Halloween 2013 - Pt III

“And I tell you, it was way, way out in the middle of nowhere. Weren’t no road or path for miles around and yet there they were. Masks and pumpkins and scraps of cloth floating in the breeze. And all of them standing and hanging and waiting in this clearing, like some sort of ritual thing. Like an offering to some unholy god. And then, as the sun went down over that hill, it was like someone held a matchstick up to the gasoline clouds and the sky turned this fiery orange. And at the same time, this horrible ringing sound started in my ears and then the leaves on the ground rose up like a tornado in slow motion and just sort of hovered there in midair. And all of them ghost things hanging from the bare branches turned around and faced me with their hollow eyes in their flat white faces and I was gone. I ain't never run so fast in my life."

Halloween 2013 - Pt II

A small tribute to the 1990s Nickelodeon horror anthology 'Are You Afraid of the Dark?'. Music by me.

Click here to see the original opening sequence.

Halloween 2013 - Pt. I

They call her 'Sister Slipper' and 'The Ghost of Fever Hospital'. Every night, she'd be sent out to check on the patients in only her dressing gown and slippers. Except that one night, she never came back. You can still see her sometimes, wandering the hospital grounds, searching for candles and lanterns to guide her through the dark...

Lately...

I was planning on making a celebratory 1st of October post, but it appears that the date has snuck up on me and slipped by unnoticed, so this is a little late. Feels strange that it's less than a month until Halloween and I'm not working furiously on props and preparing for the big day. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'm scaling back a lot this year. I have this weird constantly-lingering guilt about not doing much propwork or blogging, but otherwise it's been a nice and (mostly) relaxing 10 months.

I'm currently halfway through a two-week school holiday, which has been pretty busy so far. We decided to give my bedroom a complete makeover - painting over the weird blue walls, tearing up the worn and paintstained carpet, shifting and getting rid of furniture... It's brighter now and feels much more clean and spacious. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves...

I also did an interview with the awesome Damian of the awesome 'Misadventures of the HalloweeNut' blog several weeks ago as part of his '13 Days of Halloween' series. It was heaps of fun and got published on his blog a few days ago. Click below to check it out:

A huge thanks to Damian - it was fantastic to be a part of this.

Goosebumps

Sorry about the lack of activity lately. The blog's been pretty quiet since Halloween last year and is probably going to stay that way for a while. It's not that I've been keeping secrets - I just haven't done any prop-work since The Backs. Still not quite sure what's happening this Halloween. I know I'm not going to be doing any sort of public display. I've got a short video planned that I'd like to get started on soon, and hopefully by Halloween I'll have one or two props built and photographed to accompany it in some sort of disjointed blog post. Can't really guarantee anything at the moment.

One thing I do have to show for my absence is 'If It Were Stine' - a Tumblr blog I set up several weeks ago. I have a special place in my heart for R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series, and I thought it would be fun to turn some of my favorite horror films into Goosebumps covers. Well, the first one came out much better than expected and I decided to set up a blog. Tumblr is rife with fan-made posters, movie barcodes and cinematography palettes, so I figured my Photoshop experiments would fit right in.

Click here to check it out: If It Were Stine

Minimalism

Was getting sick of the old blog design so decided to give The House Of Marrow another makeover.

I decided to go for a sparse black&white look. While it took some serious custom CSS to get the static sidebar working on all browsers, I'm really happy with how it's come out. Since the normal archive widget wouldn't fit anymore, I've created a new Archive page, and an About page to go with it. The Archive is still under construction (it's takes ages to code all those links), and I'll probably be forever updating the music/movie lists in the About page, but I figure this design will be here to stay for a while.

P.S. Click here to see the horrid orange and green design I had back in 2010... you've been warned.

The Backs 2013

Down the bank and through the trees

Where dead leaves whisper in the breeze

Where flowers die in earth bone dry

Is where the cabin sits

 An orange flicker in the gloom

As grim and lonely as a tomb

And far from light and far from sight

Is where the cabin stays

Up the earthen path unpaved

Past pumpkins carved with faces grave

And logs and bricks and skulls on sticks

Is where the cabin waits

   

   

   

We're Halfway to Hallowe'en.

Logs, Shears & Skulls on Sticks

Setting up The Backs today. I'm going for a sparser, less overgrown look this year - although, that's not to say it won't be featuring new props. I'll be taking photos at late afternoon and then again once darkness has fallen, They should be posted up here in the next few days. Till then, Happy Halfway-to-Halloween...

A Word of Thanks and a Haunter Spotlight

This is a post that's been a long time coming, and one that I probably should have written up yonks ago. In light of recent events, I felt that now would be an appropriate time to finally get on with it.

 When I first set up my blog back in September 2010, I never figured anyone would end up seeing it. I didn't even bother to make the obligatory 'first post' post. Just under a month later, I got my first comment from Pumpkinrot. Incredibly excited, I wrote an exceptionally embarrassing reply. I soon discovered another comment that was infact posted a week earlier than Rot's. I learnt then that nothing went unnoticed on the internet, and also that there was a comment notification tool in the Blogger settings.

Looking back on where I was then, I couldn't be more grateful for all the support and encouragement I've gotten over the past few years. I want to thank my blog followers and commenters, and all the friendly folk over at hauntforum.com for your endless praise and enthusiasm. It's you guys that keep me going, and for that, I am infinitely grateful.

I'd also like to thank all of the bloggers (and vloggers) who've featured my props and linked to my blog. It's always such an awesome and gratifying feeling to get a spotlight on someone else's blog. While writing this post, I tried searching to find all the blogs that have featured me in the past but got freaked out that I'd overlook or forget some. I guess you know who you are.

Finally, I'd like to give a special thanks to Spooky over at spookyblue.com. His site was the one that got me into prop-building in the first place, and he featured my blog when it was still in the foetal stage. Since then, we've been keeping in email contact. Kind, helpful, enthusiastic and endlessly supportive, he has been a true mentor to me.

But what's a whole lot of thankyous without returning the favour? Necropolis is a freshly-hatched blog run by a friend of mine - 'Cadaver'. I first met him because he was the younger brother of a friend (by two years), and on October 31st 2011, he and his brother showed up at my Halloween display. He was fascinated by the props and set-up, and decided to try it out for himself. His older brother and I parted ways a while ago when we went off to different high schools, but he and I keep in close email contact. He sends me photos of props he's working on, I give feedback and advice, we discuss horror movies and prop-building techniques... He's incredibly enthusiastic and seems to be churning out new props every week. He's also started at my school this year, so it's been cool seeing him round. I've recently started nagging him to set up a blog, and, as always, peer pressure triumphs. Be sure to check out his blog - Necropolis.

[All props and photos by Cadaver]

The Woods Themselves

It's dark, it's crazy, it's gritty, it's wildly creative, and while some will say it's impact has faded over time, I still find it shockingly violent. Sam Raimi's 'The Evil Dead' is one of my favorite films, and when I saw the Deadite Of The Day Contest post on bloody-disgusting.com I immediately set to work. I hauled an old prop out of the attic and gave it a complete makeover. A new head, a new arm, a new paint job and a whole lot of angry molesting tree roots. On the weekend, I took it into the forest and filmed it. I got eaten alive by mosquitos and nearly smashed the camera into several trees, but it was great fun. And since The Evil Dead was one of the movies that inspired me to try out filmmaking, I felt I owed it to it.

I quickly edited the footage together with audio samples from The Evil Dead, uploaded it to Vimeo, and sent it off to bloody-disgusting.com for consideration on Monday night. My parents woke me up early on Wednesday morning with exciting news. The article pretty much speaks for itself, so click below for the link:

Needless to say, it was incredible to see myself of Bloody Disgusting. I've been checking their site daily for two years, so it was nothing short of surreal to see my name and prop on their headlines. And I keep thinking about all the people that may or may not end up seeing it (do horror directors check Bloody Disgusting?).

Anyway, here's the video, titled 'The Woods Themselves' - my love letter to Sam Raimi's original 'The Evil Dead'.

Building

After two months of doing nothing whatsoever followed by two months of filmmaking, I'm happy to say that I've come full circle and am now working steadily on props again. My room stinks of PVA glue, I've got black paint under all my fingernails, I've collecting tree branches and hoarding them in my room, my carpet is covered in tiny bits of sticky masking tape... just the way it should be.

I'm working on a couple of new props for 'The Backs 2013' as well as a top-secret project that is soon to be revealed. Till then... teaser photos!

Skeletons

I've always been a huge movie fan, and I've always been fascinated by the film-making process. I never rent a DVD without watching the special features. I love reading interviews with my favourite directors, and I'll often rewatch movies with the commentary on as I work on props or other such things. I never really thought about making my own movies until I saw The House Of The Devil. I've warbled and raved extensively about this film before, but for whatever reason, it really struck a chord with me. I made a few (very) short films since then, mostly just shot by myself on one night. And I found that I liked doing it quite a lot.

Over the past while, I've been working on making a 'proper' short film. I wrote a script, drew out a storyboard, built props and makeshift camera dollies, and convinced my dad to play the lead (and only) role. We worked till late many nights - it's worth noting that it's summer over here, which doesn't help when you have to film everything after dark (a quick shout-out to my mother and sister, who'd let us kick them out of the living room nearly every night for filming). After many, many hours of filming, re-filming and re-re-re-filming, we finally finished. I've spent the last week or so writing and composing music for it. When I say writing, I mean poking at the piano keys until something nice came out, and when I say composing I mean putting my sister's laptop on top of the piano and recording from the tiny in-built microphone straight into iMovie. Overall, it's been a fantastic and fun experience, albeit with an enormous amount of help from my dad, who happily and enthusiastically complied with my stupid perfectionism, proved to be quite knowledgeable about film-making and let me advertise him as a remorseful child murderer on the internet.

I'm thrilled to announce the beginning of my (very) amateur 'production company' Geisterbahn Pictures, and to debut my first film - Skeletons. It's set on the night before Halloween, and revolves around a reclusive haunter who gets a late-night visit from what appears to be a trick-or-treater.

Get yourself comfortable, put on some headphones and enjoy...