From the first time Sascha read the shortstory, he was hooked.
„I wanted to bring the images and impressions to the screen, that I
had every time I read it. I love the surreal setting and thought it should be turned into a movie.“
However, certain events that the short only hints at are more fleshed out in the movie to equal the impressions Sascha had when he read the story.
In the tradition of classic movies like the “The Haunting” and “The
Innocents” the idea was to create tension for the viewer by slowly
building up an atmosphere of approaching doom. Since an old
graveyard is the main setting of the film, a lot of time was spend
designing and building the necessary props. Overall 50 artefacts
were created, gravestones, tombs, monuments and a statue. Most
of the designs are based on real tombs and gravestones from the
seventeenth century.
When Sascha met Wilfried E. Keil, he knew he had found the right
DoP for the project. Wilfried also took on the task of co producing the
film. It was decided to shoot on Super 16mm filmstock, to attain a
classic film look, with deep shadow areas and bright colors.
For the shooting, they gathered a crew of highly motivated people from
all parts of Germany. Sascha enlisted the american actors Robert Lyons
and Jeff Motherhead for the leading roles. The film was shot in English
to make it accessible to Lovecraft fans around the world.
After principal photography had ended, the footage was scanned in
2K resolution as a digital intermediate. As visual effects supervisor
Sascha managed the digital postproduction. Being a low budget
project, it took a lot of time to finish the more than one hundred
visual effects. They were done by professionals, many of them working at renowned german visual effects companies.
Composer Andreas Mayer did the music and a lot of the sound
design. He is a big fan and released several albums with Lovecraft
themed music tracks and soundscapes under the project name
„Forma Tadre“. On „Shadow of the Unnamable“ he created a haunting mix of simple melancholic melodies and experimental soundscapes.
www.moorlandmusic.com
It was a long journey, but now the UNNAMABLE can finally haunt the
screen and will appear at film festivals around the world.
Shadow of the Unnamable
Germany, 2011, Color
running time: 16 minutes
aspect ratio: 16:9
language: english
sound: PCM stereo
