Filmmaker debuts horror flick online
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.