|

Dead Air

click here to view the film

Well folks the wait is over, after nearly two years of toil and trouble we bring you the final episode of 'Season of the Witch series one'.
Originally planned to be 'Charlie', Tristan Casey's look at loss, love and lunatics! episode four has finally been realized as 'Dead Air' a ten minute look into the lives of a radio DJ (George Bartholomew) and his caller (Thomas Money). Everything seems normal until the weirdness of April Fools day starts to surround them and their lives cross paths in ways they could never imagine!

Based on a chilling concept by George Batholomew way back in November 2005 'Dead Air' has grown, changed and bloomed since then; the original concept coming from the fear that if during George's real life Hospital Radio show, he were to die would anyone actually believe what they were hearing and in turn, attempt to save his life? Thus writer and director Wesley Skelly's imagination was charged!

In his original 30 page script (available here) he set out the story of an old hospital radio station that had been used during WWII to house bomb victims and a ghostly apparition that had killed a DJ back in the Seventies, a psychics daughter, another younger DJ, thought to be pulling a prank on his older counterpart, and the madness that all these these possibilities sent the hapless DJ into, causing him to eventually flee the station only to be accidentally run over. Needless to say at 30 min the script had too much going on in it and so it was put to rest while the bugs on Charlie were being worked out.

Then in May, Wesley happened upon Total Film magazines, How To Make a Movie Guide and noticed that there was a competition being held and recognition to be had, so it was back to square one to look for a project for him and long time friend and colleague Tristan Casey to work on.
Seeing that it could be greatly simplified and knowing that Total Films contest rules would not only restrain their use of violence and FX work, meant the film could be done cheap and quick and needing for once to meet a deadline.

So Dead Air was rewritten to a tight 10 mins that would play out in 'real' time and show two sides of the story, The Listeners and The DJ's both of whom would meet their demise at the hands of the Radio Apparition, now complete with Gas Mask inspired in part by the WWII subplot of the old script and also the obvious coolness factor.

Filmed in no less the two days amounting to roughly 10 hours work Dead Air spent much of June in the can until Tristan's impending trip to Singapore lead to the duo getting to work fast on the editing, which would take them nearly all of July. That coupled with the amount of sound editing required to make the scenes translate the atmosphere of a radio station and allow the audience to understand the nature of the radio creature with no back story has made this the most complex Wes Casey film yet and marks the first to be edited on Adobe Premiere rather the Windows Movie Maker.

With any luck we will at least be featured on Total Films DVD later this year and perhaps receive and award. Although it would be a marvelous achievement to win the grand prize. Either way the team enjoyed making the film and we hope you enjoy watching it. It must be noted the at present the uploaded video is not in a high resolution and better copy will be online shortly.