3RD PLACE PRIZE WINNER - CAMERA AMBASSADOR COMMUNITY BUILDERS GRANT 2023
SEMI-FINALIST - SCREENCRAFT FILM FUND
Logline & Concept
Killing Time is a horror-comedy short about a high school theatre teacher targeted for murder by a serial killer with dreams of acting. It has a little of everything - it’s dark, it’s campy, it’s lush, it’s scary, it’s funny, it’s gory - but at its heart, it’s an exploration of how the arts can help people heal their wounds or damage themselves further, with deeper dives into the importance of arts education and the glorification of true crime.
Story
Killing Time begins when our protagonist Doug finds that his car has broken down late one summer night. With no cell reception, Doug is left waiting for someone to stumble upon him for help. Unluckily, the person that discovers his plight isn’t someone that intends on letting him leave alive. Captured by his killer, Doug is forced to listen as he details the gruesome fate that awaits him - but the killer doesn’t land the delivery. He stops and starts his speech over, and over, and over again, until he finally cracks. His would-be murderer Elliot breaks down about his vendetta against Doug’s theatre teacher husband and his lost artistic dreams as Doug stares on in horror. Elliot gives his monologue one last try before he shatters, screaming at Doug that his revenge quest is all he has left - and it begins with him.
Doug finally frees himself from his bindings and tackles Elliot, fighting back with a vengeance and driving his point about Elliot’s lack of acting talents home - but will his surprise attack be enough to save him from Elliot’s clutches?
Characters & Cast
You’ve met the characters - let’s meet the cast!
Rich Lazatin (Doug)
Layke Fowler (Elliot) is a Chicago based actor and improviser. Other film credits include Eat the Brain, Raymond; Jac Kessler's Popsy; and the Soon to be Canceled Sketch Show.
Style
This film is visually lush, with the environment cast in cool shades of blue and green, crickets chirping, and moonlight pouring onto the asphalt. It’s high contrast, sharp shadows cast over dynamic scenes lit by harsh car headlights. It’s high-stakes and fast-paced, with knives flying, tires screeching, and blood pouring on the pavement - and that’s why it’s funny.
The humor here comes specifically from how the characters & their perspectives are juxtaposed with the premise and environment. Until Elliot stops his monologue for the first time, the story reads as a traditional slasher in the vein of I Know What You Did Last Summer or the Scream franchise - but it’s when he introduces this theatrical side of himself that the story becomes something completely unique, and the specificity of the theatre jokes only heightens its humorous potential. (Does anyone else remember the warm-up tongue twister “Eight cocky sock cutters cockily cutting socks?” Yeah, say that five times fast.)
One of the biggest comedic visual choices we’re making is how we use static versus handheld shots: static shots symbolize control, while handheld, shakier shots symbolize a loss of control or a shift in power dynamics. This style of camera work helps to lighten the tone of the film in specific sections - the difficult thing with horror-comedy is making sure that the film plays both sides equally. Comedy is shot much differently than horror, and we’re playing with the camera conventions of each genre in order to control the narrative and make the punchier parts hit harder. For example, Elliot’s monologues are shot in a wide, fantastical still shot - until he breaks and we go to a much closer, unstable shot to see him break character.
This juxtaposition, this back and forth, is at the heart of the film’s style. A sinister setting with an almost silly story. A budding serial killer with a passion for musical theatre. A pre-kill monologue that’s still being workshopped. Theatre tongue twister warm-ups before you try to kill a theatre teacher. This film finds its home in these contrasts.
Tone + Comps
Stories like the first season of Barry were big inspirations - balancing absurd humor and bone-chilling horror on a razor’s edge with sharp dialogue, a singular focus on character, and the use of negative space within visual spectacle. Films such as Spree and Happy Death Day were also influential in their approach to the campier nature of horror-comedy and in tackling the ‘humorous serial killer’ as a concept, and I would be remiss to omit Stephen King’s body of work as one of the biggest influences on my writing to date.
Themes & Influences
Killing Time has been heavily influenced by my experiences in theatre as a student and a teacher. I have spent almost all of my conscious life either studying, performing, or teaching theatre, and that has shaped my approach to these characters and how they interact with each other and the world at large. I’ve been in both of my characters’ shoes at different points in my life, and I drew directly from some of those experiences to craft this script - all of the tongue twisters & warmups Elliot uses are pulled from my high school theatre troupe, and Doug is based on several of the better directors I worked under. This film is a love letter to them and to the art form as a whole.
The story also explores how the arts can both uplift and corrupt instead of focusing on one or the other, which I feel is unique when it comes to stories about the arts. It’s that contrast that makes these characters so compelling, and I also found it to be the most realistic approach. If I polled my classmates at DePaul, I guarantee that I would find a solid mix of opinions on how theatre has changed them, which isn’t something I’ve seen explored in any media about doing theatre. I know people that thrive in that environment and become better, happier people, and I know people that have been utterly crushed & taken real physical and mental damage because of theatre, and it’s infinitely more interesting & unique to me to explore both than it is to stick to one or the other.
Lastly, this story sets itself apart from its contemporaries in how it approaches the concept of the serial killer. One of the things that inspired Elliot’s character was my frustration at modern true crime media, which has an unfortunate trend of glamorizing and romanticizing serial killers and underplaying their victims, especially if they’re from a marginalized community like Doug is. In truth, serial killers are generally pathetic, often incompetent, very unsexy, and not as clever as people make them out to be. I set out to create a character that stuck as closely to these real-life qualities as possible, which generated a lot of humor by itself. We also give his intended victim the power to fight back physically & take control of his narrative as a gay man who has ostensibly been targeted because of his connection to his husband, which is uncommon for a story with characters like ours. He’s our final girl, even if he doesn’t quite match the traditional model.
Production Timeline
We’re currently deep in the pre-production phase. We’ve cast both roles and filled almost all crew positions, we’re in the middle of location scouting, the shot list has been created with my lovely DP Trina Mulligan, we’re currently locking down our equipment, and we’re in the thick of grant applications and fundraising. We’ve had a few setbacks here in the process, but we’re back and better than ever!
Budget
To complete this film we need at least $10,000 in order to fairly pay everyone on set, secure high quality equipment, and ensure the safety and comfort of the cast and crew during the shoot. We know that we’ll likely be able to cover most of our equipment costs through Camera Ambassador, which is amazing. We’ve been able to raise around $1,000 in donations, but we plan to cover the rest of the gap with grants, further donations, and sponsorships. We are also aiming to give a portion of the proceeds of our fundraising campaign to an organization supporting teachers in Chicago, such as the Chicago Teachers Union Foundation. It’s key that while this project aims to express the importance of teachers to its audience, it should also directly uplift them by providing material assistance and supplies.
Distribution Plan
Our goal is to take Killing Time to a curated selection of film festivals before working out a smaller streaming deal. We plan to submit to several larger festivals with a horror lean, such as Tribeca or AFF, along with a collection of smaller genre festivals such as Panic Fest and HorrorHound. We would then be interested in future distribution on streaming platforms geared towards short horror films like Shudder or Alter (depending on how our festival run goes).
Why?
While the primary goal of this film is to create something terrifying and hilarious for a horror & comedy-inclined audience, we’re also hoping that our project inspires people to support the teachers in their lives. Arts programs are being torn down across the nation, and this film illustrates the importance of keeping those doors open - because not only do they culturally enrich students and teach valuable skills, but they also help people grow into better versions of themselves (even though that didn’t work in Elliot’s case). The work that Doug and his husband are doing is good and valuable, and our hope is that people notice that and then give back in some way. Even if you weren’t an arts kid, you almost surely had a teacher or mentor in your life that changed you in some way, so it’s something a lot of people can relate to and reflect on.
With the gutting of arts education and the media trending ever further towards tasteless true crime stories, Killing Time is prepared to challenge audiences on these topics and inspire them to work for change. We’re building a community of local artists with Killing Time, and it’s giving a lot of these newer artists on the project the space they need to refine their art and make themselves known inside the Chicago indie film industry. We want to build bridges with one another and explore this unique & exciting story, which has already brought so many people from all walks of life together. We’re ready to bring this film into production this summer, we just need that last push of support in order to make this film into the showstopper I know it can be.