
a fake body part in the crawl space, like diesels
face and here's your housewarming gift. No, that's so cool. Well,
you know, well, first off, thank you so much for
taking the time. I feel bad we didn't get to
talk as much with Victoria. But Victoria, we loved your
performance in the movie. We loved seeing you in all
of the shorts. Like we got to a point where
(52:56):
we were watching so many shorts where she's always terrorized
that we're like, this is a like does she never
do every closet and bedroom that she's in something awful happens.
But yeah, we really enjoy.
Speaker 4 (53:08):
On though you know she's going to live on until
the next one, yes, exactly.
Speaker 3 (53:12):
But and we hope death Record you do more with
that because we really enjoyed that. But yeah, we thank
you so much for your time. We can't wait to
see what you guys do next.
Speaker 4 (53:21):
Amazing. No, thank you for having us, and Victorious is
thank you.
Speaker 3 (53:24):
If you can't hear, thank you, well, take care. We'll
hope to stay in touch, and yeah, we wish you nothing.
Speaker 2 (53:29):
But the best.
Speaker 4 (53:29):
Yes, absolutely, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (53:31):
Okay, take care, bye bye bye.
Speaker 1 (53:39):
Thanks for listening to another episode of Happy Horror Time.
Speaker 3 (53:42):
If you'd like to support the podcast, please sign up
to be a patron at www dot patreon dot com
slash Happy Horror Time. As a patron, you get access
to all our bonus content, which now includes two new
bonus episodes every month, a monthly after show mini episode,
access to our Discord community so you can chat with
(54:02):
us directly, and the chance to review a film with
us in one of our bonus episodes.
Speaker 1 (54:08):
Patrons also get all our regular episodes, ad free and
a day early our monthly newsletter, the chance to vote
in polls, and autographed Happy Horror Time stickers.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
I'm Matt Emmerts and I'm Tim Murdoch, and we hope
you have a Happy Horror Time.
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