Since mid-2011 filmmaking outfit Bloody Cuts have been diligently building towards an anthology of 13 horror shorts "For the love and tradition of UK horror". Whilst the previous four instalments have been pretty standard fare -- covering the lone late night worker, the baby sitter on the phone, a sexual predator turned prey and of course a zombie attack -- their latest entry, Suckablood is an impressive fairytale horror which will cure even the most ardent of thumb suckers instantly:
Not members of the Bloody Cuts "Franklin Family" team, writer/director partners Ben Tillett and Jake Cuddihy of Half Baked Films pitched their gothic fairytale script and earned their place helming the fifth film of the compendium project:
We met Ben Kent and Ben Franklin at an independent networking event and recognised each other from our entries in the 2011 SciFi London 48hr film competition. They mentioned they were putting together an anthology of horror films, and that they would consider collaborating if they liked what we had to offer.
We went away and came back with a script, got our foot in the Bloody Cuts door, and like a rabid cross between door-to-door evangelists and commission-based salesmen, we weren’t leaving until they’d read it. Thankfully, they said they liked what we wanted to do.
The extensive making of video below shows the amount of work across departments that went into the project, with Millennium FX creating impressively creepy prosthetics make up for both Suckablood and the equally terrifying step mother character.
Video is no longer available: vimeo.com/46298273
You can also compare the finished film to this After Effects built pre-production storyboard animatic:
Not only has Suckablood seen a boost in Bloody Cuts' production values (a Stephen Fry donation helping to boost the short's budget), it has also resulted in increased exposure for the project with the film selected as a Vimeo Staff Pick, resulting in 12K+ views over 48 hours and its 25.2K views on the site to date being an eight fold increase on the total Vimeo views of the previous four films combined. We'll have to wait to see if Bloody Cuts continue to build their audience with episode 6, but if they manage to maintain this level of quality over the next eight shorts it should make for terrifyingly delightful viewing.
Should web series be a continuation of a story or is a genre alone enough to bind episodes together and build a loyal audience? Is this something you've done with your own projects?
Link: Bloody Cuts
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8 Comments
Great work @bloodycutsfilms!
July 28, 2012 at 10:17AM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
Thank you so much for covering us! Being picked up by Vimeo was a great start to the week, and this is very much the icing on the cake. As a regular reader of this site there's an awful lot of filmmaking and marketing methodology that I've been able to utilise in the development of this series, so it feels like this has very much come full circle in many ways.
One thing of note; you're right that the video has massively increased our viewership on Vimeo, but overall our films have picked up way over 100k views via YouTube. Although Vimeo was always our preference as filmmakers, we'd found it much more difficult to crack due to it being less transparent to a general audience.
July 28, 2012 at 3:36PM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
My pleasure, I really enjoyed the creepiness of Suckablood. Apologies for the Vimeocentric views focus, spending so much time on that platform I sometimes forget that to the majority of the web 'online video' = YouTube. Good to see you're doing well over there too.
July 29, 2012 at 2:23PM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
Great work Ben! Loved your SciFi entry and this one is even better. It actually reminds me of early Tim Burton... great little story, idea... where did it come from?
July 31, 2012 at 6:47AM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
Hi Dominic, glad you liked it, thanks for watching.
We were inspired by the stories of Stuwwelpeter, but there's also elements of traditional folk takes. In many ways I think you could argue there's a bit of Tim Burton in there, the evil Stepmother look is also quite Disney too.
Aside from that our only references were the animatics which totally brought it to life. When we'd made those, we kind of realised we were onto a winner.
I see you're at The Mill; fancy throwing some awesome CGI our way? ;-)
August 1, 2012 at 12:41PM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
I didn't like it: I LOVED it! A truly delightful short, with a narrative track that's a great tip-0-the-hat to Edward Gorey. You have to admire it for the sheer brute-force CRAFTSMANSHIP that oozes from every frame and on every level.
THAT said, it's "…have been pretty standard FARE," (as in, "bill of fare") not "…have been pretty standard fair," (as in, "fair-to-middling," or "county fair," or "fair skies and warm weather") as above. Craftsmanship in ALL things, guys, and that includes proofreading articles critiquing the project. I may be coming across as a bit of a grammar nazi (it'd be vocabulary nazi, really, in this case) but I don't think Suckablood would have been nearly as good if every crew member paid as much attention to detail as the introductory text in this article. Sorry, but I teach the stuff, and you'd get -5 marks for a gaffe like that.
August 2, 2012 at 10:58PM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
Simply pointing out the mistake would certainly suffice. "Should be fare, not fair, in the first paragraph." While we strive for excellence as much as possible, mistakes happen. Proofreading alone (as I have found on more than one occasion) will not necessarily uncover incorrect usage if all words are spelled correctly.
While both speed and accuracy are important in web writing, time is not a luxury for any of the writers at NoFilmSchool. We're all working part-time (often between jobs) to deliver these posts, so mistakes come with the territory. Even though we do appreciate the criticism (as the writers are here to learn as much as the readers), we're all more than competent with the English language, so there's a good chance it's simply a typographical error.
August 3, 2012 at 2:50AM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM
Great to hear you loved "Suckablood" Arthur, and appreciated all the work we put into it. It was a pleasure to make and its a great feeling to have your worked so well reviewed. Thank you!
August 4, 2012 at 4:20PM, Edited September 4, 7:54AM