This year's Blood in the Snow Festival
kicked off last week with the world premiere of Jeff Sinasac's Red Spring.
In a world overrun by vampires, a group
of human survivors forage for supplies by day and stay on the run at
night.
I was really stoked for this, as I know
Jeff and his producing partner/wife Tonya Dodds very well. They've
acted in several projects of mine and I know Red Spring has been a
passion project of theirs for years. This movie has had a long
history, starting with his script that was a optioned a few times and
even almost produced with modest budgets and A-listers over the last
ten years. When all that fell through, Jeff & Tonya just
committed to making it themselves.
I have to say I was pretty impressed
with what they achieved on such a tiny budget. Red Spring was a
really ambitious project, not just by design, but also in scope.
Filmmakers have made post-apocalyptic tales on a shoestring before,
but most have been content to just have them be morose, insular
affairs that take place in one location. Sinasac reaches higher by
employing many locales with several action set pieces.
Using Richard Matheson's I Am Legend as
a jumping off point, Sinasac quickly builds his universe by having
his survivors flee Toronto via an abandoned Gardiner Expressway.
Starring Sinasac himself, he also mined several great talents from
within the local web series scene, including Elysia White and Lindsey
Middleton, as well as genre up-and-comer Adam Cronheim (who
previously tread similar terrortity in Jeremy Gardner's 2012 festival
darling The Battery).
Rather than going for a stylistic tone
to gloss over their meager budget, Red Spring takes a more grounded
approach. The character's know they are living on borrowed time, but
that doesn't stop them from fighting all the same. And the world may
have ended, but that doesn't mean you can't still crack a corny joke
once and a while – including one random reference to a Maple Leaf Foods ad from like forever ago.
Maybe the most jaw dropping piece of
trivia was that Red Spring boasts over four-hundred visual effects
shots. The first act has a few that aren't so hot, but there are also
some subtle and understated ones that I didn't even notice. I should
mention that in addition to being
actor/writer/director/producer/editor, Sinasac also did every single
one of those effects shots himself over the course of a
year-and-a-half. That's one dude! What's your excuse Justice League?
Cast & crew of Red Spring. |
Red Spring concluded in true Dawn of
the Dead fashion, which means that there are definitely more stories
to be told within this universe. And I'd watch them. I just hope it
doesn't take another ten years for them to see the light of day.
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