We get a boatload of news from horror filmmakers, musicians, writers, and artists each week. We unfortunately
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September 05, 2005
Principal Shooting Wraps on The Bunker
Joe Monks announced on principal photography on his first film, The Bunker, wrapped successfully, just days prior to Hurricane Katrina striking Miami.
"We got everything we needed here," said Monks. "We sewed up about 85 percent of the film during our four days of shooting. With the bulk of our material in the can and everybody very happy with the dailies, now we can concentrate on our location shooting in New York and Los Angeles."
The Bunker, the story of a sadistic serial killer who kidnaps the daughter of a U.S. Congressman and which Monks also wrote, will be released next year as the second installment of the Flowers on the Razorwire DVD series. It will include a 16 page comic book, and while not all details on the book are ready to be revealed, Monks confirmed on his web site that both stories will be written by himself, and at least one will be illustrated by long-time collaborator Mike Koneful. Koneful has been an integral part of Monks' horror anthology, Zacherley's Midnite Terrors, and who will be half the art team on the upcoming zombie series: Gory Lori.
The director, who went blind in 2002 due to diabetic retinopathy, also promises a much longer outing with this film.
"The first Flowers DVD was shot as a television pilot for the horror-hungry Asian market, based on one of my short stories, Chance Meeting. So a half hour is what we shot. When the pilot wasn't picked up, we wanted to release it to our fans, so we put on a bunch of extras, and put it out. But since I have total control over this film, we're shooting first and worrying about running time later. Right now, we're extremely happy with the footage we have. We've discussed feature length, but that determination will be made later, after our second unit and location material is in the can."
On being a first-time director, coupled with doing it without eyesight, Monks says, "The crew and cast were fantastic. I gave them pretty comprehensive direction; I told them what I wanted, and they gave me what I asked for. Terry (West, who plays the sadistic kidnapper and serial murderer) and Saskia (Gonzalez, who portrays the daughter of U.S. Congressman Robert Jennings) worked their asses off. I couldn't be happier. Our DP, Vallo Lleo, spent another night in Miami just to digitize the footage to go cut a trailer for his reel. I think the fact that I'm blind was a non-factor almost from the get-go. Everybody had their job, I had plenty of pairs of eyes I trust on set to make sure what I wanted to get shot got shot."
Although Monks had a comprehensive game plan going in, this being filmmaking, even the best laid plans were occasionally thrown awry. "We lost our main power source for the camera on Sunday, of course, when finding a replacement was ten times more difficult. We had some weather noise infringing on the set at times that we needed to work around, but we made do. We also changed a scene that same Sunday to take advantage of our effects artist, Laura Bissessar, who stuck around and came up with something on-the-fly that really added impact and punch to a scene I literally re-wrote on the spot. I think the ability of our crew to overcome and adapt made that scene much more powerful than it had been originally, and our actors were able to rise to the occasion even with the last minute changes.
Yeah, we had hassles, but compared to horror stories I hear from other directors, I had people willing to go to any lengths to make this happen. I think people are going to be surprised at our final product."
