Fruitful reunion: Former classmates at Santa Fe University of Art & Design team up for short horror film
Oct. 15—Editor's note: Venue Plus continues "In Case You Didn't Know," a weekly feature with fun tidbits about New Mexicans and their projects.
It's been nearly 20 years since Sam Quinn and Connor McLean met as theater students at the Santa Fe University of Art & Design.
Fifteen years later, they met for coffee in Los Angeles to discuss concepts for a horror film. The result is the short film "Stay Calm," which will screen at 8:40 p.m. Friday, Oct. 15, as part of the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival.
The filmmakers reunited after overcoming a dark past battling drug addiction and have come out stronger, forging a tight bond.
In their film, all of humanity has been infected with a rage-zombie virus that lies dormant until triggered by adrenaline spikes in its host. A love triangle consisting of a husband and wife and their best friend have escaped the city and taken refuge in an isolated desert home. The trio must control their emotions and most primal instincts to keep from turning into monsters.
"Stay Calm" explores the idea of living a mindful life in a chaotic world. The characters are faced with betrayal, terror, lust and envy, but their survival rests in how they deal with the emotions. They must learn to face every emotion with a deep breath or risk turning into monsters.
"I love that stakes are raised so much," McLean says. "We worked really well together."
Quinn says McLean brought the concept to him about adrenaline spikes.
"I thought there had to be some way the characters can combat that," Quinn says. "I'm into
mindfulness, and that's one way we can take control over emotions and train our brain to do so. It's about figuring out how to control your emotions."
The filmmakers want to take the short film and create a series of films surrounding the universe.
"It's an idea that can have more than one film," Quinn says.
While it took more than a decade to reconnect, the filmmakers share some fun facts about the making of "Stay Calm."
1 " 'Stay Calm' was shot in Joshua Tree, California, three hours from Los Angeles, which meant we needed to supply housing for our 20-plus person cast/crew on an indie low budget. Luckily, we found a huge estate on Airbnb which was shared with the entire cast and crew for our four-day shoot. People were in bunk beds, with four or more to a room. It was basically film summer camp."
2 "The featured house in our film was more or less off-grid, running on solar energy. It was rad! That is until we'd exhaust the solar energy reserve by nightfall, and production would lose all power. Luckily we planned ahead and had some generators to fall back on for when that would happen."
3 "Several of us had to stay at the shooting location a day later after we wrapped to help scrub all the fake blood out of the carpets. It became an official crisis when we found out that our friend, who was in the process of selling the house, was having an open house the following day. ... so we hired a professional carpet cleaner to erase the evidence ...of shooting a horror film there."
4 "On Day 2, our production came to a screeching halt for over an hour when our camera car got stuck in a sand trap. Tires were just spinning. We had to get at least 10 crew members on deck, pushing the SUV, during 100-plus degree desert weather, before we could get it loose."
5 "We had a last-minute crisis when we had to replace one of our actresses on the same morning that she was supposed to work. Since we were three hours from LA, it was impossible to recast and transport someone out, but luckily, our makeup artist was also a professional actress and was game to step in and save the day. She was great! She's doing her own amazing special effects makeup and then steps on set and delivers a killer performance. We got lucky with that one!"
Screening in NM
"Stay Calm" will screen as part of the shorts program "New Mexico After Dark" at 8:40 p.m. Friday, Oct. 15, at the Jean Cocteau Cinema. Tickets are $15 at santafeindependent.com.
