Case Study: The making of mystery-thriller, 8 Remains by Juliane Block

Date: 26th January 2019
Case Study: The Making of 8 Remains
Filmmaker: Juliane Block

Q: What is your film about?

Juliane Block: 8 Remains is a psychological thriller written by Laura Sommer about a young woman, Talli, who gets choked to death by her lover Damien on her birthday. Right when she’s about to die time stops and Talli finds herself in a shadow world, a distorted mirror of reality. Caught between life and death Talli has to relive moments of her life. Guided by the spirits of Damien’s victims, Talli descends into a purgatory built on the fears and regrets of her past. She has to face them all to survive.

Q: Tell us about the festival run, marketing and sales?

Juliane Block: Our marketing plan for 8 Remains focuses on a quick release using availability and reviews to reach a broad audience, rather than a lengthy festival run, which can easily stall the release for another year or two. We worked out our release strategy with our distributor Indierights. 8 Remains was released theatrically in the US, immediately followed by a VOD release on Amazon Prime in all English speaking territories and in Germany. We are in the process of acquiring reviews from magazines and bloggers all over the world, and now, shortly after our release, are proud to get the first positive results!/

Q: Do fill in the ‘Dramatic Feature’ below

• Director: Juliane Block
• Producers: Willi Haninger, Laura Sommer, Juliane Block.
• Budget: 500,000 GBP (Financed through private investors & deferred payments)
• Production: 8 Doors GbR
• Shooting Format: Shot digitally in 4K
• Screening Format: Cinemascope 2K
• World Premiere: 23^rd November, Los Angeles
• Awards: Since we skipped the festival run no awards yet
• Website: 8remains

Q: Give the full Official Synopsis for your film?

Juliane Block: The young and beautiful Talli gets choked to death by her lover Damien on her birthday. Right when she’s about to die time stops and Talli finds herself in a shadow world, a distorted mirror of reality. Caught between life and death Talli has to relive the hours prior to her murder, since all paths seem to lead her to Damien, the lover who’s also her killer.

When Talli finds herself attacked by him again, she manages to fight him off long enough to slip away. She escapes through a door, which only leads her deeper down the rabbit hole. Guided by the spirits of Damien’s victims Talli descends into a purgatory built on the fears and regrets of her past. She has to face all of them to survive.

Q: Development & Financing?

Juliane Block: I was in development for my feature 3 Lives when bestselling author Laura Sommer approached me. We met through a crowd investing campaign for 3 Lives I had successfully conducted a couple of months earlier, and she wanted to shoot a teaser for a low budget film. I’m not a fan of teasers for low budget productions, as they are costly or don’t live up to the quality standard needed to actually sell the concept and raise the necessary funds for the film.

Therefore, I told her, let’s take the money and make a full film. The funds she had weren’t enough for the entire film, but one step led to the next and we were able to raise more cash from two more private sources. The crew deferred a big chunk of their fee and that’s how we financed most of the film. We ran out of money at the end of post production, however, executive producer Malcolm Winter, with whom I’m working on for my next films agreed to raise the needed finances to finish the post properly.

https://youtu.be/HSOikIMR2b4

Q. Production?

Juliane Block: I can’t recall exactly when Laura Sommer contacted me, but there was very little time from the first idea until first day of principal photography. One thing led to the next, and sometimes there are projects where you just have to ride along. 8 Remains was like that.

From the first idea to do a feature until first day of principal photography we had about 8 to 10 weeks. While writing, we casted, while casting we started pre-production. Knowing that all our top favourite actors we wanted had time in May 2016 we knew we had to shoot then, or never. We went into our first block of production early May 2016 for 12 days.

My initial idea was to try to shoot the entire feature in 12 days, but then we found this absolutely stunning location (costing us next to nothing) and it became clear that we will need to extend our shooting days in order to give proper attention to setting up the place. The castle we shot in was one of the greatest locations I’ve ever had. Hence we planned for a second shooting block, which commenced early October 2016. Finally, we wrapped principal photography mid-October 2016 with 23 shooting days.

Post production started off with Willi Haninger, one of the producers, and I trying to edit the film. I edited all my short films and am still quite happy with those result, however, features are a different animal. When we looked at our first rough cut it became clear we needed help and started scouting for an editor. I was extremely lucky to stumble across Ann Foo back then based in Australia via Mandy.com and am working with her ever since.

Meanwhile we worked with two visual artists on the VFX shots, who were located in Eastern parts of Europe. Sound and ADR was done in Germany. Our biggest issue was the colour grading. For various reasons we had to change the grading facilities twice until we ended up with the result we wanted, and that extended the post production process to about 2 years. But, here we are! The film is done and we are proud to show it to the world.

Q: Festival Preparation & Strategy?

Juliane Block: We more or less skipped a festival run.

Q: The Release?

Juliane Block: We planned the release with our distributor Indie Rights and premiered 8 Remains theatrically in Los Angeles and Berlin at the same time. The movie became available on VOD just a few days after on Amazon Prime in the US, UK, English speaking territories and Germany, therefore we could use the entire buzz around the premiere to promote 8 Remains to everyone who didn’t have the chance to see it in the cinema.

Q: Advice from the Filmmaker?

Juliane Block: 8 Remains was a huge risk for me, however, one that panned out well. It led to 3 Lives, my next feature, getting into production and now I’m in the position that I make my money from directing films I really want to do. My advice: if you want to do it, do it. There’s always a way.