Creating a monster

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR ‘NEVER ALONE’ – WATCH THE SHORT FILM FIRST!!!

This horror short was just a quick idea we’ve come up with during the Halloween. The shooting itself was pretty much straight forward and even though our little actor was completely inexperienced, he did an amazing job for his age of 6. The biggest challenge however, was our boogeyman. Even though we love visual effects, we wanted to do the demon practically in order for the scene to feel more authentic. But at the same time, we wanted the demon to look inhuman and not like a regular person in a make-up.

First, we went to a local store to look for a scary halloween mask, but none of those fitted our needs (either well-known iconic movie characters or not scary at all). So we decided to once again combine the practical and the visual effects and created our own mask that we would later digitally enhance in post. We simply drew a face that we “liked” on a sheet of paper, then used a sharpie to bring out the contours and finally sticked it to a piece of stiff cardboard to make it more durable. And, with the right lighting, some digital enhancement and the proper color correction, we’ve had a pretty creepy looking creature (as you can see in the video below).