From the mind behindGrave Encounterscomes writer-directorStuart Ortiz’s next horror mainstay,Strange Harvest. Thisgruesome mockumentaryis only a snapshot of the “bible” Ortiz created, full of lore and mythology, that he says has the potential for his own “cinematic universe,” that could see the dreaded, sadistic Mr. Shiny (Jessee Clarkson), make his return.
In the movie, LAPD detectives Joe Kirby (Peter Zizzo) and Lexi Taylor (Terri Apple) find themselvesspiraling into a nightmarish casewhen a family is found brutally murdered, seemingly at the hands of a 15-year-dormant serial killer known as Mr. Shiny.
The production forStrange Harvestis as fascinating as the film itself, and Collider’sSteve Weintraubwas able to dig into the indie filmmaking process with Ortiz, Clarkson, Zizzo, and Apple at our post-screening Q&A. During the conversation, Ortiz reveals the surprising inspirations behind this twisted tale, and how true crime convinced him to make the leap. Clarkson, who served as production designer as well as the man behind the mask (which he designed), explains how theCoen Brothers’No Country for Old Meninfluenced Mr. Shiny, and the hidden details of that unforgettable mask that are baked in. Zizzo and Apple also share what it was like delivering nearly 80 pages of dialogue for their talking head interviews, the most challenging scenes, and much more.
The Cast of ‘Strange Harvest’ Have Been a Part of Major Pop Culture Media
From Celine Dion’s meteoric rise to Marvel and DC, they’ve done it all.
COLLIDER: I really want to start with, and I mean this so sincerely, congratulations. Making any movie is impossible, and indie movies right now are really impossible. I really want to commend you guys for what you did and for how good it is for not making it with Marvel money.
STUART ORTIZ: Thank you.
Before we get started, to get to know each of you, what is the last movie or TV show that you saw that you’d like to recommend to everyone?
ORTIZ:The Rehearsalon HBO.
PETER ZIZZO: Oh, fuck yeah.
ORTIZ: Season 2.
ZIZZO: Well, that. Anything by Nathan Fielder, I would recommend. I’m going to think of the one I really want to recommend as soon as I walk out of here, butAdolescenceon Netflix is amazing. Hilarious — joking.AdolescenceandApple Cider Vinegarare two miniseries on Netflix that you can’t miss. Really, really good.Dept. Qis really good too. I’ll just stop there.
TERRI APPLE:The Gilded Ageis fantastic. I would take any role on that show. I would be in heaven. And alsoThe Hunting Wives, which I did not want to watch, and it’s freaking phenomenal. It’s so weird. It has all those twists and turns. For a series, it’s damn good. Those are my two.
JESSEE CLARKSON: I have to say, for me, probably, I hate to be the, I guess, standout… Honestly,28 Years Later. I went and saw28 Years Laterin the theater last weekend, and sawFantastic Fourthis past weekend. I love the fact that movies are back in theaters. I feel like there’s a movie-going experience, andStrange Harvestis one of those things, hopefully, that everyone really kind of gets into as well. But28 Years Later. I was really blown away by it. It was a movie that I didn’t expect, and it became a different movie while still staying true to itself. I couldn’t recommend it enough. I mean, outside of our piece, of course.
ZIZZO: Even though I helped kill you, I second that opinion.
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They discuss how they landed on the variety of infected in the movie, trying something different with the third act, and how their trilogy connects.
Peter, something that a lot of people might not realize is that you’re a composer. You do a lot of stuff besides acting. I believe you actually worked with Celine Dion in the ‘90s. You did the music onWinx Club.
ZIZZO: [Laughs] I did lot of Nickelodeon, girl-centric, pop music, which, to look at me, is probably the first thing you’d assume.
ORTIZ: I know it was for me.
ZIZZO: That’s how we met.
You have such an interesting career prior to acting. Did you always know that you wanted to act?
ZIZZO: So it was both for me. In college and high school, I was like the guy that was in a band, but also was in the plays. Just going into the world, music I knew was what I wanted to do, but I also really want to do acting. I just didn’t want to be a waiter for 20 years, which is what I was afraid I would be. It was such a specific thing. You either get a part, or you don’t get a part. With music, I thought there were all these roads in, and so I ended up being really into the songwriting and production world.
So, in the ‘90s is where things started to happen. Celine Dion, I was very fortunate to be a part of her sort of ascension, which is the perfect word to use at aStrange HarvestQ&A. It was her, J-Lo. I’m totally blanking, but a lot of different artists. Avril Lavigne, Vanessa Carlton. Then I did a lot of Nickelodeon kids’ music. I wrote the theme song to the version ofBlue’s Cluesthat’s on now. That theme song is me. I did a lot of stuff with them, and still, occasionally.
Then, about three and a half years ago, two of my friends, who created a show calledBillionson Showtime, just put me in an episode that needed music, also, for the scene. So they’re like, “you’re able to be this billionaire in a dad band onBillions.” Then, when we were on set filming, something happened, and I just thought, “There’s no going back. I’ve got to get back to this.” And it just sort of took over. It’s just been my absolute passion for the past, like, three years now. Music is still… I’m doing something right now. When I get home tonight, I’ve got to actually do a music thing and an audition, so it’s going to be a long night.
Jessee, first of all, you were the production designer on this movie, besides also being Mr. Shiny.
CLARKSON: That is correct.
But what I found fascinating was that you were the mold maker onIron Manand Zack Snyder’sWatchmen.
CLARKSON: Yes. My background actually came from when I was a kid; I started off in special makeup effects. I wanted to be a monster maker. I wanted to do all of this stuff. I grew up on the East Coast, so there weren’t a lot of opportunities. This was before Atlanta blew up. I literally left Atlanta in, like, 2005, right before everything blew up. Oddly enough, my first movie job once I moved to LA was getting a phone call to go back to work onThe Walking Deadto do makeup back in Atlanta.
But yeah, once I moved out to LA, I got to work for Imagineering. I got to work for Stan Winston Studios, ADI, all this other stuff, and I managed to hook up with this company called New Deal Studios, which is one of the last great bastions of miniature effects. They did everything fromThe Dark Knight,Iron Man,Tropic Thunder, andWatchmen. Actually, one of my old bosses won the Academy Award forInterstellar, as well as the Academy Award forFirst Man. So, I got to work with theseamazingpeople, and it was so much fun being on that side of it.
Being a production designer, I kind of came into work almost by accident because of the fact that I was able to build sets and do stuff. I wasn’t classically trained by any means. But in the background makeup effects, I’m a creature performer. Everybody puts on their costume, and they all creep around, and they try to bring that to life. So, I kind of bring that to other movies that I’ve done where I’ve played creatures and the other stuff, and that’s what brought Stuart and I to working together, not only as production design, but also getting to play Mr. Shiny.
‘Tiger King’ and ‘True Detective’ Inspired Stuart Ortiz to Finally Make ‘Strange Harvest’
“It turns out everybody likes these fucked up stories.”
Speaking of Stuart, talk a little bit about where this idea came from.
ORTIZ: Well, I made a movie about a decade ago or more, and it makes me feel old, calledGrave Encounters. AndGrave Encountersis a found footage style movie that has documentary elements, and it has some interviews and whatnot, and I always just thought it was a really cool way to tell a genre story, or horror story, in particular, because it was kind of this way of looking at the information in a story and just a different way than you’re able to’t usually really do in a normal narrative style film. So, the idea was always kind of with me, and slowly it’s sort of crystallized into something.
It wasn’t really until during COVID in 2020, when this little-known documentary series came out calledTiger King.Tiger Kingwas a huge phenomenon, hugely popular. I loved it. Everyone loved it.The thing aboutTiger Kingis, at its core, it’s a true crime story.There’s all this ridiculous shit in it, the guy is hilarious, but it is a true crime story. And it kind of just occurred to me at that moment that, like, true crime had arrived in the mainstream. I had thought that I was the only weirdo who liked these fucked up stories about murder and mayhem, and I was the only person that went to sleep listening to these stories. It turns out everybody likes these fucked up stories, and that kind of just showed me that there was an understanding, almost, of the language of these kinds of documentaries that people had.
I think it was my fear, making a movie like this, that people wouldn’t quite get what I was trying to ape on or something, that true crime documentaries weren’t well known enough. But when I sawTiger King, it just became clear. This is out there, and this is the right moment to do this. And then it was very quick. It was like, “If I’m going to do a true crime thing, it’s got to be a serial killer. If it’s going to be a serial killer, I want to bring in some kind of otherworldly cosmic horror element if I can.” I was very influenced, obviously, byTrue Detective, in that regard. So, it was all kind of a stew. Then, weirdly,Tiger Kingwas the thing that kind of got me motivated to actually make it.
How tough it was to get the money together? Let’s talk about getting it off the ground.
ORTIZ: It was actually relatively easy, mostly becauseI funded a great bunch of it myselfin the beginning. Then I approached literally just a few high school friends and asked them for not a ton of money, and we were able to pool it that way. It was just done completely independently by friends, quite literally.
Again, that’s insane and amazing. I say congratulations one more time. One of the things about this, and I was so curious when I was watching, is you have the opening credits, like you have the title and stuff. Was there any debate about not putting any sort of credits or maybe even doing a quasi, like,Datelinething? Does this make any sense where I’m going with this?
ORTIZ: It does. I think it’s just my love of title sequences is too strong, and I had to. I just wanted to do something like that. I was inspired — obviously, it comes nowhere near this — by the title sequence inSe7en, for example. It’s a masterpiece, and I just love that kind of thing. I love those kinds of title sequence pieces, so I wanted to do my own kind of weird version. You’re right. There could have been a version that was a little bit more like a genericDatelinekind of thing, but I wanted to lean into the creepy and have fun with it.
‘Strange Harvest’ Has Tons of Hidden Easter Eggs for Horror Fans
The team also shares what it means to have a near-perfect critics' score.
You make this independently. You’re putting your blood, sweat, and tears into it. You really don’t know what people are going to think about it. It’s at 96% on Rotten Tomatoes after a lot of reviews. What does that mean to all of you guys?
ORTIZ: I know for me it’s incredibly validating. It feels amazing. I worked really hard on the script, and working on the script and the story was really important to me.The script took over a year to write.I wrote a huge bible that was basically the lore and the mythologythat this character believed in, so that there was an internal logic to everything. I just put a lot of work into the details because I thought the details are so important. So, yeah, it’s an amazing feeling to see that people are responding to it and are digging it.
ZIZZO: Well, it’s funny because I’m so close to it that it’s impossible for me to watch it like I would watch a normal movie. But when I read the script back when I got to audition for it, I somehow got the script and I read, and I thought, “If this guy makes this, this is going to be a really fucking good movie.” So, because I’m so close to it, it’s impossible for me to be objective. At the same time, seeing that score and seeing the reviews, a part of me is like, “Yeah, this movie rocks.” I mean, it just does its thing so perfectly well and resists a lot of tropes, I think, that a lot of horror movies don’t.
APPLE: I found it gratifying because it’s very hard to know how a movie’s going to turn out. As an actor, you pick a role and you like the role, and you research about the writer-director, and you find out who your other actors are. But this set, I cannot applaud Stuart enough because not only was it a very tight, strong script, but we all had a ball on the set. I’m a scaredy cat, so Lexi Taylor can handle this; I can’t. She’s a badass, so she can handle it. But I will say that the way that it played out and how organized they were and how methodical he was about all the shots and how professional everything was and how everything just works so seamlessly, it’s very gratifying to then see it be a strong, tight film. I can’t find any holes. I’ve watched it quite a few times, and you attempt to watch it as objectively as you’re able to. I hope you all enjoyed it, but we enjoyed making it so.
ZIZZO: The first time I watched it with Terri was at your house, [Stuart], and she was reacting like she was just some audience member, like, “Oh no, no! Oh, that’s horrible!” I’m like, “Terri, you’re in the movie. You know this is fake!” [Laughs]
APPLE: Lexi Taylor’s in the movie. I’m not.
CLARKSON: My first thought was, “It worked!” Not that there was any doubt that it would work, but just in the way that it was done. It was pitched to me initially, as production designer, as just the fact that this is a true crime documentary, which we all love, and there’s a supernatural element. I’m sure that you guys, if you haven’t caught it in this first viewing, hopefully you’ll catch it in the further viewings, there are loads of Easter eggs in this.There are loads of nods to some of your favorite horror movies, some of your favorite crime documentaries, some of your crime movies. They’re hidden all over the place, not only through the script, through Stuart’s brilliant writing, but stuff that we were able to bring in visually, as well. So, there’s a familiarity to it that I think a lot of people don’t recognize in their first viewing, but as you watch it more and more, you’ll start to see nuances that were brought on not only by the performances of these guys, and I like to think by myself a little bit, but in terms of art department and building this world where all of this seemed possible, it seemed feasible. It was real enough to be scary. It wasn’t this fantastical world. It was next door. Then, through Stuart’s writing, the performances, and then editing and putting it all together. I remember shooting this movie, like, “Man, I don’t know if this is going to work like this,” you know? But trusting Stuart, all of us were just like, “Okay, this is nuts, but if this is done right, man, this is going to be cool.” And I feel like he delivered, certainly.
ZIZZO: There’s even some stuff in the news chyrons.
ORTIZ: Oh yeah. A lot of the news reenactments that we did, there are these floating tickers at the bottom that you’ll see, where they have international stories about things that are going on. There are all sorts of stories that I want to tell that are hidden in there about weird things going on in the world. So, definitely something to check out on a repeat viewing.
APPLE: When I first met you, [Jessee], you scared the crap out of me.
CLARKSON: I have that effect on women.
APPLE: Because I had read the script, obviously. After that, he didn’t. After that, he’s very charming. But it’s so interesting because as the character, he really did kind of freak me out. But then the minute you talk… But you were already in character, I think. You were already kind of in that character, so it was so interesting. He and I just had chemistry from the beginning. We just hit it off chemistry-wise, as far as the energy.
ORTIZ: Yeah, they’re not in a lot of scenes together, but the few that you are, I definitely feel it.
ZIZZO: And the whole throuple storyline that you were working on and cut completely, unfortunately.
APPLE: That might be in the next one.
If You Love ‘REC,’ You Have To See This Equally Chilling Found Footage Horror
Ghosts on film!
Peter and Terri, you guys filmed all your stuff in the same warehouse type thing. For those scenes, how many days was that shoot? Because there’s a lot of dialogue that you guys have to deliver, and as someone who understands independent filmmaking, it’s pretty clear you were shooting all of that together. What is it like as actors having to learn that much dialogue, knowing that you don’t have that many takes and you don’t have that much time?
APPLE: Also, they had a technical issue when I was there. You guys had the technical noise outside, and you were like, “Holy crap.”
ZIZZO: It was literal. It was not technical. The world was being remade outside of the warehouse somehow.
ORTIZ: We were just joking about this outside. The first day that we shot with Peter, Peter did something like 30 pages, which is a lot. That’s a lot of pages to do on a feature film in one day, and it’s not like they’re even scenes. It’s monologue is really what it is. It’s just one person talking. So, we did the first day, and Peter killed it. It was great. And then what did I say after that?
ZIZZO: Well, I was really proud of the fact. I was all cocky. I was off book for, like, the first 30 pages. Then we shot that, and I was super happy. A cute story I like telling at these things is the first thing we shot, really, was when I say my name, who I am, and where I work, which is the first thing that Joe Kirby says in the film. Up until that moment, you don’t really know how it’s going to go. So, I did the first take of that, and then he says, “Cut!” And he just comes over and he puts his arms around me. We had this big hug because it was a moment of, like, “Alright, this might actually work.”
But after that first day, we got through those first 30 pages, and I was super proud of where we were at and what I had memorized. I’m like, “So what’s up for tomorrow? You have me tomorrow?” And he’s like, “Yeah. Tomorrow we’re going to attempt to go from page 30 to page 80.” And I’m like, “Alright, I don’t have80pages memorized. Could we do, like, a paragraph, and then I’ll memorize another paragraph, and do another paragraph, and I’ll memorize another paragraph?” I mean, I was super familiar with everything, and then they had a teleprompter. It was kind of the best because just having it there, I could sound extemporaneous.
APPLE: But we rarely used it because we were very familiar.
ZIZZO: The guy interviewing me throughout the movie is the guy that got blood-eagled. [Laughs] That dude. That’s who I’m talking to the whole movie is Blood Eagle dude.
APPLE: It was interesting because you weren’t sure because you were doing those scenes as the character being interviewed for a documentary about a serial killer. So it was a movie within a movie, basically. I remember thinking, “As Lexi Taylor, I’m sitting up here being interviewed. We’re not really wanting to be interviewed.” We didn’t have a lot of discussion about the backstory. It made it very interesting to do that. And I think also to lay it all down, it was interesting to find out how it was going to play out, because we did realize it was carried away all the way through the movie. It was the throughline through the actual film that then was going to be broken up. So, it was kind of like you had a moment of going, “I wonder if this is going to work. Is this going to hit all the different peaks when you have the scenes?” And it did.
ORTIZ: It was definitely a leap of faith. Shooting some of that stuff in that warehouse was a fucking nightmare because there was some kind of recycling plant that was next to it. I guess if it had been on any kind of schedule, we could have sort of gotten used to it, but it was random as fuck. It would just be like we’d be about to shoot, and then suddenly you’d heardoot,doot,doot, that back-up sound that trucks make, and it would just go on and be beeping. We’d wait, and then finally it would stop, and then we’d jump. It was comical at times. It would start, and then it would beep, and then you would stop, and then it would stop, and then you would start, and it would beep. It went on like that the whole time, and we were just having to constantly contend with the noise.
CLARKSON: And the area we were in, I remember that we went on a location scout, and literally, I got lost in the location scout. Cops pulled me over because they saw me circling the block, and they’re like, “You don’t want to be in this neighborhood. I don’t know what you’re doing here.” I’m like, “I’m looking for this,” and they’re like, “You don’t belong here. You need to leave.” It was like, “Okay, great.” I left. So, we were in a very industrial neighborhood that was not very well kept up. I remember just weird noises going on all the time that sounded like construction or…
APPLE: Like Mr. Shiny getting busy.
CLARKSON: Yeah, exactly.
ZIZZO: It looked cool, though.
Stuart Ortiz Breaks Down How ‘Strange Harvest’ Pulled This Off on an Indie Budget
“At the end of the day, everything was sometimes going to be shot on, like, an iPhone.”
What’s unique about this is with most indie movies, there are limited locations, limited characters, and limited stuff to keep the budget down and to make it feasible. If you rewatch this, you’ll see there are a million locations, a million characters. It’s very ambitious. Talk a little bit about the writing process. At any point, were you like, “Are we going to be able to do this?”
ORTIZ: No. I approached it knowing that the way things were going to be photographed and captured, for the most part, were going to be on these low-quality, lo-fi formats, whether they’re body cams or they’re a webcam. The format was always going to be so cheap that it just was less of a concern because, usually, when you’re shooting a more conventional narrative, you have to light everything. You have a nice camera. It requires a lot of crew, and that takes time. I knew that we were just not going to have to worry about that.
The way the movie was made was interesting. Usually, when you make a film, you set up your scene, you get all your art direction, all your props, you get your actors, you block everything out, and that can be very time-consuming. Then you go and actually shoot something that requires, like I said, getting cameras out, getting lighting out, getting all these crew people to make it all happen. We only had to do the first part of that because the second part of everything was literally, like, we would spend hours setting up these kind of “murder tableaus,” as I call them — setting up these scenes with the makeup and getting everything to look perfect. Hours spent. But then the actual shooting would sometimes be, like, 10 minutes running around with a really low-quality camera and just taking photos of everything. I always knew that that was going to be the approach, so that’s why I knew that we could get away with a lot of locations and a lot of stuff, because at the end of the day, everything was sometimes going to be shot on, like, an iPhone.
I’m always obsessed with talking about editing because it’s where it all comes together. Talk a little bit about how the film changed in the editing room in ways you didn’t expect.
ORTIZ: That’s a great question. Another idea of the movie and why I thought it would be possible is because it was kind of this idea of, like, the movie itself is modular, in the sense that it’s composed of these independent, isolated units of interviews and then this archival footage. So, it was kind of my concept that I would write the script in such a way that if we ended up with an actor that just wasn’t very good in the aftermath, we could just reshoot them, basically, and there wouldn’t be this massive ripple effect that would affect everything. Luckily, we didn’t have to do that, but that’s not something you could ever do on a conventional kind of movie. Butthere was just this ability to change little independent parts, whether they were the crime scene photographs or little scenes. You could just change things and switch things out, and it wouldn’t affect the greater whole because of this documentary format.
ZIZZO: I wanted to just prompt you here because there’s something in this movie that I don’t care how hard you look, you will not be able to tell, even knowing this now, when you see it many, many more times. So, fairly early in the movie, where we have an interrogation scene with this drug addict, who we think might be our guy. There was an original guy who played that role who kind of went crazy, and Stuart fired him.
ORTIZ: Don’t go into it any more than that. That’s all people need to know.
ZIZZO: No, that’s all I’m saying. That’s all I’m saying. You’ll forget that I ever said that. So, he cast another actor, the guy that’s in this movie, who did a fantastic job. Great guy. We filmed it in a room that was like an interrogation room, like white brick walls and the clock, and it kept falling onto the table. Then, he goes, “Just come to my house. We’re going to film this new guy. I made a corner of my bedroom look enough like the interrogation room, and then I’m just going to make it work.”
So, I come over just to read with the guy. We’re in his bedroom, and it’s like the corner is just white and there’s a table, and he’s like, “I found a table that looks just like that table.” The point is, when you look at the finished thing, you’re looking at me and her interviewing this drug addict, and it just looks like we’re all sitting at this table, and we’re not. We were talking to a totally different guy who has been digitally replaced by this new guy. I have stared at this thing, and I can’t fucking see where we end and he begins.
How did you come up with the title?
ORTIZ: That’s a good question.Strange Harvest. I’m not sure, actually. I think that combo of words just seemed appropriate for what this guy was up to. Because the harvest is to harvest the crops, which is how I think he looks at things.
There’s a lot of stuff that you put in the movie that is possibly real history. I don’t actually know. How much is the stuff that is in the books and that people are talking about is made up, and how much of that is actually real history?
ORTIZ: I guess it would depend on what exactly you’re talking about, but by and large, everything is fictionalized.
Bringing Mr. Shiny to Life
“There’s nothing about him that’s redeeming.”
Jessee, talk a little bit about playing a killer. What is it like to enter that headspace? Is it fun, or is it a little bit fucked up?
CLARKSON: A little bit of both, to be honest. It is really kind of fun. Stuart and I talked at length about who this guy is and what kind of backstory he has, and what kind of trauma or what he had gone through to make him that way. There’s a line in the movie where one of the other characters says, “He’s a true believer and he’s dangerous.” That really resonated with me. It’s like, it doesn’t matter what happened with this guy, like his trauma. There’s no sympathy. There’s no empathy. This guy’s a monster. He’s an animal. He’s human, but he’s not human. There’s nothing about him that’s redeeming. The more you attempt to give him something, some sort of backstory where actors want to get in, and like, “Oh, we give him this,” it’s like, no. He’s like walking through a spiderweb. When he walks through, he just destroys everything in his path with this singular vision.
So, being able to play something that’s deliciously that evil and that remorseless… We all grew up with Michael Myers and Jason, and all of these other great killers. Honestly,my main go-to was Anton Chigurh fromNo Country for Old Men, just in the fact that he’s just going about his day, and if you get in his way, he will mow you down. He doesn’t care. There was something really fun and just deliciously wicked. We all love dressing up for Halloween and creeping around in our costumes and being as creepy as we can. That was just something that I got to lean into. The more I’m like, “Is that too much?” Stuart’s like, “No, go for it. Really go.” So, it was really enjoyable. It was a lot of fun to play.
Then, in terms of being production designer, as well, I got to create my own world that I lived in. So I’m creating the crime scenes that I’m creating as the murderer. I got to be like, “Nah, Mr. Shiny wouldn’t do that.”
ORTIZ: Jessee designed the mask, too.
CLARKSON: Yeah, I came up with the mask. My buddy Darren here, he’s actually the sculptor. He’s the one who brought it to life and painted it, and gave it life. The mask that you see here right now is thanks to Darren. The only direction that Stuart had given me was that it has to have the three dots, the three symbols. There’s something about it. We’ve all seen all these great masks. Some of them are done well, some of them aren’t.
ZIZZO: I just made that connection. I had no idea that the three dots on the mask are the symbol.
APPLE: I did, too.
CLARKSON: It’s the three planets.
ZIZZO: God damn.
CLARKSON: And ultimately, I will say I got frustrated with it. Darren and I were talking about it, and I literally drew a circle on a piece of paper with three circles on it, and it was like, “Wait a minute.” If you guys remember Pink Floyd,The Wall, “Another Brick in the Wall,” when the kids are marching into the meat grinder, they have this weird clay face. I remember seeing that as a kid, and it was so disturbing and just weird and faceless. So, as I kind of turned this image around, it kind of became two eyes and a mouth, and it was like, “Oh.” I drew something up in ZBrush, sent that to Stuart, and then showed it to Darren, and it was like, “This is what we have to make for the mask.” And he’s like, “No.” [Laughs] But we kind of figured it out from there, and that’s what you see now. So, it’s definitely a collaboration between Stuart and his ideas and ours, and the art department. Then again, the more we show it, the idea of having him, like, “Does he wear a hood? What else does he bring to it?” So, it was just kind of this big collaboration of bringing Mr. Shiny to life and death, thanks to you guys.
I had a little bit of a chuckle when Mr. Shiny sends in a note and it says, “Make sure your media player is updated to 11.5.” It’s levity in the movie. How much did you debate including that? Because for some people like me it’s funny, and other people aren’t going to catch that at all.
ORTIZ: That was just him being practical. I think it is funny, but from his perspective, it was just a practical thing. He wanted to verify that they could see it, so that’s why he put it there. But I was careful. I’m not a big fan of necessarily doling out a ton of comedy. I like a very serious kind of horror film. But that said, there were a few opportunities here and there that we could play around. Then, honestly, there are things that get a laugh that you just don’t expect anyone to laugh at.
CLARKSON: Personally, I think Mr. Shiny is more of a Mac user. I did enjoy the hold music in between the graphics there.
‘Strange Harvest’ Director Wants to Make a “Cinematic Universe”
“I have a bunch of stories that I would love to do in this kind of mock-doc format.”
I don’t want to spoil anything because people are going to watch this Q&A without having seen the movie, but at the end of the credits, there is another scene. How much did you debate what that scene would be, and what do you want to tell people? What does that scene mean?
ORTIZ: It wasn’t a debate. It was always an idea pretty early on that that would be a cool little thing to tag in. I mean, it’s my hope that if this film is successful, if people like it, and there’s an appetite for it, I have a bunch of stories that I would love to do in this kind of mock-doc format. I’d love to almost make, like, a cinematic universe that has shared characters and shared storylines. So, there’s no reason to think that Mr. Shiny or Jessee or either of these two detectives could not show up in another film or story. I would love to do that.
So you see what’s in front of you in terms of the shooting schedule. What was the day that you had circled in terms of, “I can’t wait to film this,” and did you have anything circled in terms of, “How the F are we going to film this?”
CLARKSON: I will say honestly, it was literally the first day on the schedule and the last day on the schedule. I don’t mean that to sound archaic or anything, but literally the first day on the schedule is me walking around the hospital. It’s almost the end of the movie, me with the leeches on my face. We’re doing all of this weird stuff. And then the last day on the schedule is us doing the funeral pyre. Doing independent film, you’re in several locations here. There is no, chronological order you’re able to shoot in. So it’s like, “This is how we’re starting,” and you’re trying to figure it out. You’re halfway through the movie, or in some cases, at the end of the movie, so you’re trying to match that energy that you hope you’ll be at when you’re at the end of the movie and shooting those scenes.
Through all of it, it was just kind of a big question mark. But all of them felt good, again, from the first day to the last day. But I remember being so excited it’s the first day, and also being so excited it’s the last day — not because it was the end of the film, but we kind of don’t know what we’re in for, but we do working with Stuart. Thankfully, working in the art department, we had no monitors. We had no idea what we were aiming at. We had no idea what we were seeing. He’s like, “Okay, we got it. Moving on.” Like, “Do we? Do we see that?” We can’t see any of it, but he had it all in his head, and it was a matter of just trusting him. He was very much like, “Hey, trust me. I’ve got this.” And obviously he does. We can see the fruits of what he’s brought us here.
ZIZZO: For me, it was also the last day. Well, the last day, really, was that extra scene at the end, but the last day, the campground. Because all of a sudden, there was all this physicality that had to happen where we’re running out from behind a tree, we’re shooting guns, and I’m kicking a fire that isn’t actually there. The only camera I see is the person on the ground, and it’s a little body cam that I have to look into and act to. Unless you really commit to it, it can feel pretty silly because you’re kind of thinking, “How’s this going to look? Where’s the crew? It’s just this little body cam.”
ORTIZ: That’s the anthem of this movie. “Where’s the crew?” [Laughs]
ZIZZO: I’m just looking at the chest, just the little body cam, and I’m like, “This isn’t going to look lame?” And then I see the movie, and I’m like, “God damn, that looks badass!” That and then my first day doing the interviews, just sort of wanting to get over that hump of, “Can I deliver this?” Because it has to read like you’re someone speaking extemporaneously. And the whole thing and the casting search for him was everything has to be incredibly micro in terms of expressions and the cadences and how you’re saying it, the lines, but also it can’t be flat, because if it’s flat, then it’s boring. So, really hoping that I, at least speaking for myself, could find those cadences and those rhythms and those colors and shades that kept it alive for the audience. It kept it feeling real and sounding like improv, even though I was just going word-for-word what was on the page. So, getting past that first day.
APPLE: For me, when we were doing the baby scene, he really had policemen there that were teaching. I really wanted to make sure, I think both of us did, that everything was authentic, that we really looked like we knew what we were doing with a gun. I’d never handled a gun before. By the way, being a seasoned homicide detective is different than just being somebody who’s just learning that skill, so that was really a benefit to have them on there. “No, you wouldn’t hold it like that. You would do it like this. How about the badge? How about this?” Everything was enjoyable, butI was very freaked out to film where the three people were murdered inside the home. I wasn’t sure how I was going to be able to handle it. I mean, I felt that way the entire way through before I started filming, that, “I don’t think I’m going to be able to handle any of this.” At all given times, I was saying, “I can’t handle this!” Then once I got in there, I went, “Okay, these are actors. It happens in real life, but you’re a detective. You’re there.” But the realness of everything and the way everything was put together made it very, very honest and professional and real.
ORTIZ: For me, the first day I was excited about. The first day was really funny because we were going to shoot in this hospital set, and we were also going to shoot the webcam scene with the girl. I’ll never forget. I got an email at, like, I don’t know, 5:00, 4:00 in the morning. I can’t sleep, and I check my email, and it’s from that actress’s agent saying she’s had appendicitis and has to be rushed to the E.R., so she can’t act. The first scene, basically, was that, and I remember showing it to one of the other producers, and we just started laughing like maniacs. What can you do? Then you just have to soldier on.
I think the thing that I was the most worried about was there was a scene with a pool, and that was something that was written in the script that probably was the thing I was the most worried about, because it’s a very specific set. It’s an Olympic-sized pool, and an abandoned one, and there’s just only so many of those that are going to exist in any one place, but somehow we found that pool almost immediately when we started searching, and we wanted to put real water into it. We started running the numbers and talking to them, and at first, they weren’t going to let us do it, but then they’re like, “Okay, we’ll let you put water in there, but honestly, we don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s possible that water will start shooting out into the street.” We were like, “Okay, this is a little bit beyond the scope of our resources.” So, I talked to our visual effects supervisor, Tony Copolillo, and he was like, “I think we could do this in CG.” So, everything you see in that sequence with the pool, when they’re looking down into the pool, that is all computer-generated.
CLARKSON: Everything you see below the lip of the pool was not really there. My team was responsible for everything above it, but everything below, that was all done by Tony and his guys.
