MAN IN THE LAKE - Production Diary DAY 1

DAY 1: Saturday, May 15, 2010

Discounting all the preproduction work, the teaser trailer, and the pre-visual photos, today is the first day of filming on the Southlan-Films production of the Friday the 13th fan-film The Man In The Lake. The original story is by Ron McLellen and me with the final screenplay by McLellen, who is also producing and directing, among other jobs. The film is designed to be a short film the same as McLellen’s previous fan-film Return of the Sandman (based on Halloween) and the shooting schedule is only suppose to be just south of ten days.

The first day of filming McLellen decided to start things off right by killing one of our main actors. Of the actors on set today are Jim Adams (as the Sheriff) and Nathan Standridge (as Jason, although two people will play the iconic character throughout the film because of scheduling). The Sheriff is in much of the beginning of the film but it’s always good to start production on a horror film right by killing someone. Adams is in good spirits as today’s scenes require him to run through the woods, a lot, before being dispatched by a train spike through the head by Jason. It’s as good a way to go as any in a Friday the 13th movie.

We are once again filming at the home of Roland Force, an actor frequent in McLellen’s films (Jack O’Lantern, Hell’s End, Bad Land, Return of the Sandman) but his home has also been used in many of McLellen’s films including Bad Land, Jack O’Lantern, Return of the Sandman, and now this film. Force’s land is so vast that we could probably never see any of the same spots in any of McLellen’s films no matter how many times we return.

We are light on crew today as this first day of filming was meant to be fairly easy on all of us not to mention the production itself. In addition to McLellen and me, Eric Forest Burton is also on hand. He came aboard on the Southlan-Films team during the production of Return of the Sandman (not only as crew but as an actor as well) and returns on this film as well. On this production I am the production manager and still photographer (and generally anything else that needs to be done).

One of the reasons why we are keeping cast and crew down to a minimum is the fact that this is a “fan-film” which means we can never sale, distribute, or otherwise make a single penny on the production because the characters and rights all belong to someone (or some company) else. It would be against the law for us to ever make a dime off this production. We are making this film simply because McLellen has a need to produce this film not only for him but for all the other Friday the 13th film fans out there. It is also a good way to advertise the talents of all the people involved as well as meet other people who are enthusiastic about the same subject matter.

I’m not a Friday the 13th film fan. In fact, I don’t really care for many of them but I do understand why the franchise has so many devoted fans. I’m a huge fan of the original Night of the Living Dead (1968) and I have a huge collection of related memorabilia. The same can be said of McLellen and several of the people involved in this production. My number one reason for doing this film is because there is such a huge following for this franchise that doing a film based on it just seemed like a lot of fun and 80% of why I do low budget (or no budget as this film suggests) is because it’s a whole lot of fun.

That’s what this first day of filming was like – a whole lot of fun and it wasn’t just me that had a lot of fun it was everyone from Burton to Adams to Standridge and most of all from McLellen who was like a kid in a candy shop and wouldn’t you be if you got to kill off someone on the first day of filming? Every film production should be so lucky as to have as productive a first day as this day was.