Since it began nine years ago, the Buried Alive Film Fest has grown to the point that it is moving to a new location (Fabrefaction Theatre) and features numerous American and world premieres this year. Hisayasu Satō’s Hana Dama: The Origins is coming all the way from Japan (along with its producer and actress), Finland’s Fists of Fire makes it’s animated American debut with director Tomi Malkki in attendance and Atlanta’s own Ebola Entertainment presents the world premiere of Satanic Panic 2: Battle of the Bands. With short films and features constantly in production or post production, Tiltawhirl Pictures’ Dayne Noffke will also be in attendance for the world premiere of Recompense, a short film about a man who offers his soul to his voodoo-practicing cellmate in exchange for his freedom. With the film screening as part of the Scary Animal Monsters from Outer Space program on Nov. 23, Noffke talks to Wrestling with Pop Culture about the inspiration behind the film, as well as the rewards and sacrifices that went into making it.
Where did the inspiration for Recompense come from?
Daniel Collins plays James in “Recompense”.
The inspiration came from the location. I was asked by Film Athens to go on a location tour of Lexington, Ga. This place is ten miles from Athens, but I didn’t even know it existed because it’s not on the way to anywhere. I’d never been there and I thought, “What the hell’s going to be in Lexington? Why do I want to go?” I agreed to go and thought there wasn’t going to be anything. But this place is a gem. There are crazy antebellum mansions with slave quarters out back, there’s a freaking swamp, it’s just crazy. It’s very Andy Griffith, but even more Southern. There’s lots of really neat studs there, the people are really nice, they really want people to come there and make movies. They see it happening in places like Covington and they want to attract people there. But at this point, no one knows about it. So the last place they took us was the jail. I said, “You have a jail?!” It’s a jail that was used through the ’70s and it’s just like the Andy Griffith jailhouse, two cells and a big open room. It was left exactly like it was and they’re ultimately going to turn it into a museum. When I saw it I thought, “Right now this doesn’t cost a lot of money and they want people to shoot here. If I wait until everyone knows about this and starts shooting here, it’s going to cost a lot of money and it won’t be such a cool location because it will have been used 100 times. I’m going to go home tonight and write a script.”
I had been wanting to do something with voodoo forever just from living in New Orleans and being a big fan of Southern Gothic stuff. I thought about who I could get, I thought about what I could do in a jail and I sat down and wrote it that night. We shot the bonfire voodoo scene outside on the coldest November day in forever. Then we shot the jail scene last January. I saw the jail and thought, “Voodoo. Karma. Everything has a price. Freedom. That all goes together.” It really all came from the location.
What were some of the challenges of shooting in such a cramped location during these colder months?
Every film is a challenge. If they weren’t, what would be the point? If you aren’t challenging yourself when you make films, then you’re not learning anything, you’re not reaching and you’re not doing it right. But some films are more physically demanding than others and this one was definitely that. My crew had the best attitude ever. The first night we shot in a friend’s back yard and we had trouble getting electricity outside, setting up the bonfire, keeping the bonfire going so we’d have some continuity, and it was 25 degrees. That night was really weird because our director of photography had gotten the flu. So we had to find someone to shoot it in three hours. We didn’t say a word to anyone because we knew somehow we would make it happen. We found a friend who is a wedding videographer in Athens, Edwin Hammond, who came out and rescued us. He did a really good job. I knew we could play it kind of fast and loose because it’s almost like a dream sequence. So it didn’t have to match up perfectly and we had a little more leeway in shooting that part. But he had about 20 minutes to look through the script and set everything up.
Sean Polite as Guillaume in “Recompense”.
The second day was at the jail. There was supposed to be heat in the jail, but there wasn’t. The cell was really small so my monitor had to sit outside the cell and I would direct through the bars. One technical thing I learned on this shoot is what a pain in the ass glasses are when you have an actor wearing glasses. I wanted Sean [Polite], who plays Guillaume, to wear his glasses because they match the character, and because he really needs them to see. I probably wasted two hours of the day saying, “I can see the corner of the reflector in his glasses. You’ve got to move it to the right a little. Oh, now we don’t have enough light. Now I can see the boom mic in his glass. OK, I can see my hair.” These little technical things are things that you learn as you go. By the time you figure out that’s going on, you’ve committed to it because you’ve got so many scenes of him in glasses. Then we had a few crew members who weren’t able to make it, sot we were working with a shortened crew and that lengthened our day. That day was about 17 hours. Ideally I never want to go over a 12-hour day.
Recompense premieres at the Buried Alive Film Festival on Nov. 23. Will it be screening anywhere else after that?
There’s a chance it’s going to show up in a future anthology, so I’m holding it back for a little bit. I had it online for a while, but I pulled it down. There are a couple of smaller festivals coming up, but I’m trying to hold it back until I figure out if it’s going to make it’s way into this feature or not.