This is an occasional look of what’s happening in the world of Barigord arts, often published on the weekend! While we’re probably best known for making films, we dabble in all sorts of other art forms. Plus we love to share and connect! Leave a comment or a link so we can see your artwork too!
Hey there film lovers! Once again we’re embarking on a Film Race!
That’s right, one of those competitions you might have heard of, where teams of filmmakers get some prompts at the beginning of a set time period, and have to make a whole finished film by the end of it. Not for the faint of heart!
At Barigord Studios, we’re actually veterans of these sorts of competitions. This past year was especially good for us. We had two Top 10 finishes in 3 tries in the International Film Races, and one 12th place. We were runner-up for best film in the Abbotsford 48hr Film Competition, a local race, and I took home the Best Director trophy.
Last fall I wrote a strategy post for film racing, which I will totally endorse again this week.
Oddly enough, our most consistent results have come from the 72hr Horror Film Races, where we have been Top 10 (2023) and Top 15 (2021, also best VFX) with our two entries. This is weird because very few Barigord personnel like, watch or know much about Horror movies.
I’ve been tasked with writing the scripts, as I’ve got a little experience watching horror, and plenty making it, but I still have to find some angle to help me with the genre.
Three years ago, we made Head Case, which drew very heavily from my many years watching Law & Order and SVU. A feature of Horror movies I can understand is having a monster. One monster I felt we could actually create was a human kind of monster – a serial killer.
I also was inspired by a co-worker I’d had who listened to True Crime podcasts while they worked. We talked about it in the office, and how podcasters often operated independently of law enforcement (for better or worse). This gave me a way to have characters pursuing a serial killer who weren’t law enforcement of some kind. Based on our available cast and costuming, podcasters were a way better fit.
The main theme that Race was ‘jealousy’, which I tried to take a broad view with, and put it into every character rather one central plot element. I remember sitting down with the suggestions when the Race started and writing down all the things I thought we could do, and then grabbing at those elements to start cobbling a story together. I made a lot of fast choices, and we went with my very long first draft without thinking about it too hard.
There was one other horror element to consider, and that was gore. We knew going in that we didn’t want to do actual (fake) blood or viscera or anything like that. It’s messy and unless you have someone who knows what they’re doing, can look worse than not having it at all.
We had recently acquired a large green screen, and some green fabric to make smaller ones for travel and Lego filming and such, and decided if we did gore, it was going to use VFX. I had an idea of doing severed limbs or something like that, and we talked about trying digital blood. We ended up using the big green screen for our locations, and made a sort of collar thing to ‘sever’ some heads, and instead of doing headless bodies, went with bodiless heads – so I could have the podcasters interview one.
It all came out of the logic of our limitations, and the chosen angle of a True Crime monster. It really could have used an edit or five of the script before we went to camera. Here’s Head Case.
Two years ago, in 2022, I wanted to do the 72hr Horror, but felt I had no good angle to go on. We also had very few interested people that time, and passed up the competition.
The one idea I was wrestling with was doing some sort of live-action stop-motion using liminal spaces. Stop-motion can be super creepy, just in the way it looks and feels and moves, and the same can be said of liminal spaces (ie. undefined, transitional). Not long after, I tried it out and made a little experimental piece.
Last year, despite a very small group, I decided it was time to try the live-action stop-motion for horror purposes for real this time, and made the Top 10 with our film, Friday Evenings Together.
The Theme was ‘loss of innocence,’ and I was tasked with building a plot around our one actor, Andrew Wade, and maybe myself if I could shoehorn me in somehow (I did). I was inspired by ‘Ducks, Two Years in the Oil Sands,’ by Kate Beaton, which I read the afternoon before the film race began, and the idea of a protagonist who gets more than they bargained for in their job. It fit very well with loss of innocence, for sure.
I was determined to be brief, not do a lot of words, and make it kind of dreamy, but vivid. It really worked out well, and I was even able to figure out a couple of VFX ‘horror’ shots using green screen. Here’s the film.
We actually made one other horror film last year, in the Abbotsford 48hr Competition. We didn’t intend to make a horror film, and it’s Lego stop-motion, so not really horror, but it did very well in the competition and shows another angle we could do ‘horror’ from.
I don’t know that I’m up for another stop-motion sprint like this one, unless it’s the only obvious path. In the Abbotsford Competition, it was. The Theme there was ‘new beginnings’ and we interpreted that as ‘pod people,’ and concocted a story that could only be told with characters and places we didn’t have. But we had Lego. And then we just got to work. Here’s that film.
So now this year, I’m ready for the challenge once again with a sort of structure and some nebulous ideas of what I think we can do to somehow make a horror film.
The plan this year is to do comedy if possible. Horror comedies aren’t that common, but they do exist, and how the horror fits in is my big creative hurdle this time. I feel like we can do comedy with our people, and probably not serious horror, so why not lean into that?
One option I’m considering as a framework is a documentary. I would expect any comic documentary to be a fake one, or mockumentary, but it’s not a given. If the Theme given by the contest really suggests using our actors’ actual experiences with horror movies or something, then we’d probably do that.
Using simple interviews, stills and other documentary elements could make the filming easier, though they might put too much strain on the post-production. It’s tough to gauge.
The thing is: you don’t know. I have to be open to doing anything. The Theme could even be something that is completely at odds with doing comedy or documentary-style, or whatever.
It’s about as tough a challenge as I can imagine, and I wouldn’t have it any other way!
Conclusion
I’ll be posting about the competition once it starts, and you can check out the Film Racing website (click here), with links to all their social media and such. If you are a filmmaker who wants to take on one of these competitions, or just want to make a film without much budget and a lot of effort, either leave a comment or contact us at:
barigordstudios@gmail.com
Thanks for Reading!
Congratulations! So much work! I can tell how much you love it 😀 Head Case is soo creepy – a bit too creepy for me 😮 But watching Invasion of the Pop People chased the horror out of my head. A great idea! How did you get the corn to pop on the Lego? With the green screen?
Thanks so much!! Making these films is definitely a labour of love. There’s enough compromise for a serious relationship in every one.
The corn was ‘popped’ with a series of carefully chosen pieces. Each one a little bigger than the last. We photographed them each in position, then edited the frames a bit to make it look it was popping! Stop motion can really do the job!
Wow – that’s really clever. It really does look like it’s popping. Impressive 😀