Night moves: Local filmmakers sink teeth into new vampire flick

Photos courtesy Old School Pictures

Matthew Stiller and Rachel Kimsey star in "Daylight Fades," a vampire movie set in present-day Memphis.

When "Daylight Fades," the night follows, bringing darkness and danger.

Oddly enough, such nocturnal happenings also mark the start of a potentially bright new day for the longtime friends and partners in Old School Pictures, a local production company.

Casting for "Daylight Fades" was under way when the vampire mania erupted, and director Brad Ellis says the film company used that momentum to obtain funding.

Old School Pictures

Old School Pictures partner Allen Gardner wrote the script for "Daylight Fades," and performs in the movie.

The first Memphis-made vampire feature film, "Daylight Fades" debuts Tuesday night at the Malco Paradiso in the midst of an unprecedented national mania for bloodsucking on screen, on television and on the printed page.

Not since Bela Lugosi put the bite on Broadway when he donned the cape of "Dracula" for the first time in 1927 have vampires made such an impact, thanks to "Twilight," "True Blood," "The Vampire Diaries," and other sagas of the children of the night.

"The irony is, when I first started writing 'Daylight Fades,' vampire stuff was not hot, and I was like, 'I don't know if people are going to want to see a vampire movie,'" said Old School partner Allen Gardner, 29, scripter and co-star of "Daylight Fades."

The filmmakers already were casting "Daylight" when "the vampire phenomenon exploded," said director Brad Ellis, who turns 30 on June 24. Although he was aware some onlookers would assume Old School was exploiting the craze after the fact, "it was important to us to look at this as not a curse, but a blessing. We used the momentum of the genre to help us with our funding. We used it to our advantage."

Now, the filmmakers believe "Daylight Fades" could be the first Old School production with "a strong chance of finding a welcome place in the independent film market," said Gardner, who moved to Los Angeles several years ago to pursue a career in acting and filmmaking.

Gardner describes "Daylight Fades" as "a very realistic vampire movie. No one turns into a bat or flies or sparkles."

Set in present-day Memphis, where the film was shot for 6 1/2 weeks in January and February of 2009 (cinematographer John Paul Clark used a Red One digital camera), "Daylight Fades" is the story of Johnny (Matthew Stiller), a young man seriously injured in a car accident shortly after a fight with Elizabeth (Rachel Miles), the woman he loves.

Johnny seems doomed to die until the mysterious Seth (Gardner) visits him at the hospital; Seth saves him the only way possible, by converting him into a vampire.

Gardner said he went to the dentist the first day of shooting to have molds made of his teeth, so special makeup effects artist Jim Eikner could create his customized vampire canines. Unfortunately, "I didn't really get off on having fangs that much, because my character is too tortured," he said. "He has a lot of internal conflict regarding his vampirism."

Is vampirism in this case a metaphor for love and heartbreak?

"You can read into it as much as you want," Gardner said. "It's like anything that people wrestle with in life, disease, alcoholism -- the part of you that sets up barriers between yourself and the ones you love. The characters have their problems outside of vampirism, so the supernatural element becomes another hurdle they have to clear to strengthen their relationships and get their lives together."

In any case, fangs and other horror effects are used very sparingly in the film. "We look at these characters not as if they're monsters of the night but as if they have some affliction," Ellis said.

More than a decade old, Old School Pictures was founded almost as a sort of extracurricular filmmaking club by four members of Germantown's Houston High School Class of 1999. The original Old Schoolers include Gardner; Ellis, who remains in Memphis, where he co-owns a corporate video company, New School Media (the other owner is "Daylight" sound designer Sean Faust); Matt Weatherly, editor and co-producer of "Daylight Fades," who now lives in Denver; and Memphis' Mark Norris, "Daylight" co-producer.

The first Old School feature was "Halloween 1998," a very watchable no-budget practice copy of John Carpenter's slasher classic. Nine feature films of increasing professionalism have followed; until "Daylight," the most recent were "The Path of Fear" (2002), a ghost story, and "Act One" (2005), a romantic comedy that presaged "Knocked Up": It's about an irresponsible young man (Gardner) who learns his "one night stand" is pregnant. Both those movies were named best local narrative feature at the Indie Memphis Film Festival.

The increasing gaps between productions offer a measure of Old School's increasing ambition. "Act One" was budgeted at $12,000; "Daylight Fades" cost about $150,000 in "cold hard cash," Ellis said -- an amount that's a pittance in Hollywood terms but a fortune for a largely self-financed Memphis indie.

The Old School partners were committed to making "Daylight Fades" a movie that could compete with more lavish productions. "We wanted to up our game all around, and make a film that would be more accessible in the market," Gardner said. "It led to a lot of anguished but excited discussions, because we were dying to make this movie. The longer we had to wait, the more passionate everyone got."

The film's executive producer, Ryan Watt, helped make the movie a reality. Watt is one of the area's busiest moviemakers; he has helped find funding for such projects as Kentucker Audley's "Open Five."

Adding to the professional aura are the film's leads, Stiller and Miles, working actors cast in Los Angeles. Adding allure are Rachel Kimsey, who was a regular on "The Young and the Restless," and Clare Grant, the Memphis-born actress who recently made gossip-column headlines with her marriage to Seth Green, an actor with his own sanguinary pedigree: He played the werewolf "Oz," a recurring character on the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" TV series.

The "Daylight Fades" screenings Tuesday night are expected to sell out. The next public screening probably will be a Los Angeles premiere, possibly followed by a limited theatrical booking in Memphis.

'Daylight Fades'

The movie screens at 6:30 and 9:15 p.m. Tuesday at the Paradiso, 584 S. Mendenhall Road. The first show is sold out. Tickets remaining for the second show are $14 each, available at daylightfades.com. The movie is not rated, but parents beware: Its adult language and subject matter probably would earn an R.

The premiere is presented by Indie Memphis, the Memphis & Shelby County Film and Television Commission and MemphisED. A portion of the proceeds will benefit this year's Indie Memphis Film Festival.

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