I recently had a sit down with the two filmmakers of the short film Treevenge. The film examines what would happen if the Christmas trees we chop down every year decided to take revenge on humanity.Stories in Medium: How did you both get into film making?
Jason Eisener: I started making skateboarding films in high school with one of my best friends. In grade 10 drama class our teacher wanted us all to come up with an idea for the school play. The teacher told us our idea was too crazy for the stage and we should try making it into a movie. So we did just that and made a little movie. We showed it to the class, and they really got into it. Their reaction was addictive, so we just kept making movies through high school. After high school I enrolled in the two year Screen Arts program at the Nova Scotia Community College.
Rob Cotterill: I have always had a lifelong affinity for film, as a kid I worked in a video store. When I was at Concordia University I took the film study course, and that was the bases of my education. I worked on a few independent films in Montreal, but fell out of it when I moved back to New Brunswick. Inevitably the industry called me back and I started working as an AD (assistant director) and have been doing that for the last 10 years.
SiM: How did the two of you meet up? Did you know right away that you were going to work together for the future?
RC: We met on the set of Trailer Park Boys.
JE: Rob was working as an AD and I started on the set as a daily. We started talking about movies and met at a bar where I showed Rob a short film I shot. He saw some potential and we started working on our own projects together.
RC: We found out we both loved genre films, started hanging out and then started making movies, together.
SiM: You won the South by Southwest Grindhouse trailers contest with "Hobo With A Shotgun", did winning that contest lead into other opportunities?
JE: Hobo was the first project that Rob and I, plus our good friend John Davies did together. It helped get our names out there, espicially in our home town. So when we were putting Treevenge together it helped us get a good crew together. It also helped to get a feature Hobo With a Shotgun movie, which we hope to start soon.
RC: With the success of Hobo and now Treevenge, we have two good calling cards that are helping us get financing together to do a Hobo feature film later this year.
SiM: What inspired you to come up with the idea for Treevenge?
JE: A couple years ago when my family, who really gets into christmas, were decorating the christmas tree and started putting the hooks onto the tree. All I could think was how horrifying an experience this must be for a christmas tree. Being chopped down, dragged into the house, screwed into a stand, lights thrown across them, with christmas music blasting as you are humiliating the tree by placing decorations all over them. It was a really interesting perspective, so I pitched it to Rob while we were making Hobo and he thought it was a really cool idea. After Hobo was finished we sat down and put the story together.
SiM: Shooting the film from the trees perspective was that how the script started or did you start by taking looking at it from a humans perspective?
JE: It was always from the christmas trees perspective. Just seeing what it would br like for the tree on christmas and how overwelming it would be. I thought telling the story through the eyes of the chrstimas tree would be pretty interesting.
RC: The script is entirely from the trees point of view. We were very consience of keeping it that way. The human story around the christmas tree isn’t that interesting.
SiM: Now that the film has finished is there anything you would change?
JE: It is what it is, with any project you wish you had more time for certain scenes. Or if you could back and just change that part you would but you just have to move on.
RC: We have seen the movie so many times that I am sure we could find a few things to change but I think as a whole the movie is pretty great and I am proud of it and I think Jason is as well.
SiM: Like Hobo, is there any chance we will see a full length film of Treevenge?
JE: I think it serves the purpose of the short film, but I don’t know we are always coming up with ideas for other things.
RC: There was some various things we talked about doing for Treevenge that we would have loved to have done, but we just doing a short film.
JE: If there was someone interested we would definitly entertain the idea.
SiM: The trees in the movie, were they a full costume or real trees you just manipulated?
JE: A little bit of both, Rob and our good friend Sara Dunsworth went around after christmas picking up tree carcasses that were left out and we recylced those. There is part in Gremlins where you see a guy in a christmas tree suit. Gremlins was a big influence on this film and we knew instantly we needed a costume like that.
SiM: Did you create a “tree” language for the film?
RC: We didn’t create the tree language, we basically just recorded a several of actors doing a bunch of crazy noises and whatever kind of garble they can come up with.
JE: We took sound effects from squirrells, racoons and dolphins and played around with those. The actors based some of the noise off this and we blended in some of the animal noise as well.
RC: Making the tree voices was a difficult task. But it was worth it, they defintaly needed to have their own language.
SiM: What insights did you gain from making this film?
JE: Rob really got the set to run like an actual film, unlike Hobo which was just him, a few friends, myself and our actor just running around the streets. Treevenge had a film crew, so it was the first time I had to give up the camera and had it in the hands of another camera operator. It was big learning experience for me, I had some challenges getting used to directing the camera operator from a monitor. It was frustrating at first as I was always used to rehearsing with actors and then just shoot it myself. I had to really learn how to convey how I wanted the shot to look.
RC: It was an important process I had to put Jason through. He seemed after the first couple days of it that he got the hang of it pretty quick.
SiM: The film stars Trailer Park Boys regulars Jonathan Torrens & Sarah Dunsworth, was it an easy task of getting these guys to sign on?
RC: They are good friends. I have been working on Trailer Park Boys since season 3. Sara helped us on Hobo and Treevenge, with costumes and casting. There are some really talented people in Halifax and they wanted to help us out.
SiM: Do you feel you went a little over the top for the “baby killing” and “tree rape” scenes? Or did you cut something else out entirely that you felt was to excessive?
RC: There is a deleted scene that was less excessive than what actually made it into the movie. Also there were a couple scenes in the script that we cut out but they wouldn’t have been any more excessive than the baby killing. I am comfortable with it, especially with the opening of the film with the killing of the trees, specifically a sapling that gets stomped on.
SiM: Treevenge played at Sundance Film Festival where it garnered an Honourable Mention. Was this your first trip to Sundance? And will the experience help you become better filmmakers?
RC: This was our first time attending as well as having a film in the festival. It was definitely an eye opening festival for us. This was the first time that Treevenge had played for a non converted audience and we were out of our genre element.
JE: With the film not playing at a genre festival we weren’t sure how the crowd would react. It was interesting to see how the film was going to play.
RC: And it went off, just like any of the genre film festivals which was really amazing to us. Some volunteers came up to us after and said they have never seen a reaction like that in the years they had been there.
SiM: What are your future plans? Any upcoming projects we should know about?
RC: The Hobo feature is what we are working on right now. Hopefully sometime it will be released in 2010.
SiM: Last question, were you wary of putting up a christmas tree after making this film?
RC: I don’t do Christmas trees; I have a fake tree because my girlfriend wants one. That was our compromise.
JE: I really like Christmas trees and I had a real one this year
RC: Isn’t yours still drying out in the living room?
JE: No, we took it down sometime around January 9th.
RC: But you didn’t water it once.
JE: No we did water it.
RC: Yeah right.
Here is the trailer for the movie if you have not seen it yet.
Treevenge has won a number of awards from film festivals including, New York Horror Film Fest, Toronto After Dark Festival, Fantasia Film Festival and a few others. Sundance Film Festival also gave the film an honourable mention. Treevenge also received the Best Short Film award from Rue Morgue Magazine.
Look for Treevenge in a city near you. Below is a list of a few film festivals coming soon that it will be playing at.
SXSW Film Festival
The Saratosa Film Festival
Festival Mauvais Genre
Calgary Underground Film Festival
Boston Underground Film Festival
Faux Film Festival
AFI Dallas
Reelshorts Film Fest
You can also check out Rob and Jason on treevenge.com and also on the treevenge facebook group.
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