I talked a little about the impetus for House Divided in the first post, but anyone who has ever tried writing a screenplay can tell you that, even though you “know” the plot, there are a lot of gaps that need to be filled between the story in your head and the one that ends up on the screen. So I dedicated myself to research.

I dug through crates of old black and white horror films, many whose copyrights have expired and can be viewed online for free. From White Zombie, & The Screaming Skull, Bloodlust, to Carnival of Souls (If you’re really interested, I’d work backwards), I spent the fall watching the early stages of cinematic scares. I was looking for something atmospheric, for inspiration in clever, tense lighting and bloodless suspense. The House on Haunted Hill, with its tight ensemble and set design detail, gave names to two characters in House Divided, Nora and Vincent. The rightful classic and personal favorite, Night of the Living Dead, would inspire large chunks of the script, and the entire cast would later watch it together to prepare.

To get better acquainted with the shots and staging, I put together a silent video in response to a conflict on campus (article about it here), and played around creating verbal tension. I made my mind up to shoot in Black and White HD — I could be assured of great picture, a creepy retro aesthetic, most importantly, save myself 100 hours of color correction.

As early horror movies began to get repetitious I moved through the ages. I rented The Exorcist, the movie that once scared me into watching Jimmy Neutron re-runs to fall asleep. I checked out Poltergeist, and was mildly disappointed. Silence of the Lambs held up remarkably well. I’d keep going, but I’ve done this once before…

I spent sleepless winter nights hunched over my laptop, scaring myself silly and then writing through the night to calm the nerves. My original idea, 60 minutes of atmospheric shots with sparse dialogue and little plot, was looking less and less do-able with a non-existent budget and a background in Playwriting. So, after my third veiwing of the fantastic Cabin in the Woods I wrote up some character sketches and went to work on my original inspiration — what if someone faked there own murder to stage a horror movie on their friends. Clearly, the meta-commentary of Scream that seemed so necessary in all good horror since then had an effect on me.

I had my first draft done in a month. It was specific to the Catskills house I was offered, and full of odd little abbreviations and notes to myself that would make a true studio executive shoot for the shredder. But, as school recommenced and my producer and I met to go over logistics, I didn’t have time for a clean copy. We had enough to assemble a cast, and the equipment had been quickly approved. There was a big hole in the second act I decided to fix at a later date.

But we were our own studio, and we were the ones who would have to deal with my imperfections. So, with a couple of “leadership” grants in our pockets, we begged our friends to act as crew members and drove two hours away for the first weekend of pre-production…