I’m excited to finally talk about Knocker (our working–but likely final–title), a short horror film that my friend David Overmars and I have been developing since early this year. Last weekend marked the first days of shooting, with Nova Scotia now opening back up again, so I want to write about the process so far and share a sneak peak at some of the very first stills.
It’s quite serendipitous how this all got underway. Dave and I grew up together in St. Andrews, Antigonish County, during which time we both had a penchant for cooking up stories, and where, ironically, we did in fact once film some kind of wacky video for a Grade 5 social studies project (that was, of course, back in the camcorder and VHS days). In adulthood we’ve kept sporadically in touch throughout our individual endeavors and jobs all over the place, getting together during periods when we’ve ended up in the same locality. He’s been honing his skills as a videographer and building his portfolio over the years, while I focused on my writing.
We got back into regular communication in late 2020, and in January he expressed his ambition to make a short film, asking if I’d be interested in writing a script. That would be a first for me, and making a film a first for him as well, so I dove at this new opportunity. Of course, this was bound to be an “international” project of sorts, with me in Thailand and he in Nova Scotia. Travel restrictions and other Covid measures were all over the place, and at the time we only had a tentative idea of an indoor location he might be able to shoot at in the future. We decided to keep it simple, and I started writing a script based on the idea of people trapped in a room who are coping with a mysterious threat. It didn’t take long, therefore, for it to move in the direction of horror.
Weekly Zoom meetings became a thing (my morning to Dave’s evening or vice-versa) as the initial draft took shape, where we brainstormed and hashed out details about the story, characters, the technical limitations involved, and so forth. We later expanded on the first draft to make a second, with both of us firing it off to a selection of trial readers, who came back with valuable impressions and feedback. Additional versions followed, each one building on what we felt worked and discarding what didn’t, until we arrived at what we could comfortably call our final script. I think and hope our previous trial readers are going to be both delighted and surprised by the direction it takes–but there’ll be no spoilers here.
During all this, on top everything else he was bringing together for the production, Dave was finding our actors. Knocker‘s stars, Sarah O’Toole, Harriet Ritchie, and J.D. Fortune, came on board months ago, having initially received an earlier version of the script. They took to the project wholeheartedly, exploring the characters and working with every subsequent alteration and tweak we were making as we went. We started holding regular Zoom meetings where we did virtual table reads, broke down scenes beat by beat, and just had an overall swell time. Their immense talent and creativity opened up new ideas and helped truly bring this production to life.
And now here we are, in August of 2021, and the first weekend of shooting just wrapped in Antigonish, with more scheduled for next month. This is all coming together at last, and it’s a real thrill. Though it’ll be a while before the finished film is ready to share with the world, when it’s ready the announcement will be loud and clear here.
Though I can’t say whether all these will make it into the final cut, below are some of the first stills from Knocker. Hurrah!
