Horror In The Hills

When we lived at the farm, deep in the hills, Rich Cefalo came to visit with his newly found Super 8 camera in tow. He'd just bought it at the Goodwill store in Columbus and it had one roll of film left in it. That afternoon, we decided to shoot a Low Budget Masterpiece. We built the script around our one obvious prop...a menacing looking dog cage. I grabbed a suitcase, a hat, a suit and tie from the old clothes closet on the farm and we got underway. I play a traveling salesman who has lost his way. We shot each scene consecutively with no second takes. It was all or nothing. It was fall and the trees were beautiful. Aaron Freeman plays the hapless pumpkin farmer and his younger brother Daniel was in charge of lighting. Lighting consisted of a cheap mirror we pulled from the medicine cabinet. Daniel held it in his hands and used it to reflect a small patch of ultra-bright sunlight in my face for every shot. You can see the rectangle of light bounce around as young Daniel moved along with Rich as he filmed each scene. These were the days before steady-cam. Behind the main farm house, there was a lonely outbuilding that, for some unknown reason, was filled with sun-bleached animal skulls. This seemed like the perfect spot to devise the demise of our hero. Corn syrup + pumpkin entrails = a gruesome end. In spite of our shortcomings, the 3 minute epic came out well and we watched it once. The cheap projector (also from Goodwill) ripped the start of the films-strip (that's why it skips badly in the beginning). And so this Super 8 masterpiece sat in an old drawer for several years. Until last week.

I brought it to Matt Parker to archive the footage and figure out some way to use it later on. Matt immediately got excited that it would make a great music video for Earwig. He was right. It might not be obvious from the first viewing, but Matt had a LOT of work to do to make this footage into a good music video. There are so many things that might not work out with timing, no convenient edits, finding the right song etc...But in Matt's hands, Horror In The Hills took on a new life. Originally shot by Rich Cefalo, conceived by Rich, Aaron and Lizard and eventually edited and set to music by Matt Parker. This is Earwig's video for 'Parked'. Enjoy.