TORTURED HEART
A Director's Experience Making a Low Budget Film

By Dean Calusdian

Ever since I was a child watching "Creature Double Feature" every Saturday afternoon, I have loved horror films. In high school, Friday nights were spent scouring the video store with my friends looking for obscure horror titles. We had seen every slasher movie and were tired of watching teenagers being dispatched in various ways. I wanted to someday create a horror movie that was different, a movie that would stimulate the audience's imagination, and respect their intelligence.
My opportunity came in the spring of 1992 during my senior year at Emerson College. The cost of supplies in film classes were too high so I put aside my love of the movies and majored in theatre. After a stage performance of Dracula, which I had directed, a gentleman approached me and offered to finance my next production.
The money that he offered was more than I had ever seen. Unfortunately, as I would discover much later, it was not nearly enough to make a feature film. I took a year to write the script, after purchasing every book on the subject. As I wrote, my mind would wander and the pages would fill with doodles of the strange world in which the action would take place. After months of working on the screenplay, I had more designs than dialogue.
I developed the story of Joe, a high school student whose unrequited love for his classmate, Lee, drags them both to a surreal world of pain and longing. The teen years are filled with intense fear, desire, and longing. In the script, I gave these overpowering emotions life, personified by bizarre monsters. This symbolism would make the horrors in my film more real than any maniac in a hockey mask.

****

Filmed under the title "Somewhere Deep Inside," the name then was changed to Tortured Hearts. Everyone assumed "Somewhere Deep Inside" was a porn film. I even had an offer from the greasy man at the truck rental agency to "perform" with his girl friend in the movie.
I started to build a film crew by assembling a group of college friends who, in turn, recommended some film professionals to me. By hiring as many people as I could with connections to film rental houses, I was able to get free or discounted equipment. I formed my Limited Partnership, "Somewhere Productions," and began to realize that about eighty percent of film-making is paper work and legalities.
I found, and lost, four different set designers and art directors before I found one who was brave enough to commit to creating such elaborate sets with such a low budget. Laura Ballinger began designing the sets only weeks before we were to begin shooting. A friend's uncle owned an old textile warehouse where the sets were constructed and the majority of filming would take place. At this make-shift "sound-stage," I began to create an entire world with a construction crew comprised entirely of friends working in their spare time. I further saved money on lumber by "borrowing" left over set pieces from The Good Son, a Macaully Caulkin feature that had filmed locally.

****

The first week of filming comprised of on-location photography. I obtained permission to shoot at my old High School for three days, under the stipulation that we only could only work during the eight hours that the janitor was on duty. This location, the backdrop for the ill-fated romance between Joe and Lee, proved to be equally troublesome to the filmmakers. As we were about to film a key scene in which Joe and his teacher, Mr. Jones, make a deal to ensure Lee's affections, our producer left with the keys to the all-important grip truck. Our time to film dwindled as we waited for a locksmith to release our equipment. At the end of the day, while Mr. Jones seduced Joe into his bizarre plot, I pleaded with the principal to let us stay a few moments longer to finish the scene.
The remainder of location filming included my own bedroom and a local theater, where I again was left pleading to stay and film a few moments longer. At every location, my hosts seemed to regret welcoming me. Most had expected a kid with a video camera, and were surprised when a fifty-person crew and two sixteen-ton equipment trucks arrived.
After only the first week of our three-week shoot, time and money already had become a problem. I was already way over budget and with a week before the warehouse shoot, the sets were still incomplete. My construction designer began to sleep in the warehouse to complete the sets on time. Fortunately, a realistic bedroom set was one of the first built.
A few days before we were to re-commence filming, all of our free equipment was taken away by the rental house. Karate Kid 3 was filming in town and was willing to pay more for the equipment than we ever could. I was forced to borrow money from my parents to continue the film, while my producer called all over the east coast trying to find the equipment we needed at an affordable price.
For a set depicting a "reading room" in the bizarre world of Tortured Hearts, we took some furniture and a few of the set walls to a field behind the warehouse and created a more surreal setting. However, as we were close to wrapping up for the night, a lightning storm rapidly approached on the horizon. We were a dream come true for a bolt of lightning as we stood in a large open field surrounded by twenty-foot metal poles holding lights with tremendous wattage. We continued filming close-ups as grips raced to remove the equipment.

****

By the end of the first week of shooting the actors were getting impatient. The old textile warehouse was dark and uncomfortable, and we were constantly inhaling bits of polyester that still floated through the air. My lead actress, Emily, was becoming dismayed at the trials she had to endure. Being bound with chains had caused her ankles to swell and she had flea bites from being dragged through hay in the scene of her abduction. All of the actors were being bit by spiders. Paul Stickney, who played Cannio, the tortured and obnoxious clown who guides Joe through the film, still shows off his spider bite scars like old war wounds. Lawrence, the eighteen year old who played Joe, was the youngest on the set and never lost his enthusiasm. When the crew was cranky, Lawrence would liven their spirits by imitating kung-fu movies or making his eyes bulge from their sockets.
For the next two weeks, we shot at night to avoid the summer heat while sets continued to be constructed during the day. I would film for up to fourteen hours every night, take a three hour nap in the morning, and return to the warehouse to help finish the sets until it was time to begin filming again. It was both exhausting and exhilarating.

****

The pressures of film-making, though, had begun to take their toll on me. I had lost thirty pounds, and three hours of sleep a day was certainly not enough. Filming this movie seemed more like a cruel sleep deprivation project than the fulfillment of my dream. Under the intense pressure and loss of sleep, I felt like I was going crazy. I would constantly hear the complaints of the actors and crew, and the deafening sound of my wallet being sucked dry. No film class ever prepared me for this. My energy and focus had to be clear for the night of shooting, but when I went home, my emotions took over. I would cry for no reason at all under the pressure. Tortured Hearts was only a low budget film, but to me it was everything.
And then things got worse. As we were filming a climactic scene where Joe is being pursued by inhuman creatures, everything on the set went dark. We had blown a transformer, which also had shut down the adjacent textile factory. The owner arrived almost instantly and screamed that we had to be out by morning. At that point, I completely lost all control. I was physically dragged away from the owner by my producer and cinematographer. As the crew tore down sets by flashlight, I sat in the dark and cried. To top it all off, it was my birthday.
It seemed like that was the end of my dream. The equipment had been rented, the sets were built, and half of the film was in the can. I could not afford the time or the expense to find another warehouse. There was only one thing left to do . . . beg. I pleaded with the owner the next morning. Almost in tears, I told him that I would work in his factory to make up for any inconvenience I may have caused. After explaining how much he regretted ever letting us use the warehouse, he allowed shooting to continue-- but without the use of his electricity.
In their search for Lee, Joe and Cannio fall into a garbage pit filled with naked, writhing bodies. Like the sirens of Greek mythology they tempt our heroes to stay. I could see that my actors and actresses were nervous about performing in the nude, so I took part in the scene myself. With the director in his birthday suit, all attention was taken off my scantily clad extras. After all that had transpired, it became one of the most relaxing and entertaining days on the shoot.

****

When filming was complete, I was given only one day to clear out the warehouse. Not able to afford a crew to help me, my family once again came to lend a hand. I wondered if Speilberg's mom helped him clean up after Jaws, or break down E.T.'s spaceship. Having nowhere to store the sets, they ended up in my back yard, where most of them still reside. The film was taken to the lab where it would sit for almost a year before I could pay for the processing. I worked in a day care to pay off the crew to whom I still owed money. My co-workers found it strange that I was working as a child care professional to pay for a horror film.
After borrowing more money and acquiring more investments, I was ready to begin editing my movie. My editor was Steve Gentile, who had edited the cult favorite "Complex World," and whose animated films had won international acclaim. Soon the film began to take shape.
The first cut of Tortured Hearts was running about fifteen minutes short so I decided to add new scenes. Re-shoots were filmed in the summer of '94, one year after principal photography. Many of my original crew members had moved to the west coast so a new group of film-makers were hired. I was now more experienced and comfortable in the director's chair, but the re-shoots were not without problems.
The new scenes needed to match the continuity of the original material exactly. However, Lawrence had grown his hair long and Emily had shaved most of hers off. The scenes were filmed in a local park and once again I was left pleading with the park manager for one last shot. Neighbors had called complaining about the screaming -- it was a horror movie, after all. In our rush to leave the park, a roll of film was exposed to light, and destroyed. If it were not for the skills of my editor, the entire scene would have been cut and I could not have afforded re-shoots of re-shoots.
For the next year, I toiled at the day care center to earn money to edit the sound for the film. The pace was agonizing. My sole creative input was writing checks to my sound editors. We could only work for brief periods of time as I earned the money to continue the work.
Once all of the sound elements were complete, the sound needed to be mixed down to one track which would accompany the film. We convinced Joe Grimaldi, one of Canada's leading sound mixers, to leave retirement and work on my movie. His previous credits included sound mixing for Agnes of God and Moonstruck. It was worth traveling to Canada to work with such a professional. He treated Tortured Hearts with the same respect as his previously successful films.
When I returned from Canada, everything began moving quickly. The negative needed to be cut, and then prints of the film could be made. Having spent all of my money on the sound mix, I had to use four credit cards to complete the film.

****

1996, Four long years after I had conceived of the idea for Tortured Hearts, the film was complete. Over the next year, Tortured Hearts toured film festivals as we saught distribution....but that's a whole other story.