by Denise Kaminsky

Created on: January 30, 2007   Last Updated: May 09, 2007

Hello Alan, It's nice to talk with you again. Tell me about The Blood Shed, about how many days did it take to shoot the film?
The Blood Shed was originally scheduled to shoot on weekends over a 12-day period, beginning in March 2006 and wrapping at the end of April. We we're lucky enough to cut the shooting schedule down to 9 days by combining scenes on particular location dates. Along with that adjustment, we only worked a 10-hour day on two of those dates. If I can help it and I'm 100% prepped before the cast & crew arrive on set, I try to wrap each day within 8 hours.

I know this is not the norm for most film shoots, but I've been on enough sets to know how much pre-planning and multi-tasking is needed to ensure the smoothest day possible. I'm not a director who insists on beating my cast and crew into the ground. I want them fresh and alert and I know for a fact that anything after an 8 to 10-hour day is where mistakes happen due to simple exhaustion. Of course, unforeseen things always happen and you have to be prepared. So if this means no sleep for me, I'll simply catch up on that after' the film is wrapped.

Our schedule was short because the film was originally intended to be a 35-minute short tale for the Hung by a Thread horror anthology that I'm creating with filmmakers Michael Todd Schneider and Tyler Tharpe. We got so carried away with the filming of The Blood Shed that we had no choice but to make it a feature! I did make good on the trilogy and filmed A Far Cry From Home for the anthology. I believe that will be one of my best pieces yet if not, the most controversial.

Tell us about the characters and why you chose them?

My favorite part of writing a screenplay is fleshing out the characters and who will portray them. The key challenge with The Blood Shed was realizing most people would say, big deal another inbred, cannibal, family movie'. I had to make sure the characters weren't the same folks from films like The Hills Have Eyes, Wrong Turn or Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The Bullions had to be more adjusted to today's society because the rural space in the outlying areas of north New Jersey is rapidly shrinking due to overpopulation and mass development. Leaving less area to hide in order to live a private and undetected life. True, they are inbred, social misfits and follow their own law and family code, but they also had to learn to adapt to the encroaching suburban sprawl and still stay under the public radar. It is when the two worlds collide

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