Sigrid Thornton Scare Campaign

Sigrid Thornton Scare Campaign

Cast: Meegan Warner, Ian Meadows, Olivia DeJonge, Josh Quong Tart, Patrick Harvey, Cassandra Magrath, Steve Mouzakis, John Brumpton, Jason Geary, Sigrid Thornton
Directors: Colin and Cameron Cairnes
Running Time: 80 minutes

Synopsis: TV show, Scare Campaign, has been the gold standard in prank entertainment for five seasons, but with darker and more daring reality horror shows turning up on the Internet, the format is starting to look a little old fashioned.

Scare Campaign's ruthless director, Marcus, is delivered an ultimatum by the network: push the show into darker territory or face cancellation. Not to be outdone when it comes to scaring a new generation raised on torture porn and borderline snuff, Marcus comes up with an idea that will completely turn horror-themed prank television on its head.

Their next episode is set in an old abandoned asylum and Marcus has handpicked the stooge; a man with a dark past called Rohan. An edgy new format calls for a fresh approach to casting.

Marcus calls on his favourite actress (and recently ex-girlfriend), Emma, to play the key role of the asylum administrator. But Emma's been having misgivings about the show (and her director) since a near-fatal mishap on the set of their last prank. She eventually agrees to take part after Marcus appeals to her compassionate side: the jobs of the tight‐knit Scare Campaign crew are on the line here.

So all is in readiness for what will be the most elaborate Scare Campaign prank to date. Cameras are hidden. Gags are set up. And then there's Marcus's ace in the hole – Abby. This talented teenager promises to be their most convincing 'ghost‐girl" yet.

When prank victim-to-be, Rohan, arrives at the asylum, Emma immediately senses there is something not quite right about him. And when she discovers that he was once a patient at the asylum, and that Marcus is preying on his past, she fears that continuing the prank could be dangerous.

But Marcus refuses to shut it down. However disturbed this Rohan might actually be, this is turning out to be a horror prank for the ages.

Events take a frightening turn during the climactic scare, when Rohan turns on Abby. The prank victim is now the one orchestrating the scares and the cameras are capturing it all. Emma can't just stand by and do nothing. She goes to stop Rohan, who is out of his mind and out for revenge.

The Scare Campaigners have unwittingly unleashed a psychopath and it's now up to Emma, Marcus and the rest of the team to outsmart this monster – before they are all killed.

Scare Campaign
Release Date: March 12th, 2016

About The Production

Shortly after the release of their debut feature film 100 Bloody Acres in 2012, Australian filmmakers Colin and Cameron Cairnes began thinking about their next movie. It didn't yet have a title, let alone a premise, but after casually browsing viral videos on YouTube, a germ of an idea had started to form. The writing and directing brothers began throwing ideas around with producer Julie Ryan (Red Dog, Tracks), with whom they had also worked with on Acres. One of those ideas was about making a horror movie around the viral phenomenon of filmed pranks.

Explains Cameron, "[Scare Campaign] really evolved from us watching YouTube clips – stuff where elaborate pranks get a bit out of hand, where people are really put under duress. There's a funny one from Mexico that did the rounds a few years back. People enter a lift, the lift breaks down, and then suddenly this ghost girl appears behind them, screaming. People were genuinely freaking out at the sight of this girl! So our idea was -what if one of those people, those victims, turned on this girl and the people behind the prank?"

"What if they pranked the wrong guy?" prompts Colin.

The idea began to take shape, but the filmmaking brothers didn't want to tackle screenplay duties until they had seen a couple of locations first. And where better to start looking than country Victoria in Australia, littered with old mental asylums and other abandoned institutions. Says Cameron, 'A lot of the time your story is informed by a location. If we had these TV producers who were setting up this elaborate prank, what might be a typical location for them to shoot in? A morgue, an abandoned asylum, something inherently creepy."

In the former gold mining town of Beechworth stands the majestic and haunting Mayday Hills Lunatic Asylum. The now decommissioned hospital was the fourth such institution to be built in Victoria in the 1800s and is set in 106 hectares of farmland, meaning the asylum was completely self‐sufficient. The hospital actually closed in 1995 after 128 years of operation, was then managed by La Trobe University for a while, and is now owned by local businessmen, George Fendyk and Geoff Lucas. Ghost tours are now regularly held at the former hospital, allowing public access to the historic buildings.

'We fell in love with Mayday Hills, and the town of Beechworth itself," reflects Colin. "We got to know the gentlemen who now own the complex really well – they were really friendly guys and incredibly receptive to us making a film there. It's just such a fantastic location." At its peak, Mayday Hills had some 1200 patients, split evenly between men and women.

With a script relying heavily on securing the right location, Mayday Hills was a creative blessing for the filmmakers. "To walk into some of these rooms in Beechworth, well, they're already as good as any set you might design," says Cameron. "It was only just a matter of dressing it up here and there. There are endless corridors, subterranean sections, and wonderful old lofts, rooms and cells, some of which haven't been used in forty or fifty years."

It is unsurprising then that the former Mayday Hills Lunatic Asylum is reportedly one of the most haunted locations in Australia. During the shoot, the cast and crew stayed in the former nurses quarters, which has its own dark past. There were many on the set that reported eerie goings-on, things going missing, phantom footsteps, disembodied voices and even an elevator that would move floor-to-floor of its own accord, opening at will to reveal nothing inside.

With a location locked and a screenplay ready, Colin and Cameron turned their attention to casting. They soon found their male lead in Ian Meadows (The Moodys, The Pacific), who Cameron explains was an actor the filmmakers were keen to work with. 'Ian's a great actor who we've had our eye on for a number of years. We wanted to work with him previous to this but it just never worked out."

Ian plays Marcus in the film, the host of the movie's titular TV show Scare Campaign. According to Cameron, Ian satisfied the filmmakers' visions of Marcus to a tee. 'The character of Marcus is a charmer, a guy you could have a beer with, but also a guy who ladies might swoon over. "

'But," adds Colin, 'Marcus also has a cocky, manipulative side so we wanted to cast someone inherently likable, in order for the character to get away with those less endearing traits. Ian had the perfect mix of charisma and acting chops to pull off what was actually a very tough role."

Colin and Cameron had already spent several weeks auditioning actors for the role of Emma when Meegan Warner (Turn, The Veil) was suggested. The ultimate measure of any horror heroine is the -scream test', their ability to run from or towards danger, and in a film that pays homage to many of the classic horror conventions, the full-bloodedness of their scream! Notes Colin, "Playing Emma was always going to be a fun acting challenge, but also incredibly demanding physically."

Being based in New York, Warner shot her own screen test. It was an improvised horror scene in which she'd play the young prey on the run. Using an iPhone to capture her performance, the actress had a friend play the villain in the short piece, which contained enthusiastic moments of her tumbling over the couch and fighting back. 'It was quite harrowing to watch because it looked like some sort of found footage movie," says Colin. 'It was very convincing!"

With Emma and Marcus locked in, casting then moved on to finding Scare Campaign's villain, Rohan. 'The film hinges upon this character and we needed someone who could basically be our Anthony Perkins," Cameron says, referring to the actor who immortalised Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock's classic Psycho.

Cue the entrance of Josh Quong Tart (Underbelly, The Great Mint Swindle). 'Josh just totally got it – he loves that world, he loves horror films, he's always wanted to play a maniac and he absolutely relished this role," says Cameron. 'And he would just totally give himself over to the character, really feeling those moments of horror. There's a scene where he's punching his fist through glass and cutting this young woman's throat and he's just like -I'm there. I believe it. I just want to pull her head back and cut her throat! What director is going to get in the way of that sort of method?"

At the time of shooting, Quong Tart was playing the villain, Scar, in the stage production of Disney's The Lion King. Says Colin, "When he left to return to The Lion King, everyone was really sad to see him go, it just wasn't the same, and then he came back a couple of weeks later and it was great because we all got our Josh fix again. He just gives his all and brings so much joy to the set."

Olivia DeJonge (Hiding, The Visit) who plays the TV show's new recruit Abby, was not just the youngest person on set, but also one of the most professional. At the time Olivia had just returned from the US where she'd shot the lead role in the M.Night Shyamalan film, The Visit.

"We'd heard lots of good things about Olivia," reflects Cameron. "Our DP, John Brawley, had worked with her on the TV drama Hiding, and he spoke very highly of her. We met Olivia and her family in Melbourne about a month before we went into production and it was immediately clear that this actress has an amazing future ahead of her. She has a wisdom and intelligence beyond her years. '

"She's very intuitive," says Cameron. 'She needed very little direction. Often times you'd go up and offer a note and she'd just give you a little look back like -yeah, I got it'."

"Sometimes the best thing a director can do is simply not get in the way, and with Olivia it's generally -take one' that's in the movie. She's just such a natural," says Colin.

With the cast locked and shooting commencing, the Cairnes brothers felt they had the right talent on board to truly bring Scare Campaign to life. However, creating a television show within a film is no easy feat and for Scare Campaign Colin and Cameron had created stories within stories and multiple points of view.

"Are we seeing the story unfold through the Scare Campaign cameras or are we seeing it more objectively?" Colin asks. "There are numerous layers to the narrative and we put a lot of thought into how we would represent those points of view. Often it was about being with Emma, since she's our hero, and taking the audience on her journey. But you're also experiencing events from the TV control room – you're revealing a bit of what's going on there. And there are times when the audience is with our villain, Rohan, wondering when he's going to flip and how that's going to play out. So there's a bit of thought that goes into how you're going to stage and cover the scene at any given time – whose point of view matters here? Where does the camera go, and how do you piece it all back together in the edit to make it as suspenseful as possible?"

'It became quite challenging at times, especially on a tight schedule," agrees Cameron, 'just in terms of what needed to be hidden or revealed in any particular scene."

Normally, the filmmakers say, they wouldn't spend too much time agonizing over coverage – but as Scare Campaign is all about the way different characters experience the story, it was important they got exactly what they needed. But with master DP, John Brawley, lensing the film, and actively encouraging the use of multiple formats and cameras, Scare Campaign received the aesthetic attention that was required to bring all those layers to life.

The award winning Justin Dix was Scare Campaign's practical effects and production designer, and played a significant role in realizing the Cairnes brothers' vision. "No one worked harder than Justin and his amazing, dedicated team," comments Colin.

"When you're on a tight schedule and you've only got one shot at getting the gags right, Justin always delivers," says Cameron. "We would leave the effects stuff until the end of the day, and we'd only have an hour or two to get the shot done, but the way it was choreographed and coordinated was like a polished stage performance. We always seemed to get the shot we needed first take!""

By the time the footage hit the editing room, Colin and Cameron had turned their original "germ of an idea" into a unique, multi-layered horror film. The Scare Campaign audience should prepare themselves for an adrenaline--‐fuelled horror movie, full of twists and turns, and plenty of scares. But if there is one thing they should take away from the Scare Campaign experience, it's 'be careful who you prank!"

Scare Campaign
Release Date: March 12th, 2016