In the last 2 years I’ve made 3 short horror films on a zero budget. And I mean zero budget! Unless of course you take into the account the cost of tea and biscuits for the crew and maybe the price of electricity considering those inefficient halogen lights are your light source! The three films I made are all simple in nature, short and written by myself. Exactly 2 years ago, from today I filmed my first horror short named ‘HELLO’. This short film, which runs for about 6 minutes in total tells the story of a girl who’s waiting for her boyfriend to come home from working late. The problem is, he doesn’t! Someone else pays a visit instead. Oh dear! HELLO has amassed almost 100,000 views which may not quite be ‘Charlie bit me finger’ territory but for an independent zero budget home-made horror it’s not bad. In fact its in the top 100 most watched short horror films on YouTube.
I shot this on a Canon 60D with 3 lenses and a simple lighting setup. If you’re starting out making your first horror and want to learn a few tips (that I learned the hard way) feel free to watch the making of video here > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fWl_8EW_zY where I go through some techniques I used.
And of course if you want to watch the full film, please be my guest! > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIHK5PfhjRM
A couple of months after making ‘HELLO’ I got hold of my new camera. The particular camera I bought namely the ‘Black Magic Production Camera’ aka ‘BMPC4K’ was known to be very bad in a low light situation. After finding this out I decided to try the camera out in a really low light setup, just using the ambient light in my apartment. And I ended up making this little movie. ‘Scary Thoughts’. Just a bit of fun really, and yes, it’s me acting in it 🙂 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SleqLvS-dqk
The most recent horror film I made here in my apartment is a film called ‘Shocking Video’. I have a friend who is a fabulous make-up artist and like a lot of other make up artists the ‘grizzly’ part of her work was usually only captured in the form of a low quality mobile phone photo which is a shame considering the work that goes into it. Therefore I decided to write a little short film that would be a vehicle to showcase her work. Warning, it’s quite gross! Check it out here > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJu0B6B2tdo