Halloweenies was created by Nate Strobl (‘18), Sydney Kaplan (‘18), Tristan Polania (‘17), and Spencer Boucher (‘17). Strobl was the director and he also wrote the script. Not only did Strobl write and direct the film, he also starred in it. Boucher was Strobl’s co-director as well as the one who filmed it. Kaplan and Polania starred in the film.

“My character was a silly, fun character to play. I wanted to base the character I played after the stereotypical scaredy cat you tend to see in many horror films. In fact every character resembles some kind of horror film cliché; it’s a sort of homage to scary movies,” Strobl said.

Strobl asked Kaplan to be the star of the film; he felt as if she was the one who was capable of portraying the character of Hannah the way he wanted her to be.

“My character was Hannah. She is the good friend of the two other characters. The story is about how she’s filming for her ghost documentary and made her two other friends go with her,” Kaplan said.

Polania was supporting character, Brandon. His character was helping Kaplan’s character throughout the film.

“The part I played in the film was Brandon. My character was basically just helping Sydney’s character out with her project and helping her out with the prank on Nate’s character,” Polina said.

Boucher was asked by Strobl to film and co-direct the short film.

“I was in charge of the storyboard and the filming on set,” Boucher explained. “Nate had given me a few photos of the location but I didn’t scout it out beforehand. I knew it had to be filmed at night so I went ahead and bought a nice LED light and brushed up on some filming-at-night tutorials. The night of the shoot we met at Nate’s house and everyone showed up, and then we packed everything into my car and left for the abandoned barn.”

There was a lot of work that went into making Halloweenies. A script, location, videographer, a cast, and much more were needed to create the film.

“[The process] started out with script that I wrote in about three days. Then, I sent the script to my co-director, Spencer Boucher, who made a storyboard, which is when you annotate every line of dialogue with a picture to use for reference while we are filming. Then I casted two of my friends, Sydney Kaplan and Tristan Polania. Then we went to set and filmed it in a day. Then Spencer edited it for about two days after that and then we were good to go,” Strobl said.

The film was set in an abandoned barn in the woods. They decided to film at night to depict an eerie, haunting feeling although the darkness made this difficult.

“I had no idea if the car could handle the sketchy dirt road that the barn was on. So we ended up driving about 50 feet, and I decided that we just needed to park. So we parked the car, grabbed all the gear, and set off into the darkness in an attempt to find the barn. Fifteen minutes later, we finally found it, and it was probably the creepiest thing ever; it creaked in the wind and because we were in the middle of nowhere at night,” Boucher said.

Creating Halloweenies had its challenges because they had to find a time in which everyone was available and make sure they could use the set. There were also time constraints for creating this film.

“[The hardest part was] coordinating everything, to be honest. Figuring out logistics like when everybody could get here, ‘can we have this set available’, and ‘when are we going to have the editing done’. That was fairly tricky,” Strobl said.

The hard work paid off, though. Strobl sent the video to the Savage Tech Film Festival in Columbus, Ohio; the film received commendation in the festival.

Overall, Halloweenies was a success and everyone who participated had a great time making it.

“I only have everyone on the film to thank for the great experience. They’re all very talented people and made it special to be working on that film,” Kaplan said.