Shooting a Vampire Flick in 2009
Article by:
Tom Laughlin Writer/Director – “The Union”
Official Selection: 2009 Vampire Film Fest,
2009 Terror Film Fest, 2009 Zompire Film Fest,
2009 Madison Horror Film Fest,
2009 Johnstown Wine & Film Festival.
With all the recent hype we’ve seen, fans of the Twilight and Underworld films once broke down the walls and voiced their cries, “We want more!” Studio execs, writers, and screenwriters then raced together, and now after a few short years, a huge major outpouring of vampire content has entered the media: from recent influences in
fashion, to new books and TV series, and up-coming sequels of vampire films. It’s not that vampires were not attractive or sexy enough in the past to have shaken open the doors of attention, I feel. It’s just that the media has not taken the time to truly understand vampires, not as monster characters, but as ‘real people’ in film, cinema, and books. I’m referring to them as ‘real people’ with thoughts, emotions, and desires.
With the Underworld films, we saw that vampires could kick butt just as hard as the Neo in the Matrix films, and with Twilight, we’ve seen a clever re-invention to Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet plot. These films keep raising the bar in cinematography and in the writing at this critical time in vampire cinema. (The vampire films’ fangs biting deeper and deeper into Hollywood Cinema History.) More and more filmmakers and authors are finally “getting it”, the simple realization that vampires as a film subject or book subject, are not stereotype characters, vampires in the general sense, are a culture. Once you as a filmmaker treat the subject of vampires as a history and a culture, with
specifically using myth structure in writing, then the more and more vampire films are going to continue to turn heads (and necks) and the ‘stories’ will get better and better!
Back when I wrote and shot The Union, it was right around the time that the Twilight books were hitting shelves and the Underworld films had made their glorious final chapter, 3rd film. I was itching to shoot a short film with vampires as the main subject, not a typical horror, but more of a historical suspense thriller, with a slight romantic taste, and Victorian-meets-modern feel. I wanted to take elements from other “playing grounds” and ideas that other films had scratched the surface with, and focus more on relationships, emotions, and most of all - - write a story that truly appealed to a more wider audience.
So, after fleshing out the script about a girl Lithia - who was secretly a vampire of a noble and regal coven from an ancient past life and now, in present day, living her life as a modern human (her vampirism being like a gene or a memory she was forgetting or putting behind her as she lived her new life) - was an idea that appealed to me!
Summing up: through the story in this short film, we find out she has a groom, who is also a vampire, but of another coven; the enemy coven that started a war ling ago, that ended with the death of all her coven and her family, and she fled and vanished into the world. We see that these covens are now alive and hunting her down, as she is of royal
blood and could start a new coven generation. We also see she has been secretly protected by another vampire, Lancaster, a servant of her father – who was the king over their entire coven and lands. Lancaster comes to her wedding with the mentality that his secret love for her will officially end, as she will be wed to another man. As the
film progresses, we see it all boil down to his rescuing her from her enemy, and his profession of identity and undying loyalty to her.
With about 5 months in screenwriting, rewrites, casting, scheduling, script reads and run-throughs with the actors, and planning, “The Union” was shot in 2 fast-paced Saturday nights at a cathedral in Salt Lake City, with lighting the entire cathedral and make-up starting at 4pm, filming at 8pm, and wrapping at 3 or 4am the following day. I
used the internet to cast the film and coordinate all production needs. I raised about $500 to pay for some make-up materials and my wife catered and fed a cast and crew of 15 people. In order to ensure filming that real Hollywood quality for little or no money and limited resources, we talked with local studios for borrowing studio lights and grip equipment, as well as coordinated with local filmmaker groups, such as Coalition Films, and added their head, Bryan Tuttle to become one of our executive producers. We networked with and brought in several theatre-owners and costumers to help with the
design and look for the Old-Victorian/Contemporary wardrobe – influenced by Baz Lurman and Luc Besson films. We also had a police SWAT officer volunteer and oversee weapons on set.
Post-production took about 4 very long months at a studio in Salt Lake City Utah and was edited by the writer and director, Tom Laughlin, using Final Cut Pro HD to handle the HD content workflow. The film was shot in HD using the JVC-GYU100, and we felt very fortunate to have had HD quality for our small budget! The music and soundtrack
was composed for Peter Jackson’s LOTR 3: Return of the Kings’ Michael Teoli, of Orchestral Mayhem Productions, and the film’s color was re-mastered by awardwinning film editor John-David Brewer on his Avid Nitrous system.
Through patience and waiting many long months - due our no-budget, we had to wait for schedules to open and for certain people - who normally we wouldn’t be able to afford, were able to squeeze in time to work on this film. We also worked for weeks with the rep for the band On A Dead Machine, to allow us to use the song used for our
ending credits, in which we were finally given permission to use.
In conclusion, using the internet to find actors, crew, music for the soundtrack, and people who believed in the script and story well enough to see the great potential it would be to work on such an intriguing project, but more, the potential they saw in “The
Union” to one day become a feature film – which was what Tom Laughlin’s purpose for the short film was fro the very inception: to prove what a band of volunteers and a few filmmakers could pull of for little or no money. We had to think completely outside the
box and worked with the Utah Film Commission to find a cathedral, as well as find 99% of the tools and resources to make the film. If you have the time, energy, tenacity, and patience, you can make a great suspense thriller vampire flick with the Hollywood feel,
for next to nothing, through networking and using the resources that you have a round you and also challenging yourself to go farther and farther - till you reach the exact look and feel you want to get for the film, with the end in mind that you are not going to settle for less, but make the best film you can with who you know and what you have.
You can make great films, tell stories, and move people. You can achieve great things through the use of film, inspire others, and above all, make a difference through your story. But in the end, it’s all a story – right? That’s all that matters… If the story and script are solid, everything else falls into place. And people who read good scripts will
suddenly want to be apart of your film project and you gain that support by how strong the script is and how real the characters are and become.
It is my hope that one day, a studio exec or producer will also believe in this short film enough to want to see more, and then invest in the feature film version of “The Union”. It has strong characters, real themes, conflict, and things people can relate to.
Hope you enjoy the screening of “The Union” at this year’s film festival!
Thanks,
Tom Laughlin
Writer/Director
The Union
www.myspace.com/theunionfilmproject - All news, announcements, pics, & movie stills.
DVD available on Amazon.com