A creeping dolly move through our hospital set.
The 15-day shoot for director Brian Feeney’s The Echo Game began in mid-August 2008 in Los Angeles, CA. But the journey began long before, in October 2007 when Feeney completed his first draft of the screenplay. As word of the project spread, crew and cast members were inevitably drawn to the project by Feeney’s enthusiasm and love of the horror genre.
“I first came onto The Echo Game just to give Brian a little advice on the production, but after I read the script and talked to Brian about it, I wanted to get my company involved,” says Asa-Shumskas-Tait, co-founder of Lead Balloon, a new production company based in Los Angeles. “The plot and characters felt very original and Brian’s enthusiasm for horror, and good horror set pieces, is limitless and infectious.” Shumskas-Tait, along with Lead Balloon co-founder Doug Spice, eagerly signed on as producers and guided the film from a nights-and-weekends, no-budget production plan to a fully-fledged shoot with a very small but real budget.
Next, Brian brought the project to friend and collaborator John William Ross who co-wrote the next draft of the script with Feeney and eventually stayed on board through production as a co-producer.
“What I like about working with Brian is that his imagination seems limitless,” says Ross. “He’s always coming up with new, creative ideas so you know that you’re always going to get something fresh and distinctive with his projects.”
As The Echo Game opens, we meet April Reilly, a reporter whose life takes a mysterious and ultimately terrifying turn when she receives a letter from a former lover who she believed died years before. For this role, director Feeney already had Alisha Seaton in mind—an actress whom he had worked with as far back as 2001, when he was still a student at the USC School of Cinema-Television.
“This is the third time I’ve worked with Brian Feeney and I was so happy to be back on set with him,” says Seaton, “I absolutely trust his instincts. He has an amazing eye for composition and a sense of elegance with the camera.”
To implement the visual style of the film, Feeney called upon cinematographer Jeffrey Waldron. Waldron, also a graduate of USC’s School of Cinema-Television, came highly recommended from previous work on other Psychic Bunny projects. Long before shooting began, they worked closely to come up with a visual style—focusing on color, control, and motion.
Director Brian Feeney and crew watch the monitor feed during a take.
“I think in the end we achieved a unique look that differs from anything that is currently out there, but certainly owes a lot to the classic horror films we grew up with,” says Waldron.
Thus, finding a varied array of locations was a big challenge for the production team. The villain, Anne Cassavettes (Judy Clement) and her henchman pursue and terrorize April and her family in a variety of different locations, each with its own distinctive feel—including their suburban home, an eerie nearly empty hospital, and a Hollywood Special FX shop. Knowing that budget and resources would be tight, Feeney already had many of these locations already secured and integrated them into the story at the script stage.
For the “Gore Girlz” store location—where April’s partner, Casey (Jeannie Bolet), works—Feeney chose “The Dapper Cadaver” horror FX and prop shop in Hollywood, owned and operated by long time friend BJ Winslow. The store—decked out in horror paraphernalia including skeletons, severed limps, prop weapons, and so on—added a fun traditional horror element to the film and presented some interesting challenges for the production crew. “Even at 3am there were a lot of laughs,” Seaton recalls.
Another classic horror element that offered a particular challenge were the effects. From the beginning, Feeney and the production crew knew that they wanted to take a more traditional approach and do as many of the effects as they could practically.
”A huge part of making the type of movie that we were so intent on was getting the effects right,” says producer Shumskas-Tait. ”To me, that means a lot of practicals augmented with some CG, not the other way around.”
The FX team was comprised of fellow USC grads, who they had worked with before on many projects in their student film days. Working with limited resources, the team was nonetheless able to build numerous prosthetic wounds, facial moulds, and even a realistically layered human head for the film’s gruesome climax.
All in all, the task of making a great suspense horror film on a shoestring budget came with many trials and tribulations, but the cast and crew met the challenges head on and had a terrific time doing it.
“I loved working on The Echo Game,” says lead actress Seaton. “Despite long hours for everyone and an exceedingly tight schedule for my director to contend with, I was working with a talented group of people who wanted to create a fun, suspenseful wild ride of a horror film. The Echo Game is definitely a movie I’d want to see!”
Director Brian Feeney after wrapping with actress Angela Landis.