Life is tough for us romantics. Finding love often feels like it’s always in the wrong places, but at least (I expect) you can at least say it’s not at a graveyard, and you’re not the resident gravedigger with particularly poor hygiene and people skills. If this description aptly describes your situation, however, you can find solace and community in the eloquently absurdist Dead Lover.
Dead Lover follows the aforementioned lovelorn Gravedigger (Grace Glowicki, also the director, co-writer, and producer), on the hunt for her lover within the confines of gravedigging and socializing in her tight-knit community of gossip queens and passing mourners burying their loved ones in her humble graveyard. Just when love seems eternally out of reach for our cockneyed heroine, an oddball Lover (Ben Petrie, also co-writer and producer) catches her eye, and his eye her’s. The rest? Well, that’s history, folks.
What transpires next is a slapstick, horror-infused comedy of witchcraft, reanimation via finger, and revenge. Dead Lover relishes in a tone-perfect absurdity that builds and never lets up until its totally bonkers closing moments. In its plot and tone alone Dead Lover is unique, but what also sets it apart is its practical black box theater aesthetic and recycling four-person ensemble cast (the players: Glowicki, Petrie, Lowen Morrow, and Leah Doz). In many ways, Dead Lover is a heightened play made for the stage, however, using the medium of film to elevate the story in perfectly weird and elevated ways. It’s a trip.
I absolutely loved Dead Lover and was lucky enough to speak with the ensemble cast along with editor Lev Lewis and practical effects artist Michael Harmon on how they brought this beautiful, hilarious monster to life. Check out our conversation below for all the ins and outs of pulling it off.
Editor’s note: The following interview is edited for length and clarity.
NFS Roundtable With the Cast and Crew of ‘Dead Lover’
No Film School: What was the original genesis of the unique, black box style of Dead Lover? Are there any direct influences?
Grace Glowicki: I wanted to make a movie that was inspired by the aesthetics of low-budget black box theatre. I always feel visually satiated when I watch a minimalistic play—so I thought I could honor this in film form. Then in my research, I came across Kenneth Anger films which gave me lots of hope. They proved that actors, lights, and a few props were enough.
NFS: What’s your background as an ensemble? Did you plan for the four of you to play each character from the get-go?
Ben Petrie: It was a unique casting process. Grace cast the four actors before assigning any of us particular roles. Rehearsal was a carousel, wherein we all played each of the characters at different points, and all got both an interior and external view at what these characters might look like. Over time, we all naturally gravitated to particular characters that represented some element in our psychology that yearned for expression. It was a very natural and egalitarian process.
Lowen Morrow: The casting choices changed through the development and rehearsal process, but ultimately Grace put the ensemble together. I believe she was always going to be the Gravedigger, but she actually reached out and asked what characters we wanted to play so we had some say as actors.
Leah Doz: We all play several parts, with one main supporting role being our throughline role. When I read an earlier draft of Grace’s script, I pitched the role I wanted to play and why. She was so responsive, and it worked out. I was the last actor to join the film, but they were developing the roles for a long time before that without knowing who would play who.
NFS: What techniques did you use to pull off action shots and, say, shots at “sea”?
Ben Petrie: The shots at sea were some of the most novel and hilarious to shoot. For the scene where Gravedigger and Lover are “swimming in the ocean”, we had a kiddie pool on the studio floor, lined with black duvetyne and filled with a foot or so of water, and Grace and I just gently splashed around in there. That scene was all shot without sound, so we had music playing in the studio—I want to say it was Al Green—and the crew was standing around us giggling at this semi-erotic display happening in a rubber kiddie pool on the studio floor.
The scene where Lover drowns at sea is a perfect example of the whole team coming together to collaborate on the illusion of the film. Our production designer, Becca Morrin, and her team had constructed the facade of a large ship, with a deck and railing for Lover to hang on to. For the lightning storm, DP Rhayne Vermette and her camera team used all in-camera practical effects—pouring droplets of water immediately in front of the lens, using a cookie sheet with holes punched into it. The lightning was all done practically as well, using flashes of light behind a lightning-bolt stencil. Then, it was just a matter of me thrashing around on the ship, hamming it up, while Grace called out directions over the whirr of an industrial fan standing in for torrential winds.
– YouTube
NFS: Amazing. It plays great. Would you say “absurdist dark comedy” is your genre of choice?
Grace Glowicki: Definitely! Things that are absurd feel deliciously rebellious to me. And I can’t imagine making a comedy without darkness—the darkness makes it all so much funnier.
Lowen Morrow: It certainly was the right choice for this film. I love playing with all sorts of genres, but getting to go dark and goofy for this one was a wild and sticky good time.
Leah Doz: I don’t have a genre preference as an actor. I’ll do anything if I find it inspiring. But I love absurdist filmmaking when it’s based in narrative, and I’m drawn to dark comedy as both a creator and audience member. This particular genre is so refreshing as an actor because you can’t really make a wrong choice so long as you’re making it 100% and willing to look insane and make a fool of yourself. For me, it was an invitation to fly my freak flag in ways usually uninvited in other spaces that are too cool for school.
Lev Lewis: It is not. I have nothing against it, but also don’t hold it in any particularly high regard. I do like cool projects and good directors though, and that’s why I wanted to work with Grace on this guy.
Michael Harmon: I would describe the genre as fantasy, and the comedy as slapstick. Yes, I am partial to fantasy.
NFS: How did you pull off the slapstick practical effects (particularly the innovative finger stuff)?
Michael Harmon: I’m a designer with film experience, but this is the first time I’ve worked with these kinds of effects. I had help from the wonderful and experienced Samantha Breault (makeup department head), who guided me through the process of designing and building the fingers. The long finger had a steel core, with a tiny steel cable running along it which could pull down the tip of the finger, this is a common machine in movie effects called a “tentacle”. I also used the website Stan Winston School, which I can recommend for beginners.
NFS: Considering the style, were there any challenges in post you did foresee?
Lev Lewis: There weren’t any visual effects elements I was aware of and I didn’t even really know the style until I saw the first day of dailies. In post, I’m typically more focused on story issues than technical ones—though those definitely come up as well. For Dead Lover, the biggest technical issue I faced initially was there was no script supervisor, they slated fairly inconsistently/incorrectly—I say that with love, and they were shooting almost entirely on a black background so distinguishing one scene from the next was challenging. But in the end, it mattered not at all—everything got to where it needed to be, and some things to probably where they shouldn’t have—hopefully always for the better.
NFS: What was your process for nailing such a clean comedic tone? Was there any improv?
Ben Petrie: A lot of improvisation was thrown into the cauldron in which this strange brew cooked over the course of its years of development.
The initial development process was one of freewheeling, nearly shapeless, open conversations in which ideas were openly invited by Grace, on the basis that the subconscious was at the wheel. I would also say there was an improvisational element to the screenwriting phase—she and I would take turns doing a “downhill ski” of a scene, which is basically just a draft of a scene wherein you just keep going, don’t look back, and again, let your subconscious drive the ship. The rehearsal phase also had a lot of improv—at every step, Grace invited her collaborators to follow their impulses. But once we reached the shoot, the script was pretty much crystallized, and we stayed faithful to it—we had the limitation of finite 16mm film, after all.
Leah Doz: Grace was clear up front that the performance tone was not naturalistic, that she wanted purposely theatrical, heightened performances that were kind of parodies of themselves.
In the film world, every other department and team gets the benefit of pre-production and communication with each other to build and understand the creator’s vision, except actors who are usually supposed to show up on the day and somehow successfully insert themselves into the project, which I find sabotaging for them and the project. But Grace was adamant to rehearse—especially because she created such a unique world and tone, and we shot on film, so it wasn’t something to ‘figure out on the day’, so we rehearsed a ton. I attribute the success of our cohesion and confidence in playing this unapologetically big style to those rehearsals. I come from theater, so rehearsal makes sense to me and I want to do it for every project. We did tons of improv in rehearsal to solve plot holes, to see how far we could push vulgarity, to find cohesion as an ensemble (especially for the Sailors and Gossips), but that didn’t mean we came to set simply repeating our rehearsal.
We still discovered and rewrote on the day. But we had enough ease as a unit to listen and play off one another and dare to find things in the moment. We were stuck on accents for the Sailors in rehearsal until we fitted them the morning we shot them. And then, all three of us were inspired by the wardrobe and came up with these three distinct voices that morning that we rolled with. We had trust in the process and how much fun we were having. Fun was key as an actor in this project. If it wasn’t fun, it wasn’t working. And that came from how much intuition we were able to build in rehearsal.
Oh, and we got to watch Dailies. Let your actors watch Dailies! They can keep understanding the tone as it emerges and make their work better and better. I guess what I’m saying is, invite actors into the collaborative process like Grace did. It makes for better films.
NFS: Any advice for aspiring absurdist horror-comedy filmmakers?
Grace Glowicki: Work with people who inspire you. Even if they’re not “in film” it will make your movie so much better. And don’t be afraid to use unconventional filmmaking models or whatever you need to do to make the process more fun, because the more fun you’re having, the funnier the movie will be.
Ben Petrie: If you have fun making the film, that’s going to be imprinted onto the celluloid, or onto the sensor, and reflected back into the audience watching it. So work with people you love and who inspire you, trust the hell out of them, and have fun!
Lowen Morrow: Horror and comedy, while different in tone, require the same skill set to be successful and it’s even more true for horror-comedy. It’s about knowing how to build tension and when to release it, and when done right, you’re going to get that scream or laugh or both!
Leah Doz: Don’t try to repeat what’s already been done. See the vision in your head and execute that without backing down. I feel that’s what Grace did and why the film unapologetically maintained its unique vision in its realization; it’s definitely what inspired me. From an acting standpoint, go big or go back to bed; fly freak-flag.
Lev Lewis: Same basic advice for every filmmaker ever: find a way to transmit yourself, your feelings, your desires, your interests into something that some random person who’s never met you will recognize, be compelled by, be interested in. If you can do that then you’ve probably done well.
Michael Harmon: Understand your constraints, be honest about what you will actually produce under those constraints, and to write the project based on that. Dead Lover is a perfect example of this.
Author: Grant Vance
This article comes from No Film School and can be read on the original site.
