Scared Stiff interview with Douglas Plomitallo
Scared Stiff TV, an original horror anthology series created by horror fans for horror fans.
We caught up with producer, Douglas A. Plomitallo, to talk about his Scared Stiff series.
Horror News Network: How did you come up with the concept for these short horror movies?
Douglas A. Plomitallo: Well, before I started the show a few years ago, I originally was thinking about writing an anthology book of horror stories. I had a handful of storylines written out, but from the beginning, filmmaking was always what intrigued me the most. And at the time, I don’t think that there were any anthology shows on the web, so I decided to go the route of a web series.
Horror News Network: Can you tell us about your latest episode, “Predator: The True Horrors of Halloween”?
Douglas A. Plomitallo: “Predator” is about a young boy who is out trick-or-treating alone on Halloween night. A man sees the boy walking and tells him to get in the car so he can bring the boy to safety. Since it is a short film, I don’t want to give too much away as to what happens next, but the rest of the story is about what happens when you make bad decisions on Halloween night!
Horror News Network: How long did it take to create that episode? Is that approximately the normal time in creating one of these films?
Douglas A. Plomitallo: We shot “Predator” in three nights, two nights of principal photography and one additional night of re-shoots. The trouble we had with that particular episode is that because it took place on Halloween night, we couldn’t shoot until it was dark out. That means we couldn’t start lighting the set until 7 or so in the evening. The other problem was that the young boy in the film was only seven years old so we couldn’t go too late into the night. So we had a short window to get everything done.
Post-production was spread out over a couple of weeks. We shot the ending scene first, so I had that edited together by the time we shot the opening scenes.
The shooting times vary, but on average we usually shoot for 2 or 3 days for each episode. “Tiny’s Halloween 2” was our longest at 7 days of shooting. The shortest was “The Best Day of My Life” which was shot in only 2 or 3 hours. “The Confessional”, which was shot on green screen and was mostly done in CG-I took close to ten months, on and off, to complete.
Horror News Network: Can you tell us a bit about the actors involved in these films? It seems that a lot of the actors are used in multiple films.
Douglas A. Plomitallo: At the beginning of the show, I used a lot of the same actors out of necessity as I was pretty much using mostly friends and family in roles. My plan was that if I put out a good product, people would want to be a part of it and eventually I could add to the cast. But by using the same actors on various episodes, I started to get comments from fans of the show asking for certain people to return. So I started to recast people in different parts for different shows. Now fans have their favorite “Scared Stiff actor” and look forward to seeing them back in different roles. It’s kinda fun to change it up by having someone who usually plays a good guy suddenly be a villain in a different story.
Horror News Network: How often are new movies added to the site?
Douglas A. Plomitallo: We try to have one ready a month, but it gets tough to stick to that schedule sometimes. I try not to make it go more than two months between episodes. We’ve been putting out interviews and additional content to try to fill in the gap between releases to keep the fans entertained throughout the year.
Horror News Network: Where can our readers find out more about Scared Stiff?
Douglas A. Plomitallo: Readers can find out more about the show and it’s cast and crew by visiting the website, www.ScaredStiff.tv. The shows can be downloaded for free to watch on their mobile devices on the site and can be watched in High-Definition on our YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/scaredstiff.tv).
Horror News Network: In closing, what would you like to say about Scared Stiff?
Douglas A. Plomitallo: It’s been a blast working on “Scared Stiff”. I’m really proud of what the team has accomplished in the past 3 years. We’ve had fans that have been watching from the beginning and have seen how the show has evolved over time. In my opinion, the quality of the show has improved with each episode and it’s pretty amazing to see how the show has grown since our first episode “A Victim in the Night” all the way to our latest one, “Predator: The True Horrors of Halloween”. We try to change it up every once in a while to offer a little something for everyone. We hope to keep raising our own bar and keep putting out episodes to entertain the fans.
Horror News Network: Thank you for your time, Douglas! Good luck with Scared Stiff! Comment on this interview here.
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