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Filmmaker debuts horror flick online

by Matt Baldwin / Whitefish Pilot
| June 22, 2011 10:49 AM

BadFritter Films latest project is 15

minutes long and features only two words of dialogue. Producer Adam

Pitman, of Whitefish, says that many who tune in to watch the

online premiere this Sunday will have a lot of questions.

“And those questions won’t get

answered,” Pitman told the Pilot.

He admits the horror short “Cliff Lake”

— shot entirely at Cliff Lake near Tally Lake — is a convoluted and

artistic experiment, and “some people won’t like it.” But the home

grown film company is betting that it will please the horror

connoisseurs who follow the crew and possibly lead to a bigger TV

or online series.

The film company known for producing

the award-winning flicks “Roulette” and “Paper Dolls” filmed “Cliff

Lake” last summer. Since then, the crew of Pitman, director Adam

Stilwell and producer David Blair went their separate ways in

search of steady work.

With Pitman in Whitefish, Blair in

Arizona and Stilwell in Los Angeles, the trio edited and wrapped up

the short. They decided the best way to release the film was via

the Internet.

“The Internet has really intrigued us

as an outlet for our films,” Pitman said. “That’s where everything

is heading. Movies and TV will all be Internet driven within 10

years.”

The web release of the short, he said,

is basically an exercise in marketing, too. Instead of only showing

the move at film festivals or through admission to theaters, they

are putting it online where anyone can see it.

“People don’t see our movies enough,”

Pitman said. “We said, ‘lets get this one out for free.’”

BadFritter’s hope is that someone

watches “Cliff Lake” and approaches them about starting a pilot TV

show.

“Getting investors is always our hope

from one of these,” Pitman said. “But we always want to get the fan

base excited, too. We consider it a success whenever someone sees

our work and thanks us for bringing the horror back to horror

movies.”

“Cliff Lake” — while a standalone

project — is loosely part of a zombie-apocalypse TV series

BadFritter has been working on called “The Madness.” They

originally hoped to pitch the series to HBO or Showtime.

“We wrote the first season and had all

the characters,” Pitman said. “We put a year into the TV show. Then

we moved away and the momentum stopped.”

Then American Movie Classic’s “The

Walking Dead” came out, which is based on the same

zombie-apocalypse theme. Pitman said the hit show’s success didn’t

discourage their hopes for “The Madness”, but rather, it encouraged

them.

“We realize we were on to something,”

he said. “For some people, it would have taken the wind out of

their sails. But it is inspiring for us. “The Madness” is original

and we’re excited again.”

They’ve taken that excitement and

focused it on the possibility of using the Internet to start a

BadFritter TV channel or producing a webisode series.

“We started shifting from the idea of

going through studios to self distribution,” Pitman said.

Cliff Lake is part of “The Madness” in

that it’s a slice of what’s going on while everything else is

falling apart in an apocalypse.

Pitman warns that “Cliff Lake” is for

adults only and that it’s “experimental.”

“We wanted to go out in the woods with

a video camera and a loose script and see what happened,” he

said.

Stilwell, Pitman and Life Noel are the

three actors in the film.

The online premiere happens June 26 at

8 p.m. Mountain Standard Time at www.clifflakemovie.com. The site

currently has a trailer for the movie with information about

BadFritters and the fundraising efforts on www.kickstarter.com.