Teacups & Couture A Fashion Blog by Roxanna Bina
Guest writer Emmanuel Itier interviews Director Pamela Moriarity and Actress/producer Kristen Ann Ferraro and Actor/writer/producer Eric Wolf of the feature film A DEADLY LEGEND.
What attracted you to this film?
Pamela: When A DEADLY LEGEND was first presented to me, I was immediately attracted to the script.
The sense of family institution spoke to me most as did the elements of love, loss, and secrets. The family themes are familiar territory to any storyteller and the story I wanted to highlight was that of loyalty and the protective nature of a close family. No matter how dreadful, or what outside influences threatened them; they would fight for each other.
I was also captivated by the story after speaking to [executive producer] Eric Wolf for the first time. Three days later, I had drawn up a visual design of 26 scenes in painstaking detail. I immediately felt excited about this project. The story opened up as I started working on it and could tell the script was right in my creative wheelhouse. The visuals came to me easily!
Eric: In fact it came from doing a short film which gathered lots of positive feedbacks and people told us we should do a feature. Actually we wanted to pay homage to the scary horror movies of the past. We also wanted a strong female character and not just a scream queen. We wanted a strong development of the storyline with solid character and not just rely on blood and guts. At the end we wanted to make a supernatural thriller.
How did you prepare for it and what challenges did you face?
Pamela: I was first informed of what the budget was and who would be working on this, many of whom I hadn’t previously worked with. I wouldn’t consider myself as one who has more experiences than others, but we all were not novices. Also, I’ve learned a lot from wearing many hats in this industry having had many years of working on set with many first-time filmmakers. Something that worked tremendously for me was being patient, open to ideas that were contributed and listening to all viewpoints for collaborations and compromises whilst being flexible with budget and time. We understand that these characteristics are crucial in low-budget film productions.
Kristen: For sure the challenge was to be first time producers and acting as the same time in the film. This was a very large cast and crew so it was a big challenge with myself to wear both hats: lead actress and producer. I constantly worry about everyone happiness on the set, therefore I was quite busy at any given moment of the shooting. I learned the hard way to let some of that go. But overall everything went great and there were no major issues to complete our picture.
Eric: It helped that we had a great cast and a great crew of very professional and dedicated individuals. Needless to say that we were super lucky to be able to complete principal photography before the beginning of the pandemic. This doesn’t mean that post production wasn’t slightly challenging with this “new normal” but overall we were able to complete this picture without too many limitations considering the pandemic situation. And I can admit we are very proud of what we achieved.
What was the trickiest scene to film and why?
Pamela: I designed most scenes and the visuals were pretty tricky for the budget, time, equipment and the capacity we had. In terms of visual telling, I designed 7 scenes to have very specific camera movements, choreography, and blocking. There were very controlled (that was the idea anyway), but I also knew those were high aims. As this was a low budget film, we had limited resources at hand and had to come up with the solutions to make things work. I knew that we couldn’t have it all, but could come up with the next best strategy to make the story work along with the visual designs, the time and budget that we had. The scene that a character carries a dead body to the house was one of the most emotional scenes. We had a great cast and I was very pleased with all of the performances.
Eric: Certainly the raft scene was the trickiest to film! Anytime you want to shoot in water it’s a major challenge! It was very complicated to shoot that scene with the proper logistic and the necessary camera angles.
Kristen: And since I’m in that scene I can confirm that we didn’t film it in a pool, which is what you would do with the bigger budget and schedule. Sometimes it would be done with a green screen. But not here! This was film on a real lake and a real raft. We were surrounded by divers and various stunts coordinators and this was quite daunting. I believe it came out so cool!
What is this film about for you? What are the themes explored?
Pamela: As I mentioned earlier, the film for me is about family. In regards to the themes, we explored all the fun stuff, supernatural themes, camera tricks and what not. It was fun to try new techniques every day from the prep month to the last day of principal photography.
Eric: It’s really about the bond between family and friends and how that overcomes the adversity they all are facing.
Kristen: For me a major theme of this film is about taping in your inner strength and understanding the power that you have over negativity and challenges. And some of our characters are able to survive because they are able to do that.
Eric: In the end we wanted to have a good fun movie for the audience to watch!
