Coffin'

"Coffin'," an Apt Pupils production, appears on owyheesound's web hosted cinema section because Apt Pupils let Nathan Snyder, of owyheesound,  remix the audio.
The following is a description Chaz Gentry gave of the inspiration and production of  "Coffin'."

"Coffin was a tiny story I wrote during the winter of 2004. Originally, Coffin was inspired by RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD PART II. I remember watching the two bumbling grave robbers trying to steal from the corpses in the contaminated cemetary. For some reason those two made a lasting impression in my mind as a child. So when I wanted to find an excuse to use our brand new camera, the Panasonic DVX-100(thank you government funding!!), I combined the discusting act of gravedigging, with my love of Sergio Leone westerns and the childrens book trilogy, SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK. This combination eventually led to the creation of coffin.

When creating this short I had set myself two goals.

1. To tell a story without the use of diologue. In the past the Apt Pupils relied heavily on diologue to propell our films. Now that I had full creative control on this film, I felt that I would rather see a film that had less to do with verbal content, and work with more expressions, movement and sound.

2. To tell this story with more purpousfull camera angles and slower more traditional movie cuts. Influence coming from Sergio Leone, I wanted to see how long I could hold the audience with one shot, I wanted to experiment with suspence. Build it up slowly. This was the first short Ive worked on where I preplanned all the shots in advance.

Shooting the film on set was fun and easy. We woke up at 7 in the morning the first day preparing the gravesite and fixing the problems with the coffin. That and preparing jordans make-up took most of the day. Admittedly, we took our sweet time. We shot it in my grandmothers back pasture in the middle of the night. Shooting from 9 at night to 3 in the morning during the month of January. The weather was perfect that night, with absolutely no wind and relativaly cool temperatures. The only real problem I came across was the lighting of the Dead Girl(sara). I had missjudged how bright the light was on the girl. I was afraid that I would light her too bright making the moonlight seem unnatural. She came out on tape later too dark. I wish I could have gone back and adjusted the lighting."

Chaz Gentry-director/writer

 

To watch the windows media version of Coffin', Click Here.

 

 

 

 

Apt Pupil members involved were

Chaz Gentry-director/writer
Shakey_russ@hotmail.com

Jordan Carlman-co-director/actor
jippy_lovemachine777@hotmail.com

Sara Lynch-actress

Other Apt Pupil friends and neighbors involved were:

Steven behnke -     assistant director
Ryan Baxter -         head grip
Shawn Johnson -     grip
Oscar Moncada -      grip
owyheesound -        post-production audio