Interview with Closet Space Director Mel House - Page 2

Yeah, the blog's gotten me into some trouble in the past - but no more than my mouth has, I guess. I have a notoriously short temper and it comes through in the virtual world as well. Sometimes I hop on there and just vent all my frustrations with no filter or remorse - but it gives me an outlet. As a direct result of that, I don't think I've actually yelled at anyone on set.

Oddly enough, the most challenging thing for everyone on the Closet Space set was adjusting to a real movie shoot. Most everything everyone had worked on before was your usual student film, shot in the backyard stuff. A couple of us had worked on other, more ambitious films (Necrophobia comes to mind), but this time we had a pretty large crew, a special effects team, various mechanical and makeup FX gags, set construction, soundstages (of a sort), on-location shooting, and tentacle monsters.

It took a while for things to gel and for everyone to realize that making movies on a serious level isn't about hanging out, drinking beer, and catching a shot once in a while...it's real work. And it got pretty grueling on set pretty often - we all have day jobs, so we're shooting on the weekends two hours away from home, in a house that's 30 minutes away from any kind of civilization, and we're all actually sleeping there as well (roughly 20-30 people)...it wore us out pretty quickly.

Of course, money always becomes an issue on a low-budget production, but it wasn't really that pronounced of a problem on Closet Space. As I said, our FX team was phenomenal, so they gave us some pretty amazing stuff on limited means and time.  I'm positive that if I had given them twenty bucks more, they would have given me a life-size latex Kraken. I'm saving that for the sequel, though.

We also managed to stretch other things quite a bit - when we broke down sets, we were careful and reused almost all the materials each time we built a new set or moved location. We had three main builds - at the house in Ledbetter, Texas, where we built the "dimensional entry" portion, then we broke that down and moved back into Houston, where we built some minor sets at Phobia Haunted House. After that was done, we rebuilt a hallway and a dark stage in our carport (a.k.a. HouseWalker Ranch). Of course, that was all harrowing work at one time or another, and there were usually only 3 or 4 total people helping out (myself included - I do get my hands dirty from time to time), but in the end it saved a lot of time and money. In addition, if I need pickup shots during the edit, I can just walk outside and get them anytime I want (I also own all my own equipment), so it's convenient.

Article Author: ILoz Zoc

Founder of the League of Tana Tea Drinkers (LOTT D), expiring writer of Zombos Closet of Horror Blog, and valet to Zombos, the noted B-movie horror actor (to his few remaining and decaying fans).

Visit ILoz Zoc's author page — ILoz Zoc's Blog