Short film Heartless, which is a modern retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart is the latest release from the Award-Winning Sunshine Boy Production team of Kevin and Jennifer Sluder. We caught up with Kevin ahead of the film’s UK Premiere at Nottingham’s Mayhem Film Festival on October 13th.
STARBURST: Heartless is your first directing credit – how was the experience for you?
Kevin Sluder: So many adjectives come to mind. Challenging, incredible, daunting, exhausting, fulfilling, the list goes on and on. It’s seriously one of the greatest decisions I’ve ever made. For the longest time, I didn’t think I had what it took. Directing always seemed to be what someone else would do. I thought I was a writer and that was it. Then I produced a few shorts and the idea of directing didn’t seem so foreign anymore. Then I thought up the Heartless idea and I decided to just do it. Having made that decision, the smartest thing I did was to surround myself with an incredible team of badasses. From the actors to the blood f/x people to my awesome cinematographer, Mike Testin. It really helped having such a wealth of experience around me. At any given time, I had at least 4-5 people who had directed films on set and other people who’d been a part of dozens of films to lean on for advice. This made for a great experience for me. Plus, so many of the people on the cast and crew were friends of mine… I couldn’t have asked for a better way to direct my first film.
What drew you to adapt the Poe story?
I helped out my friends on set and the lead actress was having a conversation with the sound guy about their favourite Poe stories. I piped in that The Tell-Tale Heart was my favourite and, during my drive home, I thought up this shot of a startled young exec staring at her reflection in the mirror, having done the dark things that the TTH narrator had done in the Poe story. I thought it was an arresting, cool image and formed the story from that. I’m not much on writing period pieces and the story has been told a million times in its original form, so I felt modernizing it was a cool choice. There was something about the mix of a dark, dark murder and a shiny corporate office that I really loved.
As well as featuring some great jibes at the sexist workplace, there’s a great use of practical effects, was ‘keeping it real’ important to you?
Absolutely! Once I read the story again, I realised just how bloody and macabre it was. I mean, the main character chops up an old man and hides his parts under the floor boards of his apartment. Just imagining that is horrifying. So when I started visualising just how brutal and messed up the narrator’s actions were, I was left with no choice as a filmmaker – go big or go home. Luckily, my friends Josh and Sierra Russell are, in my humble opinion, the finest makeup FX artists in indie film and they were up for the challenge. I’m proud to say that all the blood FX in the film are practical and I think that’s going to be a trend in film going forward. There’s such a difference between the ‘real’ thing and CGI blood. I definitely wanted that for Heartless. It intensifies the experience for the viewer.
Mayhem Film Festival takes place at Nottingham’s Cinema from October 11th – October 14th. Heartless screens on October 13th. For tickets and more information, head to www.mayhemfilmfestival.com
Follow Heartless online www.HeartlessMovie.com on Facebook @HeartlessHorrorMovie on Twitter @HeartlessMovie_ and on Instagram @heartless_movie. Read our review here.
