Teen filmmaker enlists Machetetalent for Twilightspoof
My Sucky Teen Romance: Actress Elaine Hur gets a mouthful in Emily Hagins’ third feature. Fresh off their work on Machete, makeup ef-
fects artists Doug Field and Susan Benson slip into an Austin hotel for a little downtime – and to fling some gory body parts around. The couple is there working with another Texas-
based genre director, seventeen-year-old Emily Hagins, on her Twilight-inspired horror comedy My Sucky Teen Romance. Since the release of her zombie apocalypse-
themed debut Pathogen in 2008, Hagins has pro- gressed from papier mâché heads and homemade blood to effects that can go toe-to-toe with many multiplex scarefests. And it isn’t just that Hagins’ latest film boasts two of Rodriguez’s effects people, or has the director’s sister, Tina, in a role, that invites comparisons to the prolific independent filmmaker. “I’ve noticed that working with Rodriguez,
Emily has the same kind of attitude,” Field ex- plains. “Whenever there’s some type of effects gag or makeup effect, they have a really clear picture of what they want the shot to look like. Both of their approaches is to let you find the way to get there. Usually Emily and Robert’s re- sponse is, ‘Just make it look cool.’”
The $9000-budget movie, Hagins’ third fea-
ture, pits several teens attending a genre con- vention against vampires who go there knowing that the popularity of the touchy-feely Twilight vamps has made people easy prey for the au- thentic, ferocious kind. “There’s not a lot of gore in the movie,” Hagins
says, “but when there is, I wanted to do it a little bit over-the-top.” When Field and Benson were referred by the
makers of Zombie Girl: The Movie (coming to DVD November 9), the documentary about the making of Pathogen, Hagins instantly saw the possibilities. “I love practical effects when I watch videos
about how they do them in other movies,” she says. “And to actually see real people doing that in my movie – this is so cool!” In addition to redesigning the classic vampire
staking so that blood erupts from the top of the stake itself, Field and Benson tackled one of the main set pieces – a dream sequence in which one girl tears another limb from limb. “They wanted to do it in this hotel room, so we Dexter-ized the whole floor, covered all our [sil-
icone] body parts with blood and chucked them up over our heads,” Field recalls. But even though Hagins has gone from a crew
of one or two amateurs (namely parents Megan and Jerry) on her first feature to thirteen people for her latest, she still prefers to have some fellow teens helping out on set. “I like working with kids because they have this
element of not knowing what you can’t do,” she says. “An adult who does this stuff for a living, they really know what they’re doing, but with a budget as small as mine it’s hard for them to make the adjustments. They say, ‘Well, I’ll still need $6000.’ Uh… I don’t have that.” The championing of those independent filmmak-
ers who work on a shoestring is one reason Hagins admires Rodriguez, who she’s met a few times over the years. Field says that it’s probably just a matter of time before the two cross paths profes- sionally. “If you’re making horror movies in this town, eventually you’re going to get together.” Shooting on My Sucky Teen Romance began in
July and wrapped in September, with a finished product slated for release next summer. A.S. BERMAN
9RM
Photo by Gaul Porat
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128