Arrow Video Frightfest returns for its twentieth year of frightful delights later this month. Running from Thursday 22nd August to Monday 26th August, the film festival showcases the best and brightest in films that embrace the darker side of cinema. In the run-up to the festival, we at THN are bringing you a series of interviews with some of the filmmakers presenting the fruits of their labour to the Frightfest audiences.
Over the last couple of years Frightfest have introduced a new strand to their films, First Blood. First Blood takes over one of the Frightfest scenes for an entire day and features films specially curated for showcasing interesting voices new to the genre world. It’s a great opportunity for festival goers to discover filmmakers who could potentially be the next big thing, and offers something a little different to what the main screen has to offer. Kicking-off this year’s selection is Graham Hughes’ Death of a Vlogger.
Death of a Vlogger is a found footage / mockumentary hybrid that tells the tale of a vlogger whom starts to document some strange occurrence in his flat. It offers a compelling commentary on social media, the dangers of believing everything you see, and the dark side of Internet fame, all of which are explored in a dynamic way. There are also some pretty solid scares, not bad for a film that was made on a rather modest budget with Hughes himself stepping in front of the camera to keep costs down.
Before Graham got swept up in the madness that is Frightfest, we caught up with him to get an in-depth look at the film.
How did you get into filmmaking?
I think I’d always wanted to do something like that, essentially storytelling of a sort, but I didn’t know what those jobs were. My granddad had this VHS collection where he’d just record tons of stuff off of TV, and he did low key editing as well. He’d censor sex scenes and things, violence he would let us watch, but if it was a sex scene, he would stop the recording and start it up again once it had stopped. He had a huge VHS collection and that’s how I got a love of cinema.
For years I didn’t know the difference between a director, a producer and a writer, so I wanted to be a stuntman for a while. That was a tangible thing, I could see what a stuntman did. Then it was when I found out what the distinction was between a writer and director and a producer, that was when I wanted to do that and make films. I was probably about sixteen, embarrassingly late to figure these things out. Then I did Film and Media at Uni and learned the ins and outs.
Graham Hughes
In Death of a Vlogger you also play the lead role, what made you decide to step in front of the camera?
There were two factors that went into that decision. The first is the subject matter of the film is something that I had experienced a lot – not the haunting part – but the social media part. I’ve been making videos for the internet for about ten years now, since You Tube started, so maybe it’s not quite ten years, I’ve just been uploading stuff to You Tube and I’ve been making stupid short genre films, and more recently I’ve been lucky enough to have a few videos go viral. It can be a really horrible experience. Just putting yourself out on the Internet and the reaction that you get can be kinda scary. That was something I’ve got a lot of experience with, so it was a really personal film for me. The format of the film allowed me to use a lot of the videos that I had in my back catalogue and use that as an archive for the documentary format. The second reason is budgetary. The film didn’t have much of a budget and my rate is really good, it’s really cheap. It also allowed the shoot to be very flexible. I could shoot myself in my flat, it was shot over about six months. Evenings and weekends; if it was just myself in a scene, I was able to just set up the lights and the camera and just do as many takes as I wanted just working on my own. It just made the shoot a lot easier to have myself as opposed to bringing in someone else to instantly make scheduling harder.
The film deals with social media which is just this massive phenomena at the moment with people desperate to go viral and be Instafamous. Why do you think people are so obsessed with their digital selves?
I can’t speak to why other people would be that engrossed in it, but from a personal point of view I think it’s just validation. I think everyone’s scared of not leaving a mark, or being forgotten, or not being…something. I’ve brought up a bunch of times is I feel those guys from Mad Max: Fury Road, and I’m just running around shouting ‘Witness Me!’ all the time. I think that is what the human condition boils down to to me, those two words. I think there is a part of that where people just upload a picture of them on a nice day out or something and when someone leaves a like or comment it just feels nice. Someone has seen what you’re doing and has noticed it and has taken the time to leave a like and it just feels nice to have that kind of attention. I mean it’s completely hollow. In a sense, it’s kind of meaningless, but I think the reaction to that is hard to avoid, at least for me. I know it doesn’t mean anything, but I still get validation. It still feels nice. I’ve no judgement on my part for anyone that feels that because that’s how I feel.
Graham Hughes
I felt the dialogue was very natural, was that how it was written, or did you allow for some improvisation?
Yeah, there was a fair amount of improvisation. It varied, part of it is that I struggle to remember scripts words for word, so any scenes that feature me are going to be loose. If it was just me and an actor, we would know the beats of the scene and we would just work through them as we went with improvised dialogue. Others were pretty line specific. For example, in the seance scene there were a lot of very specific blocking and effects, and things like that that went into it, so it needed to be quite close to how it was written. As far as word for word with that scene, it was more what was most comfortable for the actors. The two main actors that I spent most time with, Paddy Kondracki and Annabel Logan, they’re just brilliant. Paddy’s a big improviser, all of his talking head scenes, none of them are word for word. Whereas Annabel is more classically trained and all of her talking head scenes are exactly as written. I was open to how the actors wanted to do it. I like for everyone that works on a film that I’ve written or directed to bring a bit of themselves. I think that always results in a stronger film.
It’s also a film that has a lot of layers of truth and deception, how tricky were those moments to work out?
It was a bit of juggling. The film was made truthfully, and then I had heard about how some of the bigger animation companies work. In that they heavily do animatics and go shot-by-shot, and they’ll get the actor to come in and do their lines and if something isn’t working they can scratch things at an early stage and restructure things. They can see what’s working and what isn’t at an early stage. I wanted to employ some of that, this film was relatively easy to shoot compared to something with a bigger budget or crew. It was relatively easy to re-shoot scenes. I was editing as I went so I could see how it was coming together and see where the weaknesses are. With that in mind, that’s how I was really able to layer in a lot of those things that you may have missed.
Now, I’ve been brought up on horror films, but if there’s one thing that gets me, it’s a ghost story. There were moments when watching the film when I actually got chills, how difficult were these effects to pull of?
I have to agree, ghosts are where it’s at for me. I love paranormal films, I’m a huge horror fan, but paranormal and ghosts is definitely the scariest ones for me. Slashers, meh, I’m not likely to get killed by a slasher, but I may be killed by a ghost (laughs). I know that’s completely ridiculous. On paper I found them not too challenging because I come from a comedy background, and I find the dynamics of how they’re set up very similar to comedy. You have to set-up the punchline or premise and either adding a surprise or flipping it. In terms of actually shooting some of those things, like I said, I made this on my own in my flat, I don’t really have any effects background, apart from I can use After Effects pretty well. As far as raising a sheet off of the floor on it’s own after fixes no help at all, so there was a lot a trial and error. The two hardest ones were the sheet rising on its own and the levitation scene at the end. They both took about three or four tries each time. I basically just knew what I had to do and I had an idea of how to do it, and I had to keep trying and failing certain things and then just improving a little bit each time, realising what the issues were. It all just tackled from a sort of logical way, ‘how would you do this?, then try it and if that doesn’t work, ‘what’s another way?’ I’m sure an actual effects person would have done it in two seconds flat.
Graham Hughes
Graham has a lot of pop culture memorabilia in his flat, is it safe to say you’re a fan of the films that are featured on those items?
Yeah, I mean, that’s my flat. It wasn’t dressed in any particular way. It still looks like that now. We’ve still actually got all the writing on the wall. I was terrified I’d have to re-shoot something so all that red writing is still up. It was weird, about two months ago, me and my girlfriend were just sitting and watching a film or something. I don’t know what it was, but something got into both of our heads where I just turned to her and said ‘it says c**t on our wall,’ and she was like ‘yeah I just thought that’. So yeah, it still says c**t on our wall.
Death of a Vlogger is getting its world premiere at Frightfest, what made you think that this was the best platform to debut this film?
I kind of feel that almost goes without saying really, Frightfest is just an institution. At this point, I’m just really, really grateful that they programmed it. Especially since I think we might be – I need to check the programme more closely – but I think we are the only found footage film that they programmed. I think its become a bit of a dirty genre recently. People are just a bit fed up with it, so the fact that they’ve taken a chance on it is just really, really humbling. It means a lot to me. The fan base at Frightfest is just absolutely incredible, so I’m just super excited.
Have you been before?
Not the London one, just the Glasgow branch. I’m really excited to get down and get into the thick of it and watch some films.
Is there anything you’ve got your eye on that you want to watch?
Some of the other First Blood films for sure, like A Serial Killer’s Guide to Life, and Dark Sense.
Graham Hughes
What do you think the Frightfest audience will get from Death of a Vlogger that they might not get from other films in the line-up?
I always want to get two reactions from any film that I make. One is just a visceral enjoyment, I love genre so whether that’s comedy and they laugh, or horror where it’s pretty tense or they’re scared. Obviously I want them to be scared from this film, but I also want them to come away thinking about something. The reaction I’ve had so far from Death of a Vlogger is that it’s been lingering with them. I want people to be able to be thinking about it for a couple of days after they see it. If that happens, then amazing, and if not, I just want them to be scared.
Do you have any other projects lined up?
This has taken up all of my time. I have about two or three ideas that I would love to start writing. One of them is a horror siege film, one’s another found footage film, which would be a one take paranormal, mental trip across a city. Kind of like Victoria, but in a horror way. It kind of depends, I want to see this one goes down in the next few months and see what my options are. If I need to do the no-budget route again then so be it, but it would be nice to step up to something a little bit bigger.
Other Frightfest filmmakers have gone on to bigger productions so it’s definitely possible.
My last feature, we got into about ten festivals around the world. One of them was Edinburgh, which is obviously quite a prestigious festival, but having just had Death of a Vlogger be accepted at Frightfest, the amount of attention and interest that I’ve got off of the back of that is way more than anything with my last feature which got into ten festivals. Frightfest is something else. It’s crazy the reach that they have.
Death of a Vlogger screens at Arrow Video Frightfest on Saturday 26th August 2019.
