Imagine running into an old elementary friend while grocery shopping. You catch up on old times and agree to continue the conversation outside. For some reason, your friend decides he wants to meet up at an alleyway.
As you get closer to the dark alley, you feel an eerie presence and start to question whether your old friend is the same guy you remember. For the next few minutes you’ll be battling to stay alive. Turns out your friend is a traumatized serial killer. It’s his way of getting revenge for being bullied as a kid. Now, he wants to kill you. Cut. That’s a wrap.
You, the reader, have just walked into the set of the shortfilm, “An old friend.” The movie tells the story of a young woman trying to snap her murder-crazed friend into reality.
Edgar Vazquez Jr., a Texas A&M University-Kingsville (TAMUK) student, is the director of the short horror/drama film. Vazquez, along with his Producer, Clarissa Trevino and Cinematographer, Alejandro Gonzalez, are working on the short film as part of a class project.
Before the cameras, lights and action, Vazquez, Trevino and Gonzalez were all strangers taking an introduction class in filmmaking. However, all that changed when Armando Ibanez, their class instructor, paired them together into a group. They were assigned to come up with a script and make it into a movie.
“It was a good match up, a luck of the draw,” Treviño said. “I have a friend in the class. She’s in a different group and people are butting heads there and not working out,” Trevino said.
The group “seemed to click pretty good,” explained Gonzalez, and they all quickly took to their roles. “Teamwork is a very important thing when you try to make a film. You can try to do a solo, but that’s a lot of work on your shoulders. You need a whole crew to come in and join. Since it’s a small film, you don’t need that many people. But it’s an interesting experience… it’s stressful for me, but I like that kind of stress. Something that I like that if it gives me stress, I know I’m doing something productive there,” Vazquez said.
This was the first time Vazquez, a communications radio and film major, had written a script. Ever since he started to perform for plays in high school, Vazquez had always been interested in film.
Now a freshman in college, Vazquez was determined to make the best film he could, starting by making a good script. At first, Vazquez had writer’s block when developing the plot for his film. However, after choosing an alley as the setting for his film, he finally developed a script he and his team members liked.
Vazquez explains that the story is about a friend trying to convince someone to stop killing others. The main protagonist is trying her best to remind the killer to leave the past behind and not let him fall into insanity.
“It’s kind of a very twisted thing. Since he’s been bullied for a while, he tries to get revenge… His friend is trying to say that you don’t always have to bully. She just wants him to stop. Change what you’re doing, not everything has to result in violence and killing people. You can talk through it and get help. There’s always help out there and people who want to help you. So, she’s trying to comfort him and help him out,” Vazquez said.
As a psychology major, Trevino knows that bullying can affect a young person’s development. “At that age [elementary], that [bullying] influences people’s lives. In some way they stay behind their classmates because of the effects of bullying. I think that’s something to keep in mind…It’s not as common for people to become serial killers, but there’s always that percentage,” Trevino said.
Once the script was ready to go, Vazquez and his group members started looking for actors. The film required only two actors. One actor would play the role of the heroine and the other would be the murder-crazed friend. Gonzalez states that looking for actors was the hardest part of making the movie. The actors would agree to go on set, but then call to cancel.
“Every time we were getting a few people who said, ‘yeah we can help out,’ but then they would fall through,” Trevino said.
Eventually, the crew was able to find actors, however, one of the actors injured his foot before filmin started. Because of that, both roles were changed to male and Gonzalez took up the role of the main protagonist. The role of the serial killer will be played by Daniel Suarez. Despite the film having a few gory scenes, Gonzalez made sure the actors felt at ease in the spooky setting.
“We want to work with them. We want to make them [actors] feel comfortable so they can give their best performance in the film,” Gonzalez said.
Production for the film started in early October. Vazquez decided the best place to film the movie was in a local grocery store in Alice, Texas. The location is described as having a “hometown feeling,” and it has a nearby alley that can be used as the climax setting of the film.
Initially, the movie was going to be at least five minutes long, but after Vazquez and his team spoke with Ibanez, he extended the short film to seven minutes. Vazquez feels there is so much he has to explain in the movie, and it will be hard to put his vision in just seven minutes.
“We’re trying to make this the best we can. Not just [go half way]. This is something I want to continue pursuing in my kind of level. That’s why we’re trying to do our best to make it the best we can,” Vazquez said.
This is the first time any of the crew members of “An old friend” have worked on a movie or have taken a film class. Despite not having experience, the crew believes they could apply what they have learned in filming class in their future careers. Gonzalez is a business marketing major and thinks the filming skills he’s learned could come in handy when he decides to promote a product or business on television.
“[The class] is all I wanted and more. I really wanted to do something like this, and now here we have our time to shine, and I’m looking forward to it.” Gonzalez said. “In the future I’ll be shooting movies for marketing, possibly advertising commercials and stuff like that.”
Initially, Trevino took the class as an elective course, but she says the course is a lot more interesting that she thought it would be. “I didn’t realize there’s time, there’s work, there’s angles. You shoot, you reshoot. You take stuff out, you add stuff in. We take all that into consideration when we are discussing our film,” Trevino said. Vazquez estimates the movie will finish near the end of October, just in time for the Halloween season.
18Once the movie is presented for class, Vazquez hopes “An old friend” can be submitted for competitions in movie festivals. “In my head I’m trying to see where else it can go. If it does really well, I want to see if we can push it to little conventions and festivals. But right now, our priority is to put it for class and giving our effort there. It’s always an idea in my head that I’ve always wanted to go in to those little film festivals,” Vazquez said
