The script for FROM HELL HE RIDES is to a point where I’m confident that I can begin to storyboard. It may not sound like much but that’s a pretty big milestone. In the life of an animated film the next few months are when a majority of the directing takes place. After that it’s basically all assembly.
I just got word that FILTH received the BEST DIRECTOR – SHORT FILM award from the Milwaukee Twisted Dreams Film Festival. My sincere thanks go out to the festival organizers and staff and to all the attendees. Beyond that … I am speechless.
Back in the 1960’s Roger Corman, American International Pictures, even Hammer Films would pre-sell films based on a poster and title. Lately I’ve been trying to come up with a good, exploitative title for this new film. One of my all time favourite spaghetti western titles is DEATH RIDES A HORSE. Brilliant. I wanted something like that, a title that evokes an era of film making long since passed. With that in mind, FROM HELL HE RIDES will be the title of my new film. It will be presented in widescreen (2:35: 1 aspect ratio) like all good westerns should and I hope its production doesn’t kill me.
It’s starting to dawn on me how many incidental props I’m going to need for this film. First there are the clothes; hats, belts, coats, spurs. Everybody needs a gun. There’s a scene in a bar; tables, chairs, bottles, glasses, a piano. There’s a scene in a blacksmith shop; stove, irons, saddles, buckets, shovels, anvils, ropes, chains. A scene in an office. A scene in a cabin. Then there are the exterior street shots with all the building fronts. With each new film I try to up the difficulty but this is going to take a whole lot of patients and time to get it right (thank you George Harrison) The two year window that’s been established with the last three films will likely be exceeded. On the other hand … it has the potential to look exceptional.
With all the recent festival news I haven’t really updated the work being done on the new film but it is moving forward. Design time is both enjoyable and frustrating. I usually have a pretty good idea of what a film will look like but when it comes to the characters … that’s a little trickier. Even though I sketch them out, it’s only when I get them in clay that I really know if I like where I’m headed. There is still work to be done on all of these sculpts but slowly my cast is starting to come together.
a film by ADAM CIOLFI 