The 8 Hour Film Project Horror 2022

No, that title is not a typo, Tiny Explosions transformed into Tiny Possessions this month to participate in the 48 Hour Film Project Des Moines Horror and things did not go as planned.

Sam Pace-Tuomi hosting Screening Group A.

Our filmmaking weekend started pretty normally. Friday night kickoff, brainstorm, and writing session. Around 10:30 we broke all set to make a film called "Death Wizard," then Saturday morning about 2am I woke up to a screaming child who didn't want to tell us why she was up but didn't want to go to sleep, so we watched cartoons for 10 minutes and she ran off and started to cry. Meanwhile, I was just feeling dizzy, lethargic, and had a sore throat. Next thing I know I'm running to the only 24 hour Walgreens left in Des Moines to get kids ibuprofen and I get back to sleep around 5am. Kiddo number two wakes me up at 7am and I am a big ball of yuck.

I told the squad I was out, Tiny Possessions crumpled like a wet shirt, and Death Wizard vanished. Super bummed, I spent all Saturday either sleeping or on the couch thinking up how I can shoot a 4 minute one-man band horror short. With the team disbanded, Brian went and shot a short with his daughter (it's actually pretty darn good, I wish he'd released it). Saturday night as I was pulling up the covers, friend filmmakers were messaging asking if they could lend their skills to the team just so we could submit something. Really nice gestures, but still I went to sleep hoping for a health miracle.

Sunday came, and 2/3s a miracle arrived. I wasn't dizzy or lethargic, my throat was a little sore, and for the second day in a row I had a negative covid test. I texted Brian at 10am to see if he wanted to make something, and by noon we had the band back together, on location, and we guerrilla'd our way through a film now known as "Murder Farm."

Murder Farm was written in 20 minutes (and rewritten on the fly), filmed in 2.5 hours, edited in 3, and submitted with an hour remaining, but zero gas in my tank.

Is it a perfect film? C'mon, we made it in 6-7 hours! There are plenty of things I would change. The audio was all shotgun mic. We didn't set up a single light. We nearly forgot the prop and the line of dialogue. And if we had time to reshoot the ending I think we could have produced something worthy of top 3 of the event. Still, I do love it. It's funny, the location is golden, it's bloody, dumb in the right places, and even though we made it last minute we had a huge cast with a handful of fresh faces. Very happy with how it turned out.

In the end Murder Farm did make the Best of Horror Des Moines screening and we took home the award for "Best Gore." I won't spoil why, but you'll know it when you see it. I can't share my favorite top 3-5 films from the event because I only saw my screening group. Wish I could've gone to Best of Horror screening but our entire house was sick, again. It's been a month.

I hope you enjoy watching Murder Farm as much as we enjoyed making it. Hopefully next time we make a film, Tiny Explosions will be able to make use of our entire production window. I guess we'll find out in a few weeks... 😎 #RIPDeathWizard