BY TREVOR NICHOLS
“How do we take the most beautiful thing you could see, and make her evil?”
Max Speed remembers asking himself before putting together the movie trailer that brought him international recognition.
He did it with help from local makeup company, Phantom FX. With dark makeup, they transformed 11-year-old Erica Hale into a frightening creature, gave her a knife and soaked it in fake blood.
The terrifying two-minute clip was shot in a day at Blair House Museum in Kentville. No script, no rehearsal and no budget. The team worked off of some music that Speed had “playing in his head,” and a vague idea of a little girl playing in a field.
Beautiful Girl is the result; the creepy movie trailer, sitting in the top spot of the people's choice awards at the International Movie Trailer Festival.
The festival - an online community for filmmakers around the world- awards prizes for movie trailers contestants have shot or hope to shoot.
It is partnered with Openfilm - a website dedicated to promoting independent films - where Beautiful
Girl was just featured as an editor's pick, “right next to Robert Duvall's face.”
Speed says seeing their small production sharing space with Hollywood stars was unbelievable: “I went from excited to humbled immediately.”
He had no idea how much attention the project would get when he started, he says. In fact, he didn't even know the International Movie Trailer Festival existed.
When the project received good feedback, Speed went looking for some kind of contest he could enter.“When we entered it into the festival we had no idea it was open to the whole world,” he laughs.
Now people from as far away as New Zealand are voting for Beautiful Girl and the trailer has a healthy lead over the big-studio production in second place. Speed has also been contacted by the festival and told the trailer is being considered for the top judges prize.
Aaron Peerless of Phantom FX worked with Speed on the trailer. He remembers the complete shock when they found out they had reached first place.
He says the pair were on the phone, unable to say anything to one another.“You could basically hear the drool running down his chin,” Peerless chuckles.
With the success of Beautiful Girl, Speed and the gang hope to take what was originally a test-project and turn it into a full-length film.
“Before we didn't even know we were going to make a movie,” Speed says, “but the trailer was a testament to what we can accomplish.”
Full-length enthusiasm
When he talks about the film, Speed practically sweats enthusiasm. At the crew's July 23 meeting he is often out of his seat giving full-body demonstrations of shooting techniques.
The Phantom FX crew is right with him, squirming with delight as they talk about the truly disturbing elements they plan to put in the film.
They are more like a family than business partners, Speed says. He says that he values the input of every person who works with him. Little pieces of personal creativity all come together to create something unique.
“It ends up showing in the trailer that it's not just one person,” he says.
Peerless says that for as long as he has been doing makeup, he has never worked with someone like Speed. Makeup artists rarely get much dialogue with directors, he says, and have limited creative input. With Speed, however, they are creative equals. “The coolest thing about Max is that he wants our input.”
“The policy I have is zero ego, full creativity, and no idea is shot down, only written down,” Speed says.
When he put together the final cut of the trailer, his biggest fear was letting down the people he worked with and the same is true, Speed says, of the people who vote for the trailer to keep it at number one. He says he would be disappointed if they make a film that doesn’t live up to people's expectations.
Speed wants people who voted for the trailer feel like they are part of the whole production and \plans to list “the fans” as executive producers in the credits. An executive producer is someone who makes a film happen, he points out, and Beautiful Girl would not have happened without fan support.
“I owe it to them, because anyone who votes helps to make that film.”
The International Movie Trailer Festival is ongoing and voting is still open. To check out Beautiful Girl and cast a vote visit www.maxspeed.ca
