Going out for a brisk bike ride down a lonely country road? What's that key lying in the road? What does it open? Say, maybe that run-down house in the woods...I bet the key belongs to its owner. But who is the owner? And what are all those cryptic notes that suddenly appear, slipped through a door that cannot be opened? What does it all mean?
To find out, you will have to watch the short horror film, The Gibbering Horror of Howard Ghormley on Fangoria's Blood Drive II DVD. But be prepared for the unexpected in this creepy journey into the fantastic. To help with your preparation, upcoming horror director, and all-around bon vivant and Stoogologist, Steve Daniels, comes into Zombos' closet to chat about Ghormley.
ZC: The Gibbering Horror of Howard Ghormley is a very creepy 12 minutes shot on grainy, B&W 8mm. Your use of 8mm film, and diegetic and non-diegetic sound is very unnerving. Can you tell us more about your artistic decisions when choosing and composing these elements for your story?
SD: Thank you. I have been making Super 8mm films since 2000, and I really love the look and feel of the format. I am very thankful that Kodak continues to manufacture and support the film. Super 8, especially when shot at 18 frames per second as Ghormley was, tends to illicit a strong nostalgic vibe with viewers because of its use in old home movies. I have always associated things, scary things, to be scarier if they occurred in the past. Although I did not specify a time frame in the film, I imagined Ghormley taking place in the 1930s or 40s, so shooting the film in the grainy black and white Super 8 heightened that aged effect.
Because Ghormley was based on a disturbing, recurring dream I had, I wanted the audio from the film to reflect that surreal, dream-limbo quality. The film is "heard" through Ghormley's head. It's meta-diegetic sound. Real world sounds are selectively heard, unnaturally amplified or distorted to a very unnatural effect. The music/sound design, masterfully done by Chris Bickel, is both non-diegetic and meta-diegetic, as one could argue, as it both comments and compliments the action on screen, and reflects poor Ghormley's agitated mental state as the story progresses.
ZC: What challenges as the director and writer did you face in transferring your dream to film? Were there any trade-offs between these roles?
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