ON A NIGHT LIKE THIS Trailer on-line

[ExcelsiorKings]

Please visit the homepage of www.excelsiorkingspictures.com to find the teaser trailer, pics and info on our horror short film now in post, ON A NIGHT LIKE THIS.

Comments and feedback appreciated!

[ExcelsiorKings]

Any thoughts, questions, feelings about the film, website, premise or the existence of a low budget horror in the North West of England?

Much appreciated!

[ExcelsiorKings]

Anyone?

[sinshine]

EK...I really like the tag line! Although I'm confused as to what the story is about, it certainly looks entertaining. What can you tell us about the plot?

[ExcelsiorKings]

Yeah, we aren't giving much away there It's about phantom hitchhikers and it's full of twists, being a short it's difficult not to give away too much in few words. The whole thing is very much in the Amicus horror anthology vein of the 70s, and hopefully once this one is complete someone will give us funding to make 3 other segments and a narrators segment and then we'll have a feature

[sinshine]

I hear ya, EK. I'm currently working on a series of horror short screenplays that I hope to begin shooting this summer. I'm hoping to get the first off the ground and have that help me generate some more funding for the others.

Keep us up to date with OANLT

[ExcelsiorKings]

Good luck with those, Sinshine.

What format are you planning to shoot on, just out of interest?

[ShadowPuppet]

Great quality over the web,even at full res looked great
how did you get such quality ,could use more info in your trailer,looks scary anyway

[ExcelsiorKings]

Thankyou for your interest and kind comments

Quality in what sense?

We are pushing for a better trailer presentation format as oppose to the small window we presently have- also, VERY difficult to not give away the whole short film even describing it in few words, but the problem right now is presenting it with just enough info to know what it's about without giving away the twists and plot points- very hard and we are still learning.

[KrawlinKaos]

Looks pretty interesting. I love ye olde Amicus films, never saw any of the older ones they did based on Bloch stories but Asylum has always been a fave of mine. And don't get me started on phantom hitchhikers! Really, I thought this might just be about a guy with a knife so that's cool.

I have had trouble filming at night. I guess my main problem lies with the lights I have used. Looks like you have alot of cool elements going on with the rain and all. How'd ya do it?

[ExcelsiorKings]

Lots of my own money!

You can see in our behind the scenes photo gallery how we shot the driving sequences stationary with what's called "poor man's process"- all done in-camera. We also mixed real night footage with day for night, one of the benefits of shooting DV with the black levels and all. We have yet to grade the film too and we are also adding rain composites to many of the shots that were filmed dry as well.

CGI is to an absolute bare minimum- we could have gone greenscreens for the driving stuff but myself and the director prefer as much in-camera as possible- plus it saves a ton of post time too. It helps that I grew up with an eye on Derek Medding's in-camera philosophy too.

The trick with night sequences and low light in general is to keep it consistent AND make sure that all of the seperate stories/characters have their own "look" or "pallette themes" so when the editor and director come to cut the film they can choose any shot and it'll make sense. Our storyboards were actually far far off what we actually photographed, and this is a good thing- what's drawn is in many cases unfilmable, especially with these kind of "trick" shows. DP and designer MUST be joined at the hip.

Asylum is a classic and hands down the first inspiration for the short, along with Freddie Francis' Amicus version of Tales From The Crypt and the Donner/Silver/Zemeckis TV show of the same name.

[KrawlinKaos]

wow, it looks really great! I think it's really amazing some of the things you can do with dv cams.

You know, I have an old video tape that has Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror and Asylum on it! At one time TBS began showing all the Amicus antho movies on friday nights.

[Jnott78]

Looks exciting, a nice little tease, can't wait for the full production.

[monochrome]

The quality is really good....the website too !

can we purchase your films ?

[ExcelsiorKings]

Thankyou for the kind comments.

We are currently in post and do not have a distributor as of yet. The short stands on it's own but could be one part of an Amicus style horror anthology, and we are currently seeking funding for our next short which we would like to be a second part in this series. The next short would be shot on HD though on a larger budget and is more Peter Greenaway via surrealism than say the unashamed love letter horror of ON A NIGHT LIKE THIS, but could make for a very diverse, unsettling anthology. The other two segments and the story that links them together could be dealt with a number of ways.