“I remember a world before the nightmares. The fear. The death. Before we found it. Before it found us.” —12 KILOMETERS, teaser trailer.
Practical effects are cool! But in recent years, we’ve seen them take a backseat to those crafted almost wholly within a computer.
“What happened is that I slipped on the ice and cracked my head open,” Filmmaker Mike Pecci says in his new Kickstarter video.
What could get more practical than that?
“12 Kilometers is something that came to me when I suffered a head injury earlier this year,” Pecci explains in his new Kickstarter video. A client of my firm, I remember when his partner Ian McFarland called me and told me the terrible news. A creative auteur, Pecci was out of commission while his brain swelled. It was a life-changer for Pecci.
Months earlier, as an attorney, I assisted Ian and Mike with another notable project, the Punisher fan film The Dead Can’t Be Distracted. That film, suppressed by Marvel, will likely never see the light of day. On his website, Pecci wrote a filmmaker’s “how to” about his experience with fan filmmaking. It is something like what Ben Wheatley did with his A Field in England project. And Pecci’s informative essay is a must read: http://mikepecci.com/tdcbd01/.
But his near-death experience made Pecci move away from making a film purely as a product of fanboy passion and caused him to turn his significant creative talents to an original concept. That project is 12 Kilometers.
“I got a hematoma on my brain,” he tells us ominously in his KS video. “What that did was put pressure on my brain causing nightmares.”
And it was precisely those nightmares that became the inspiration for his new film.
So, what did the nightmares bring him? A creature straight out of a horror classic. The thing is a black fluid that is discovered by Russian miners. This fluid is controlled by sound. Because Pecci and McFarland come from a rich background in commercials and music videos, look for the sound design to be critical to the tone of the film. And judging from the teaser trailer and KS video, sound will be as important as the unique practical effects relied upon to create Pecci’s nightmare on screen.
And those practical effects should be chilling. Pecci will be using macro photography (and filmmaking) techniques with the assistance of photographer Linden Gledhill.
“He [Gledhill] has the ability to create these tiny sets on the surface the size of a dime,” Pecci informs in his KS video.
The intention is to put the fluids through brains and organic material and film it on a scale that approximates that of actual size.
“It’s scary as hell!”
Pecci knows that his creature owes a lot to the horror films of the 1980s. He tells us that he wants his film to look like it came off the video shelf next to Carpenter’s excellent re-imagining of The Thing or next to John Landis 1981 film An American Werewolf in London. Folks my age will keenly remember seeing David Naughton transform vividly in a werewolf while a houseguest inside the lovely Jenny Agutter’s apartment. I have to say that I’ve always held these two films in high regard, but seeing them again in recent years made me even more a believer in the old school practical effects. Even those scenes where the creature went crazy in The Thing still work for me.
The casting choices will be equally important to building credibility with the viewer. McFarland & Pecci have recently cast actor Ara Woland in a prominent role and the intent is to cast Russian speaking actors whenever possible.
12 Kilometers, the short film, is just the first step toward bringing the concept to the screen as a feature. And to that end, McFarland & Pecci Films needs your help. With 16 days to go, as of the writing of this post, the Kickstarter has already raised more than $6,000.00 of their $14,900.00 goal. Readers are strongly encouraged to check it out and give what they can.
“As a director, I love horror films. I love scaring people. I love getting a great emotional response from an audience.” Pecci tell us. “The truth of it is I love scaring people, I really do. And this film scares me.”
Visit the 12 Kilometers Kickstater page here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1674591332/12-kilometers?ref=nav_search
