First-person horror: ‘Brew House’ puts audience in the action
’When five urban explorers enter an abandoned brewery to film the latest episode of their hit web series; they disturb the final resting place of a group of artists that once called it home. Paranoia and mistrust spreads among the group as these malevolent spirits begin to play a wicked game of cat and mouse. What was once an evening of fun has become a night of unrelenting terror for these explorers. Their friendship and loyalty is tested as they fight to escape and survive the night inside the Brew House.'
“Brew House,” a horror film set in Pittsburgh and currently in post production, will take first-person accounts of horror, to a whole new level of scary using cutting edge technology to bring home the fear.
“‘Brew House’ is what’s called, in the subgenre of horror, found footage,” explains producer Emily Mathason. “So if something goes wrong and all the people die or are missing and they find the film or video footage, which is kind of like ‘Blair Witch Project’ they use the footage and that tells the story, so it’s called found footage.”
Mathason, a Greene County native and co-owner of EMRO Films, is one of the faces behind “Brew House,” a horror movie filmed in a partially vacant old brewery on the South Side, using personal action cameras. It’s a revolutionary concept in an industry that started the ‘as seen through the eyes of narrative’ with the success of ‘Blair Witch,’ which later fostered the huge horror franchise ‘Paranormal Activity’ and cult favorite “As Above So Below.”
“What’s different with ours is there are no stationary shots. So not even an establishing shot on a regular big movie camera. Everything is point of view coming from action sports cameras. They shoot in 4K, which is super high definition,” said Mathason.
A remarkable feat.
“No one has ever done it in that way and the only way we were going to be able to do it, if we wanted to be competitive in the market, was to do it in high resolution,” she said.
The directors, five leading actors and nine member crew are ready for their role in cinematography.
“It’s pretty exciting because we are really innovating the industry. Also, we had to develop our own platforms to have monitors because on a normal movie set there’s a camera and there’s what’s called ‘video village’ where the director is sitting and watching everything on a big monitor,” said Mathason. “We didn’t have that. We had two iPhones, three iPads on a platform that we arranged that our director and I was assistant directing, on a live feed that we had to watch all five cameras from all five actors all at once. Now not that all five actors are in every scene but for a lot of scenes there’s five cameras and five monitors we are watching.”
Mathason explains, in post production they will be able to watch all five shots of the same scene and decide what shot they want.
“Some shots are smaller, some are bigger but we want to make sure we’re getting all the shots. We won’t use every shot so its just about having a lot of options,” said Mathason.
The shots that Mathason discusses, will give the viewer a greater sense of being in the moment and in the center of character’s danger according to an actress in the film.
“With the actors wearing the cameras, a forced first-person perspective means the audience will be put directly into the shoes of the characters; if they don’t get away, neither can the audience. The film also plays on modern themes of internet fame and the trappings of technology, speaking exclusively to an audience that grew up with YouTube,” Jess Paul, who plays Megan, wrote in an article for indiewire.com in February.
Paul is joined in the cast by fellow Pittsburgh actors, Jordan Streussnig, Greg Richards, Johnathon L. Jackson and Katie Schurman, a friend of Mathason and the reason she got involved in the project.
“I heard Katie promoting the Kickstarter campaign on Star 100.7 for ‘Brew House’ I immediately looked up the director, John Sabatine,” said Mathason.
The crowd sourcing Kickstarter campaign, started by Sabatine, a Point Park grad, raised more than $4,800, which Mathason knew would be a good start.
“The money they raised online I knew that would get them somewhere, but I got in touch because I knew I would be a good fit for this.”
Producers are responsible for developing additional funding as well other business related functions, which Mathason admits directors would rather not deal with.
“It’s not their forte. They like the creative and while I like the creative, I’m blessed with left and right brain, I came on board to negotiate day rates with the crew and royalties, and make sure there was food and the actors were taken care of and I was put in charge of the budget as well,” she said.
Mathason was then asked by directors Sabatine and Vince Yanni to assistant direct the cutting edge horror film.
The setting for “Brew House” provided its only scary backdrop according to Paul.
“Before the first action slug was typed, historical, forgotten relics in the Pittsburgh area were scouted and chosen for the film, allowing us to write to our locations. The actual leftover artifacts and decaying paint jobs far exceeded extravagant and expensive art production and allowed the story and characters to become grounded in local culture. Dead birds, vintage cigarette poster-ads and dried out brew tanks: all-inclusive,” described Paul.
The film’s characters grab inspiration from real-life web series’ urban explorers and build off Pittsburgh’s own industrial history, using decades-old artifacts and abandoned rooms, to depict a story of forgotten factory workers and once-residing artists and photographers.
The concept alone was enough to frighten and yet entice Mathason
“I’m not even a big horror fan and I’m scared easily but I knew by default that because this was horror and because we were doing something different that this instantly is going to have people wanting to see it.”
No final release date is set for the film but it is expected to be out, in theaters, film festivals or direct to DVD, around Halloween.