Hi all! Hope everyone is doing good. Oregon is locking down again (today is 11/15) in the middle of record Covid cases. We now have people in our immediate circle that have been exposed or have it, including some pretty horrible effects. It's no joke. BE SAFE AND MASK UP.
Okay, enough on that, let's talk about the new Jason Rising trailer. Haven't seen it yet?
Oh, if you dig it and want to help - snagging a Blu Ray or other perk here helps so much:
This is our 4th and final trailer for the movie. The first trailer we filmed specifically for our Indiegogo campaign. It was a great way to get used to working as a team. We had a quite a while to prepare for it and time to do the post work. I think we shot it over 3 different days. I'm still proud of how tight we got it. You can watch that trailer here:
For the camera nerds we filmed that one on the original BMPCC (pocket cameras) with an SLR Magic 2x 35mm anamorphot lens as the main lens. James, the director of Jason Rising, is great with vision. Each trailer tells a different story. For our second trailer we tried to add new footage to the first one and it just didn't work so we ended up with an all new trailer.
Anyway, let's get back to brand new and final trailer. We need more money to finish up the movie and it had been quite a while since we've shown anything to people. We had a target date for the new trailer - 11/13 - that was our original launch date before Covid messed everything up. But we were already into November - I forget when exactly we started editing the new trailer but it was about a week before we put it out. Holy tight turn around, batman!! Looking back I'm pretty sure we started on the 6th.
So what goes into making a trailer? As I mentioned above we like to tell some story. It needs to give people an idea what the movie is about, and amp them up to watch it.
Establish your world. We like to start with establishing shots showing our Crystal Lake. I think we've opened every trailer with a drone shot. We also like to try and set the tone immediately.
I give you James Sweet, Director:
Alyxandria Nicole:
Pamela Voorhees, Jason Voorhees's Mom, is one thing that makes us different from the other fan films, so we wanted make her revenge part of the trailer. We haven't focused much on her in the trailers. So we got drone shot of a lake, jib shot of our detectives walking in with the Crystal Lake sign, and then we cut to something no one had seen yet. Young Pam.
She's at the edge of a dock, crying. As we push in you can see there's something next to her. Once we cut closer you see it's a bloody machete. She's emotional, hurt, and now a murderer. Fun fact - our Zombie Pam is played by our Young Pam. Our voice continues and we see Pam lighting a match that illuminates her face - up until then you don't see her face at all.
We shot that stuff on November 1st. One of the perks of slowing production down for Covid has been us coming up with cool additions to the movie - and young Pam was one of those.
We then show Pam's hand coming out of her grave, then another creepy Camp shot, and then headless Pam walking. So between our voice over giving the back story of Pam and our footage we've caught people up on Pam. Now it's time to meet more our amazing cast.
We establish our cops, Pete and Eve, searching cabins. In the trailer you don't know about our escaped convicts. They're just meat for the slaughter. ;) So the cops searching the cabins - we filmed some of Pete's scenes in 100+ degree weather - just BRUTAL heat. Then we got Anna and more Pete and it was getting to 40 degrees. Boo. Winter hits fast here.
We use the cops searching the cabins because that footage looks cool, it's new, and it helps establish the environment. There's a nasty bloody bed that's an Easter egg from some of the franchise movies.
Above, Anna Campbell. Below, Kyle Vahan.
Next up is a shot of our Jason crate. This particular shot - the night before we released the trailer I was doing After Effects magic to clean up part of the crate. We had clearly done some repairs on the crate but I was able to hide it.
Then we cut a crazy eye shot of Jason. It's up close, there's worms wriggling around ON his eye and his eye is moving. SICK. He's waking up.
Pam opens the crate, we see Jason's fingers moving....he's alive!!
Then we see our cops with a cool line, "we shouldn't have come here". So true Jed. (Played by Jason Reynolds).
Then we get some gnarly sounds as some nasty boots come into view. We filmed those shots on the 8th. THE 8th.
Finally we get to the main event - JASON. We start on a bloody axe and follow the axe as it's being raised up and reveal Jason. I love how you get to see all the nasty details on the hockey mask. It's covered in black blood, dirt, has dents and scraps and scratches everywhere. We also filmed that shot on the 8th. It's crazy how much cool footage we got that night and how much we used in the trailer.
A voice over from Pamela tells Jason to "KILL THEM ALL" as he turns and faces the camera, staring right at you. YOU DED.
Then we have Jerry Bell Jr, playing Bear, saying, "We're not alone". God I can't wait for people to see that scene, it's so funny and so good. We used that line because it's such a good line and doesn't give too much away.
We then have Pete (played by Kyle Vahan) lighting a fuse in a hellish shot - one of my favorites from the movie. Ah yeah. All hell does break loose.
We then cut to what others have described as an ICONIC shot of Jason pulling his mask down with Serena (played by Lisa Sorenson) tries to scamper away in the swampy water of Crystal Lake. It's three shots and shows how Jason toys with his victims.
Monday the 9th I texted our studio guy and was like, "Yo, we're dropping a trailer on the 13th. Do you have time to help on the audio side before then? It'd been to be in by Thursday night. Won't get you audio until the 10th". I pictured he wouldn't have much time to help except for putting the dialogue above the music.
But instead he completely replaced the score we had with actual score from the movie (so cool!), did all the sound effects, made Pam sound undead as fuck, added all the folly, and did some incredible sound design. It went from a solid trailer to an A+ trailer because of his sound work.
James and I were editing in the evenings, and in the downtime James was putting together the Indiegogo page. Riley Nix helped clean up the text on the Indiegogo site and wrote an awesome press release for us. I was doing color work, and then After Effects work.
Gabe Johnston, our audio savant, send the final audio at 3:45 am on Friday morning. I wasn't done with the After Effects work until 12:30am Friday morning. It was down to the wire but I'm so proud of it.
Because it was finished on such a tight timeline we weren't able to pre send it out to press. TJ, one of our Friday the 13th friends, runs a rad podcast company and they do reviews. He reached out so he got a proto version and did a really cool write up on it:
And then it went live. Pretty much near universal praise from everyone - which does not always happen - especially when fandom is concerned. We've been fortunate that people have been digging what we're doing and have support with their hard earned money.
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