Directed by MARKUS MEEDT
A group of friends foolishly decide to play a game of Werewolf. As distrust, lynching and dietary requirements put their friendship out of balance, the Werewolf remains hidden in plain sight.
READ OUR INTERVIEW WITH MARKUS
Tell us a bit about yourself and your filmmaking background.
When I was a teenager my family moved from a microscopic village in Bavaria to a small town in Sweden. Struggling with the language and failing to make new friends, my brother and I started an international drama club to lure out the other immigrants and open minded teens in town and hang out. Somehow the whole thing took off and we had several stage shows (super local stuff with cardboard cut out set design). But the whole thing made me fall in love with story telling, working with actors and coming together with talents to create something from nothing. Alas, I moved to London, studied film and worked myself up as a runner and AD on films and TV. I somehow fell into commercial directing, which is my bread and butter. But the goal remains to direct long form narrative.
What's your inspiration behind Werewolf?
David Ellis, the writer of Werewolf came to me with the script. In fact, before he showed me the script he tried to re-cap a recent game night that went out of hand. I think me cracking up at his story gave us the confidence that it could actually work as a short. Dave put it on paper and brought on his brilliant actor friends (most of them know each other from their work on Shitfaced Shakespeare) and we took it from there.
What obstacles did you overcome while in the making of this film?
The obvious obstacles were money and time. I know a lot of people frown at the "expenses only" approach. But in many cases it is the only way people can actually finance a short film. And I always remember the things we accomplished with the Swedish Drama group with absolutely nothing. So yeah, we still pour all our money into it, but it all went into the prosthetics, some extra lights and most importantly catering. Which leads to the time issue: Food is pricey. After doing the math the numbers gave us only had 1.5 days to shoot the 12 page script. And the Werewolf prostethics that pop up briefly for 1 shot took roughly 5 hours.
Creatively, the challenge was to make "people sitting around a table playing an imagined card came" visually interesting. We lose the power of blocking as everyone is pretty much just sat at a table. Cinematographer Tom Lee, Gaffer Alex Gibbons, and I had to come up with a visual language that would help emphasise the slowly growing claustrophobia of social gatherings, rather than physically move our cast. We came up with three stages of maddness, all shot on "sequence" specific lenses with more erratic camera movements as the tension rises. Our editor Carley Brown created a "cuts per second" crescendo that slowly increases over time before we strip it right back for the slow burner ending.
Tell us about the journey of getting your film to audiences.
We are fortunate that our producer Nick Coupe has had several films in established film festivals across the years. He knew the deadlines, the festival specific flavours and some of the programmers. We ended up at Loco Film Festival, Aesthetica and Fright Fest amongst others. They are three of my favourite film festivals and we were obviously super chuffed. Unfortunately Covid meant that pretty much all festivals were online only which, despite best efforts, just isn't as personable as on site festivals.
Any advice that you can give to other short filmmakers?
Less of an advice on film making and more on what to do with your film once it is done... When we finished Werewolf, I was super happy with the final result, but I felt embarrassed sharing it with people. The grade was a bit rushed, the music only stock tracks and all in all, I was worried that people might just not find it very entertaining. But Nick and Dave believed in the film and started showing it around, getting it into festivals and sending people screeners and we received great feedback in return. I think a lot of directors are quite introverted about their work. They don't necessarily hate it, but they are shy about it. And it is one of the worst things to be! Don't be afraid to show your film to people. Don't keep it locked away till "the festival run is over "either. Share private links to friends and industry peeps. And once you are ready to unleash it online, utilize all the great online platforms (Such as Kino Short of the Week) you can. They are less expensive than film festivals, more reactive and can have a much further reach. No matter how shy you might be about your work, there is an audience out there for it. And the only way to get better as a film maker is to understand YOUR audience better. They might get your films better than yourself. There are a lot of useful take aways from audience reactions.
What are you working on now?
I am in post production on another short film written and starring David Ellis and James Murfitt (who are both in Werewolf) and have a horror comedy called Paranormal Investigators doing the festival rounds. I am also developing a Horror Anthology Series with creative producer Sean Scott Griffith and am trying to package a horror feature I co-wrote with Gemma Hurley. But as these things go, everything is moving at a snails pace. But as the famous saying goes: Slow and steady catches the worm... Wait... No... How does it go?
Any film recommendations that we should add to our watchlist?
I just watched Babyteeth on the plane from London to Mexico and cried my little eyes out. It completely subverts the coming of age film with some genuine heart, grit and consequences. I am also an absolute sucker for animated movies, so if you haven't watched The Mitchell's Vs The Machines on Netflix yet, you should lock it as your lazy Sunday viewing!