Short Film News…

So, I’ve been talking about making a short film for sometime, and been looking into it for a while. Its actually happening now, or at least the process towards it being produced is underway, which is very exciting news indeed. The film will be called The Wedding at Otranto, and its based on the novel The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, first published in 1794. For anyone who has read the novel, the film is set the day before the actual story commences, and charts the build up to the fateful wedding which begins the book proper. Anyone who hasn’t, its definitely worth a read - its one of my favourite books, and is generally regarded as the first ever work of gothic fiction, so lots of dark labyrinths, lots of supernatural elements, ghosts, hauntings, portends etc, there is more information on it here. As for the short film, I didn’t especially want to reproduce the story in the novel, but because the plot begins with a fairly shocking event (I won’t ruin it for anyone intending to read this, but something pretty…big happens within the first few pages) so it seemed like a good idea to explore the build up to this, as plenty has obviously been happening beforehand, although the back story is not really explored, and nor is the life of Conrad, who is essential to the plot, but isn’t really given much time. Conrad was in fact half of the reason for writing the play - his story is so short lived but so interesting that I felt like it needed developing further, and the only way to really do this was to go backwards. The nature of the story itself, the gothic genre, really draws me towards it, too. Anyone who has read any of my books will know that the gothic is something which I really love, and something which I have explored at great length. Many of my favourite films incorporate the gothic too - Sleepy Hollow for example is possibly my favourite of all time. 

Anyway - I’m very excited for this. Read through, casting and the search for good places to film that are suitably shadowy/old looking are next. More news soon.