October 30th Comes Early

Brace yourself — and bring on the popcorn.

A first taste of October 30th: All Hallows Eve, a locally produced horror flick, will appear on YouTube at precisely noon Wednesday when the film’s first trailer is launched.

Film brass are excited about giving the low-budget flick, still in production, exposure.

“This is the first time that we’ve done any sort of release of the material that we’ve been working with,” producer Brendan Garlick told The Sault Star Tuesday afternoon.

If the truth be known, Garlick also served as assistant director and key electrical grip — not unusual in the making a film on less than a shoestring.

“It was probably one of the most challenging experiences that most of us were ever involved in,” he said.

But, perhaps, one of the most rewarding, especially when future prospects are factored in. The independent project gave one person who has served as assistant makeup artist on previous films the chance to be chief artist. And the audio supervisor, who learned the trade in school, was afforded the opportunity to apply his skills for real.

“We all took on a bunch of different roles and everybody had to put in 100% effort,” Garlick said.

October 30th: All Hallows Eve is the brainchild of Sault Ste. Marie businessman and filmmaker Ryan Byrne, who plans to create a trilogy. The first film, which began shooting last September, tells the story of a schizophrenic filmmaker who, traumatized since childhood by his mother’s murder, writes and plots a retelling of his past starring a naive teenaged girl and her friends, who are haunted by a creepy old man who hangs in the woods.

The movie, shot primarily on Echo Lake, east of the Sault, incorporates an evil mask that changes form as the film unfolds.

“Our main motivation for the trailer is to try to garner a little bit of buzz here in Sault Ste. Marie,” Garlick said. “We frequently run into people who didn’t even realize we made the movie, because it was so low budget and because we did it independently.”

Minimal backing was buoyed by an indiegogo.comcrowdfunding campaign (igg. me/at/october30th). A high-end camera was purchased, but props were loaned to the production by local thrift stores.

All cast and crew — about 50 — were volunteers, who are either local residents or have regional roots.

“The neat part was we tried to get people who had an interest in film and the film industry but didn’t have a lot of experience,” Garlick said.

The plan now is to take the completed package to horror film festivals in the summer and fall and, should a distributor be secured, release October 30th: All Hallows Eve in none other than October.

“Even if we aren’t successful in finding a distributor, there are various means of independent distribution we can use,” Garlick said.

The trilogy concept remains in the works, with the sequel slated to be filmed in 2015 and the final chapter in 2016.

And what if the debut flick scares audiences out of their shorts and the project goes viral? Will little only Algoma be forgotten?

“We absolutely plan on staying in Sault Ste. Marie,” Garlick said.

The trailer link, effective noon Wednesday: http://youtu.be/0qqtzlbFNb8

j.ougler@sunmedia.ca

On Twitter: @JeffreyOugler