Thursday, August 21, 2014

Afflicted movie/ old scripts/ The Listener



Aug. 12 Afflicted movie: I cut out this Edmonton Journal article “Behind Afflicted” where Jay Stone interviews the actors/writers/ directors of the movie.  It was on Apr. 4, 2014.  Here is the article:

The Canadian horror movie Afflicted was written and directed by Clif Prowse and Derek Lee, two 35-year-old filmmakers from Vancouver who had never made a feature before. It also stars Clif Prowse and Derek Lee as two guys named Clif Prowse and Derek Lee who plan an around-the-world trip but get stopped in Paris by ... well, it's kind of a secret, but it is a horror movie.

The friends have been making movies together since they were 16: shorts that won awards but didn't get seen much. Afflicted, however, was shown at the Toronto International Film Festival and is going into wide release. The mock travel blog told in documentary style cost just $318,000 to make.
Postmedia caught up with the filmmakers by phone.

Q: How did you come to this movie?

Derek: It came to the point where we needed to make feature films but the first script we wrote was a $20-million sprawling international action film, and no one was going to fund that for two unknowns.

Then Clif threw out the idea of 'supernatural documentary.' I wasn't initially excited about the idea but ... I thought, going found-footage and documentary style to make something as surreal as a creature movie was a cool idea and rich creative ground.

Q: After Blair Witch Project and Paranormal , did you think people might be tired of the found footage genre?

Clif: We didn't come to it saying we'd like to make a found-footage movie ... And then just find some random thing and plug it in there because it's a cheap way to do it. For us it was in the context of the supernatural creature in our film. Often that's a story told in cinematic, stylized, and often melodramatic language.

The thing that was really exciting about it was, wow, if we approached this from a realistic perspective, and reimagined what this would look like if it happened in real life, what if we tried to make it feel much more biological and have this really gritty documentary-style look at it, where all of a sudden people feel they're watching real life, and see spectacular things happen within that frame? That was core to the concept.

Q: It must be challenging to be the directors and actors at the same time.

Clif: Most of the time one of us is holding the camera on the other which allows you to step back at that point and be the director. The toughest scenes were where it was the two of us on screen at the same time. At that point you have to leave your directing assessing hat at the door and just be in the scene.

Q: And you did it with a pretty small crew?

Clif: There were seven people, most of them doing the job of an entire department. The cinematographer had to light a nighttime action sequence on a street with four small lights.

Q: And yet you managed to go to Europe to shoot it.

Derek: We had the audacity to shoot a $300,000 action horror film on location in Western Europe. It's actually an idiotic concept.

Clif: The boon of doing it documentary style was there was a small crew and less gear, so we can fly to Europe. If you're shooting a $300,000 Canadian movie, that often means you're in a house, shooting in 15 days. We had 30 days in Western Europe.

Q: What's next? Derek: "We're writing our next feature film. It's an action film, in a darker horror vein, psychological and tormented. Not found footage. I miss music so much. We want to get back to aggressive, wide-angle dolly shots ... We want to create our own voice that is more true to what we've been making until now.


My opinion: It was a very inspirational interview about 2 filmmakers having success with this movie that they created.

Movie review: Here’s the movie review I read in the Edmonton Journal that was right beside the interview.  Here are some excerpts:

Afflicted is, then, kind of an old (not to say eternal) story, but dressed up in new media and new attitudes: at one point, once they’ve figured out why Derek is so hungry all the time and why he looks so strangely pale, Clif goes onto the Internet to check up on what to expect. Derek will shortly develop power over vermin, it says, although — like a lot of stuff you read online — this turns out not to be true.

…realizes that he’s in the presence of something not only supernatural but, like, awesome. All fears are put aside as Clif films Derek’s new superheroic abilities: smashing rocks, leaping into the air, lifting a van, and outrunning a motorcycle.

“Found footage” has become a tired technique (one waits in vain for the “lost footage” genre), but Lee and Prowse, who also wrote the screenplay, give it new life.


Aug. 17 Old scripts: I was going through my disks and found this.  It’s something I wrote back in 2009/ 2010.

My idea: Aziz gets beaten up by a mob.  He owes them money since he opened the restaurant. The mob boss is the bad guy.

2014: It’s been done on the TV show Believe.  This black guy owns this tool store and got money from a mob guy.  There is 48 hrs left to pay back.  Tate has to get a white horse back to the mob guy to be even with him.

My idea: The restaurant is being threatened to close down, and Daniel and Jessica have to save it.

It’s been done before in the movie Empire Records:

“The employees of an independent music store learn about each other as they try anything to stop the store being absorbed by a large chain.”


I never saw that movie.

Aug. 21 The Listener: I just finished watching The Listener series finale.  It was a really good series finale.  I love this show.  This has been on for 5 seasons and always had well- written episodes.  It was overall a good show with writing, acting, and characters.  I would say it never “jumped the shark.” 

I kind of knew season 5 was going to be the last season.  A few months ago, I remember reading an interview with the star Craig Olejnik and he says it maybe the last season because they have enough episodes for syndication.

From the beginning of the series, it wasn’t a sure thing if this show will last this long.  It came out in summer 2009.  Then there may not be a second season, and there wasn’t the show at all in 2010. 

It came with the second season in Jan. 2011, mid-season.  Then it showed most of the episodes, and then it stopped.  It aired the remaining 3 episodes at the end of the summer.

Then it came back for the 3rd season in summer 2012, 4th season in summer 2013, and 5th season in summer 2014. 

There were quite a lot of changes with a couple of characters written off and new ones added in.  In the first season Toby was a paramedic and uses his telepathic powers to help people.  In the second season, he was recruited to the IIB to help people.

Here’s a really good article about the show ending: 

The Listener focuses on Toby, who can read people's minds. There was an official announcement on Aug. 6 that the fifth season would be the final season.

“Literally, we (the cast, which besides Olejnik and Esmer includes Lauren Lee Smith, Melanie Scrofano, Anthony Lemke and Rainbow Sun Francks) found out only four or five days before the announcement,” Olejnik said.

“It's still kicking in that the show is done, and it's still kicking in that I even was on a show that went for 65 episodes, and I was in 90% of it," Olejnik said. "That's insane to me. It still blows my mind. I'm just grateful.

“It comes down to eyeballs, it comes down to the network supporting it, and the producers producing it, and the people watching it. I'm still learning what it means to be an actor, and what purpose it serves society and history. But I've learned so much over these years that will be invaluable to me in my lifetime, just as a human being.

“To all the 'listeners' (viewers) out there, I want to thank them deeply from the bottom of my heart, for making a little Nova Scotia boy's dreams come true."


My opinion: I saw all 65 episodes.  I even wrote synopsis’s about the episodes on my blog, at least for the first 2 seasons.  Goodbye The Listener.

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