FAN-tastico!

"Horrible Turn" takes fan-made films to a new level.

I love fans. Well.. maybe not all fans. Some are a little (how do I say this politely?) pesky with their fanaticism. I won't name any fandoms, but you know who you are. But in my experience, fans can do a lot to enhance the enjoyment (or angst) of a tv series.

One group I have been very fortunate to be involved with is the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" fandom, and by extension the Joss Whedon fandom. Whedon, who created "Buffy" as well as other fan faves "Firefly" and "Dollhouse," has the most awesome fans in the world! A few months ago, I organized a screening of the series' musical episode "Once More With Feeling" in Houston. Over 2300 fans flocked to a park in the middle of downtown Houston to join voices in song to such classics as "Something to Sing About" and "Walk Through the Fire." One fan in attendance at the sing along was Chance McClain. Chance contacted me after the screening to tell me about a musical he had produced that was a prequel to another Whedon musical masterpiece "Dr. Horrible."

THIS I had to see!

Chance invited me to the "world premiere." I was skeptical, I admit, having seen many fan films that were like badly Sweded videos. But what I saw on the screen that night blew me away. The quality was excellent... the songs were catchy... and the dialogue and acting were freaking HILARIOUS! If someone had told me that Whedon himself had penned it, I would have believed them. It was that good. So I asked Chance if he would write about why he chose to make the "fan-feature" and how he went about doing it. Here's his story in his own words:

MY "HORRIBLE TURN"
By Chance McClain

I woke up one day and decided I wanted to make a movie. I had all of the tools.

Film school? Check.
Camera? Check.
Crew? Check.
Actors? Check.
Locations? Check.
Script? Check.

Everything was in order. Except for the minor details.

Okay, I lied. I had none of that stuff. But I did it anyway.

As a huge fan of Joss Whedon’s "Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog" and a board member at a local community theater I set out to acquire the rights to do a live performance of Dr. Horrible. Several schools and community theaters had already done it across the country and I wanted to bring this brilliant and unique story to the stage in Houston. I hopped on the internet, Googled my way around, and landed on an email address that people used to get the rights to the show. I told my story, asked for the rights, and hit send. And waited. Then I waited some more. A month later, I tried again employing even more humility but once again the response never came.

While this was going on I was talking to some of the kids at the theater about Dr. Horrible and soon Whedon’s internet musical with the catchy tunes became a regular topic of conversation. We began asking questions about the characters in the story. Why did the public like the smarmy Captain Hammer? What’s the deal with Australia? Why was the lovable Dr. Horrible, well, horrible? The questions turned into theories and the theories turned into a story. That story began to take form as a script. A script to be performed on the stage.

My obsession began bubbling over into other areas of my life. I started talking to coworkers about the idea of doing a play. Frank Bullington, the production director at 1560 The Game (where I work) warmed to the idea and over sushi and sake he started poking holes in my script. We would hole up and talk about the characters and how they would react to different situations. We talked about moving the story from stage to screen and a million other things, taking notes all along the way. I took our notes and began typing a real script. On March 11, 2009, I had a finished first draft. And it was terrible. The story was there but the dialog was weak, the songs were just poems, and I had no idea about proper screenplay formatting. But so what, right? The time was right to move forward with the project.

I started working on the music…basically just plucking it out on a guitar or piano and deciding loosely how the songs would go. Frank, a skilled musician, would help here as well. At this time I emailed an old friend, Kevin Ryan, who had a knack for all things artistic and asked if he would help with a few of the songs. I told him about the project and he graciously got on board. Kevin applied his unearthly music making skills and turned the words into quirky, memorable, and fantastic songs. Kevin also invested with his heart and agreed to work as DP for the movie. And Editor. And co-writer. And amillion other things. Somewhere along the line another old friend, Joey Wright, joined the team. Joey has been shooting commercials in and around Houston for a dozen years or so and brought skill behind the camera and a bunch of badass gear. Tony Moles came on board as well bringing a professional graphic designer into the fold. My motley crew was assembled. Chance, Kevin, Frank, Joey, and Tony.

Between March and May the songs were assembled, the script was massacred and massaged, the locations were scouted, and the movie started to take form. We bought a legit camera of our own to go along with Joey’s wonderful behemoth, stumbled across two friends with lights and patience, and decided to make the movie. If only we had some actors.

Two of the kids, Tyce and Jacob, I knew from working with at the theater. The rest of them would be acquired via a casting call. On May 31st we posted our listing on Craigslist. We figured a week was sufficient time so on June 7th, we held auditions. We had about a hundred people show up for an unpaid Houston Movie Musical. There were several very talented people to choose from amongst the patrons from the Cantina scene in Star Wars. Boom! We had our cast.

The rest of the story plays out pretty much the same way. Ready? Fire! Aim. If we did not know how to do something we would learn quickly. At some point along the way I decided I wanted a real computer showing the boot-up sequence of Compuserve so I tracked down an old Compuserve disk and installed it on my work computer. That, was the single stupidest thing I have ever done. The popup dialogs were asking me questions like, ‘It seems you have an older version of Internet Explorer. Would you like to upgrade to Internet Explorer 2.0?’

“Of course I would!”

‘Internet Explorer 2.0 has the ability to play sounds via .wav and .midi technologies. Would you like the ability to play sounds?’

“Duh! Give me sounds oh mighty Internet Explorer 2.0!”

It is December 17th and my computer is almost back to normal. Anyway, as the project grew and the bank accounts shrank we started to have a ‘real’ movie. A feeling of pride began replacing the feeling of panic and on November 9th, 2009, we premiered Horrible Turn at the River Oaks theater.

On March 3rd, when I set up my calendar, I wrote October 30th as the release date. We would’ve been ready if we could’ve booked the theater. As it was missing it by a week and a half is not bad.