Will Gartside
Massacre (The Musical) is on its way to Madison's screens...
I'm happy to announce that principle photography for Massacre (The Musical) wrapped in August, and we are now more than halfway through the editing process. Hopefully, come late October, when we premiere the film in Madison, audience members will enjoy watching the finished product as much as the cast and crew enjoyed making it. This assumes, of course, everyone had a good time and weren't lying to me when I asked them about it.
While I continue searching for venues to show, and festivals to submit, the finished film, Rob Matsushita is tackling the painstaking process of going through the copious amount of high-definition footage frame by frame, in his spare time.
Matsushita estimates it takes him roughly one hour to edit together each minute of footage if everything goes off without a hitch. "The biggest pain in the ass of the whole process," he laments, "is that the high-definition files are so ridiculously huge, it's not a matter of whether or not the computer is going to crash, but how many times the computer is going to crash every day.... I learned early on how to distract myself from being pissed off at the computer."
"I complete one minute of footage a day," he continues. 'I make one minute look really cool. Every time I put a new minute together, I try to put something in it that I, as a person, cannot stop looking at."
Using YouTube, Matsushita set up an innovative system to relieve some of the strain of editing. Private files get uploaded to an account where only cast and crew have access to them. This allows me -- the director -- to review footage as it is being edited together to make sure Matsushita and I are on the same wavelength when it comes to the look and pacing of the film. It also provides the cast and crew the chance to see the film as it evolves.
"One of the exciting things about this process," Matsushita says, "is that this is the first time, as an editor, I can actually make my progress available to the cast and crew immediately after I'm through working on it. Whenever they want, they can go online and see what's being done."
So far, a lot of our advertising has downplayed the comedic aspects of the film. Why?
"We're saying, 'I'll take your Jason Voorhees and raise it a Discordia Doren any day,'" says Matsushita. "We're not just doing a slasher movie here. We're building a franchise character. We're saying, 'We'll see your Victor Crowley and raise you one meat tunnel!' Freddy Vs. Jason? I want to see Discordia Vs. Chucky>."
What's great is that we all have a clear vision of what a feature-length version of this film would look like -- more back story, more bodies and, of course, more blood.
"If we ever get to do a Hollywood version of this," Matsushita suggests, "I hope we can get Sissy Spacek to play Discordia's mom. Discordia is somewhere between Carrie and Carrie's mother. She has the religiosity of Carrie's mom but the inner rage and unpopularity of Carrie herself. It's just Discordia's easily duped by Satan."
