‘Shelby Oaks’ Director Chris Stuckmann And His Stars Talk Found Footage And Bringing This Story To Life
Finally, this Halloween, Chris Stuckmann‘s hybrid found footage nightmare, Shelby Oaks, is hitting theaters, courtesy of NEON and a few hundred backers who helped make the film’s Kickstarter campaign the most successful horror movie project ever. Stuckmann’s feature film debut is a creepy descent into horrific family secrets as a woman tries to find her missing sister.
We spoke with Stuckmann and his stars, Camille Sullivan and Sarah Durn, about bringing the film to life over nine years, filming in a haunted prison, and how Signs inspired Stuckmann to start making movies.
Dread Central: So Signs is the movie that made you want to make movies? Tell me more about that.
Chris Stuckmann: It came out when I was 14. It was an amazing summer. I saw the right series of movies that made me think about movies differently. The first was Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, and then it was such a good movie. It’s so good. It’s so good. And then it was Spielberg’s Minority Report and then Signs. And they all did something different for me, where I was like, this is a giant blockbuster thing that feels like a visionary made it.
Minority Report was the first time I ever spoke to an adult, my friend’s dad, afterwards about a film on an analytical level. And I was like, “Wait, people get together and talk about movies like this? This is weird.”
And then Signs, I started to notice that I had this realization that people made movies. I know it’s weird to think that, but when you’re a kid, you kind of just watch these magical things that are displayed to you, and you’re like, “Well, that was great. I saw the thing.” You don’t necessarily think about that people are coming together to actually physically create this.
I literally ran home from that theater, begged my mom for a camcorder. She had a gift card to QVC, the shopping network, and she got me a camcorder, and I started shooting movies after that.
DC: That’s so fucking cool. And now you’re here with Shelby Oaks and a new version of Shelby Oaks, which is so cool because I know it premiered last year, but then it’s kind of premiering again in a way. How did it feel yesterday seeing another theater of an incredible audience react to the movie?
CS: Absolutely incredible. Absolutely incredible. At this point, I’ve seen the movie so many times, 500, 600 times. The only way to have a new experience is in an audience.
You can hear gasps, you hear a scream, you and I feed off that. Because every time I watch the movie to test the color correction or the sound, it’s like, “OK, I’m sick of this.” When you hear it on Dolby Atmos with all these amazing film-loving, horror-loving people, it’s a new experience.
DC: What was that like for you two? Because both of you are so central to the story, that must’ve felt so cool to see those powerful performances on the big screen.
Sarah Durn: So nerve-wracking. [Laughs]
No, but it was just such a gift. Both Fantasia and Fantastic Fest are such beautiful audiences who are so excited about Shelby Oaks. You can just feel that everyone’s really pumped about seeing this movie, and that’s such a gift. I don’t know. I had no idea where this movie was going. I didn’t even know if it would come out.
CS: I felt the same way when we were shooting. I was like, I mean, I’ll just put it on my YouTube channel or something. That was a genuine thought I had. And the fact that Neon acquired us is genuinely like a dream come true. It’s a real grassroots movie.
DC: No, it really is the epitome of indie. You had mentioned in the film’s intro that it was an idea you and your wife had. What was the initial kernel of an idea for Shelby Oaks?
CS: We did a YouTube sketch together. We used to do these Halloween specials and stuff. The fourth one we did was this cabin in the woods thing, where it was like we did these cabin in the woods reviews in a cabin in the woods, and it was very creative. We had so much fun doing it. It was so inexpensive and so cheap. And we realized when we were driving home from that shoot that we were just tired of waiting. Nothing was just going to fall into our laps. We just had to do it. And we started writing Shelby Oaks after that.
DC: Hell yeah. What year was that?
CS: 2016.
DC: Okay. Wow.
CS: So this film has technically been gestating for nine years.
DC: That’s wild. So, I’m a found footage person, and I obviously love this hybrid found footage approach. Did you always want it to be a hybrid found footage? When did that come into the equation in terms of playing with the format in such an interesting way with Shelby Oaks?
CS: Thank you. Initially, it was all going to be from the perspective of the missing YouTubers. That was the first shit, because it was like we were out of necessity. My wife and I, we were going to save $20,000 and just make the movie for nothing and put it on YouTube. And I couldn’t really control the ideas that were coming as I was writing the treatment. It was one of those things where, as soon as I had the notion, the idea that you could exit the lens of a real camera, so to speak, that the actors are aware of and enter the lens of a fictional camera.
It’s not like we’re doing something super new with this. Cannibal Holocaust did something like that, where you have a lot of the movie as a traditional narrative, and then later, they watch some found footage. With Shelby Oaks, there’s this idea of why can’t we play around with format? Why not? We’re all in on the joke. We love horror. We’re watching a mockumentary, and we know it’s not real, so why can’t we play around with it?
DC: Camille, with your character, you are in and out of those formats. Was performing and acting in both formats difficult? What was that like for you as a performer?
Camille Sullivan: I was really mirroring the journey of the character. So it felt really easy because at the start, she’s lost in grief. She’s trapped, and then something happens, and her whole world kind of breaks open. And that’s what happens in the movie, too. But it’s like a renewed sense of life for Mia in a way, because it’s like at least there’s a path to follow. I mean, she’s been spinning her wheels for 12 years, just waiting for a direction to ta,ke and then off it goes.
DC: That’s so cool. So, there’s it is a specific image in this movie that was really haunting, and that’s the cradle with all of the evidence boxes in it.
CS: Thank you.
DC: It comes up a couple of times, and something about that was just really haunting. It seems like such an important visual metaphor, and it was a pretty powerful one. I wanted to hear more about including that.
CS: Thank you so much. I wanted a very clear visual to describe the fracture in their marriage, because Robert would love to have a family. Mia has put that on hold because of her, you could call it an obsession, but her drive to find her sister and having all of this evidence, basically this baby crib that was planned for a child, has now become a storage facility for this other thing that’s taken over. And there was nothing that the actors or the dialogue would’ve said that would’ve communicated that. So the visual is there, and you let it speak for itself.
DC: It sounds obvious when I say it out loud, but it says so much in the film. And I think something else that does that is the crack in the window. And I really love that really simple visual as well. Was that always in the script?
CS: So the way that I view that is, and if you experience something in life, especially at a young age, that traumatizes you in some way or leaves an imprint on you, like this crack in the window. You don’t fix it, you don’t tell anybody about it. You don’t share it with anybody. You don’t go to therapy. You don’t tell somebody I need help, whatever. It’s going to keep growing and spider webbing and spider webbing until it’s this thing that will eventually eat you alive.
There’s this whole notion in Shelby Oaks that this has always been there since they were little, and it was something that’s easily written off. Sometimes we’ll see a crack in the glass or whatever in our window, and it’s like, “OK, whatever.” But it’s always there, and it’s representing this thing that’s always been watching them.
DC: I wanted to know about the locations you filmed for the Paranormal Paranoids. Did you film in actual haunted locations? What was that experience like? Especially for you, Sarah, you became a real paranormal host.
SD: Oh my God. What a dream role. Yeah. I’ve always been into spooky things. I grew up reading ghost stories. I grew up reading Haunted Ohio. I’m also from Ohio, like Chris. So we share that, and I don’t know, there’s something about Ohio, the flyover state, but it’s kind of forgotten.
CS: We have the most haunted houses in the United States of America.
SD: They’ve proven it.
DC: Wow.
CS: I want to know how you prove that.
DC: How do you quantify that? But maybe I don’t want to know.
SD: There’s a lot of just creepy elements to Ohio generally. There’s the Frog Man.
DC: Oh, I know Frog Man!
SD: We all need the Frog Man in our lives. But yeah, just Ohio has this element of horror kind of baked in a little bit.
So it was such a gift. And I grew up watching paranormal TV shows. On the History Channel, there was a show called A Haunting. I’m very much into all those shows. It was on at four o’clock, right after school. I traumatized both my siblings because I needed to watch it every night. So yeah, I mean, it was just so fun to traipse around in the woods with Chris, with the other actors, and be at legitimately creepy places. And the creepiest was probably the prison.
And the first time we were there, we were there with a security guard that moonlights as a ghost tour guide, and they have people who come and bring all the gadgets. They look for the things moving, and so we’re just legitimately walking around with this old school camcorder with the only light sources coming from little flashlights and the camcorder’s flashlight. It’s legitimately a creepy place.
CS: When I scouted the prison, they took me into what used to be the infirmary
DC: How was that?
CS: I mean, stepping into it, there is a genuine sense of shift in air quality, and it’s not just the way it smells. There was a pressure, I can’t even imagine how many injured prisoners died in that place.
DC: What was your experience like, Camille?
Camille: It was pretty cool. I was able to, and I don’t know if I was supposed to, but I was able to wander off by myself in the dark. I was actively looking for ghosts. I was like, “I am going to have an experience.”
CS: There were a few nights for the first ad you’d hear over the walkie, “Where’s Camille?”
Camille: Sadly, I did not find anything.
DC: You didn’t? Any spooky experiences on set ever?
CS: So again, scouting. There was a moment we were going to have a scene in the showers, so I had to go into the showers of the prison. I didn’t even tell you guys this. I went into the showers, and I was like, “I don’t want to film in here. I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to.”
DC: Good for you, though. Set that paranormal boundary.
CS: There’s also a chapel at that prison with a huge mural of Jesus that’s crumbling. It’s awesome.
Shelby Oaks is out now in theaters from NEON.
Categorized: Interviews
