Interview: Director Frank Sabatella on Creating the Bloodthirsty Creature Effects in THE SHED and Working in Genre Film
Michelle Swope
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Writer/director Frank Sabatella is known for the feature film Blood Night: The Legend of Mary Hatchet (2009) as well as the short films The House That Cried Blood (2012) and Children of the Witch (2013). His second feature film, The Shed, tells the somewhat tragic story of Stan, fantastically portrayed by Jay Jay Warren, who loses his parents and ends up living with his abusive grandfather. Cody Kostro is sensational as Stan’s best friend Dommer, who along with their friend Roxy (Sofia Happonen), attempts to help Stan deal with the dreadful situation of finding a very hungry vampiric creature living in the shed in his backyard.
Frank Whaley gives a sympathetic, yet terrifying performance as the creature in the shed. The engrossing and horrific story was written by Sabatella and features an amazing cast and some truly frightening makeup effects.
Dread Central was excited to have the opportunity to speak with Frank Sabatella about his motivation for the story, creating the creature effects, working in the horror genre, and a lot more. Read on to find out what we talked about!
RLJE Films will release The Shed in theaters and on VOD and Digital HD on November 15th.
Dread Central: What was your inspiration for The Shed and why did you decide to make it about vampires?
Frank Sabatella: The story actually started with a buddy of mine in film school, back in 2002 or 2003. He wrote this very short story about a vampire in a shed and we started there. I remembered that story for years and when I was starting to write my second feature I was like, “You know that was a really great core concept.” I asked him if he would mind if I wrote the feature based on that concept and he was totally cool with it and we just went from there. I took it to a place where I feel like the vampire in the shed can sort of be representative of the, I guess, darkness that is in our characters. I started figuring out if we take that metaphor and we put it in a sort of horror movie presence, we can have some fun with it and kind of tell a cool story, hopefully [laughs].
DC: The Shed features such a strong cast. I especially enjoyed Jay Jay Warren as Stan and Cody Kostro as his best friend Dommer.
FS: They rocked. They were so good. I think Dommer is a great role for a good actor, because of the wide breadth of emotion that comes through. It’s not easy stuff that he’s doing, but he makes it very natural. I think Jay Jay and Cody together have such a solid chemistry. I think their scenes of conflict together are amazing. They just worked off of each other so well that it just really works.
DC: The chemistry between the two of them seems genuine and is so believable. I thought they were incredible.
FS: I love hearing that. Thank you.
DC: Can you tell me how you went about the casting and why you chose Jay Jay and Cody for their roles?
FS: We went through the usual casting routine. We had a casting director and we put out our casting breakdown. Cody auditioned in person for me in New York, which was great. As soon as I saw him and saw his audition, and this is not a lie, I was like, “That’s our guy. I don’t care. That’s the person we need.” So, he was pretty much first choice right off the bat. Jay Jay, thankfully, came in much later in our casting game.
I had seen a bunch of people for the role and there were a lot of great actors, that tried out for Stan, but I felt like they weren’t quite hitting it. Then when I saw Jay Jay’s audition tape, I was like, “I think this kid’s got it. I think this is it.” And we had him do another take for us, because we were casting out of New York and he was in Los Angeles. When I saw his second take, me and the producers, we all agreed. We were like, “This is it. We got our guys.”
DC: I thought the makeup effects in The Shed were really cool. Can you tell me how you came up with the look for the vampires?
FS: Thank you. First and foremost, I wanted the vampires to be scary. I didn’t want them to be sexy and smooth. I wanted them to kind of be organic, so I took a lot of cues from The Lost Boys, the look of those vampires where they were still very human, but they started to become inhuman, the more, I guess, vampier they got. So, I kind of started there. Then, when I was working with Jeremy Selenfriend from Monster in My Closet, who designed our effects, we just continued to talk about like, “What do we want to do? What do we want them to be?”
Vampires can get very monstrous, so we didn’t want to go too far with the monster, we wanted to keep the human aspects. We decided that they would sort of change as things progressed. So, the vampire in the shed, if you pay attention, his look continues to change, and by the final act of the film he’s probably the most vampire-looking that he’s been the whole time. Prior to that, I mostly just wanted the sort of deathly look, a mouthful of fangs, and scary eyes. We never call them vampires in the film, but it’s just sort of known. So, I wanted it to be like they’re just this undead, evil thing.
DC: What do you enjoy most about working in the horror genre?
FS: It just comes so naturally to me. I was that little kid that loved monsters. I don’t know where it started, it’s just as far back as I can remember, I was into monsters. I would watch Dracula when it was on and things like that. Anything with a monster intrigued me, so it has just stayed with me my whole life. I think that my inclinations as a writer and as a filmmaker just always lead me somewhere dark and it’s just nice to be able to express that in a healthy way through my writing and my directing. I also think horror is fun, so I think it allows you to take that sort of dark feeling and those dark anxieties and do something fun and constructive with it. So, that’s what I enjoy most about it.
DC: Can you tell me what you’re working on next?
FS: I’m debating and going back and forth between two stories I’m starting to develop, but the one I think I’m leaning towards is about two young adult women who are sort of dabbling in witchcraft, and they’re basically looking to conjure an entity in the name of revenge for something that happened. As you may guess, things go horribly wrong once the entity arrives and that’s where I’m at. It’s very early in the development stage, so if six months from now you hear I’m working on something else, don’t call me a liar [laughs], but that’s what I’m developing now.
DC: I really appreciate you taking time to talk with me today for Dread Central!
FS: Thank you so much! I’m so happy to talk to Dread Central and I really appreciate your kind words about the film. It’s so great to hear that people that love horror and know horror are enjoying the movie.
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