Movie Review: Pray For Daylight
After a lengthy period of simmering, the Stone Soup that was concocted in 2005/2006 has finally been shared with those who contributed. At long last,Stone SoupFilm’s first feature length film, “Pray For Daylight” got to see the light of day. Quite a few people made it out to the World Premier last night at the Riverview Theatre.
Background/Disclaimer
Myself and many friends were involved in the making of this film between Fall 2005 and Spring 2006. I think everyone had their turn pulling cables and moving lights. Josh, Sarah, Xtina and I each make an appearance in the film.
Jagged Spiral provided several songs for the film score. Back then we were using the name Jagged Halo, which we later dropped when we discovered it was also the name of Gary Numan’s Record SubLabel under Artful Records.
Outside the handful of Jagged Spiral songs used in the film, Colin Mallon and I wrote original score for the majority of the film. If you search for “Pray For Daylight” on this blog, you can hash through all the chaotic fun and turmoil involved with scoring an indie vampire movie.
It’s hard to believe that more than a year has passed since I handed over the final score tracks, and I was quite excited to see the results of months of work on this project.
The director Tony Bruno compares the budget of Pray For Daylight (PFD for short) to the expense of a used car, but PFD was not a low-budget movie. It was a NO-budget movie. Oh, there may have been some equipment purchased, computers upgraded, parking tickets paid, palms greased, favors pulled, and other body parts greased and pulled to make this movie, but locations and labor were all gratis, or at most the “dollar to make it legit”.
Link to the videos online:
Pray For Daylight is the third installment of the ‘Cassie Banning’ series. You can watch all three parts on Google Video from the links below:
- The first part is “Steve the Vampire“
- The second installment is called “Pray For Daylight: Vampire Hunter” (Originally called “Hunter”)
- “Pray for Daylight” was renamed “Cassie Banning: Vampire Hunter” but don’t be confused. This is the the movie called “Pray For Daylight” that I’m discussing here.
Detailed Review of Pray For Daylight
Spoiler Warning
If you haven’t seen the film yet, you might want to watch it now, or jump to the bottom of this post for the Executive Summary Version of the review. Jus’ sayin’.
Acting
The acting was pretty good and more importantly, consistent. It never sounded as though people were reading from a script, something which plagues many indie films and really bothers me. Actually, the only lines that sound like they were read off a cue sheet were mine, because they were. Almost forgivable, since they were in some strange language that sounds like I’m trying to talk while tongue-wrestling a Spaniard while eating Pop Rocks.
Kudos to Kate Bruno for maintaining ‘The Wednesday Addams Stare’ while single-handedly kicking my ass. Also to Kate’s mom, Kristi Bruno as the Uncanny Cassie Banning, and to Sasha Walloch as the “Pretty Hate Machine” Syeria. Outstanding performances by Trey Simmonds as Detective Garrett, and Robin Marie Whitt as the deliciously evil villainness, Lucretia. Special mention to Rick Sullivan as Eric Saveau, and to Josh Kattelman as the nosy bartender, for taking lines that could supply Taco Bell with a month’s worth of cheese and making them sound believable. And finally, props to Sarah for the truly blood-curdling scream, and allowing me to neck with her on camera.
Some of the best lines in the movie are not lines of dialog, but rather, looks. Check out 31:45 and 52:35 to see what I’m talking about.
Locations
The sets are awesome for an indie film. AlleyGators? Valentinos? The Carpathians, fer crissake? Nice work.
Visual Effects
The special effects are reserved and tasteful. Especially the eyes. I loved the eyes. The intro credits were great (If I recall correctly, done in Lightwave by Alex Bruno – Nice work Alex!) Although I think each actor deserved separate title placement, instead of being lumped together onto a single page.
Using the storyboards during the title credits was a fabulous idea, and they looked great.
There’s a couple gunshots and some sword-point-sharpening via post-production After Effects magic, but they are tasteful, adding to the film, not distracting.
Lighting
The set lighting in PFD was sporadic. Often one character was lit well, and the other was not. This is especially obvious when watching the video in compressed formats.
Check out the shot at 1:05:00 where Cassie Banning is in the foreground putting on her jacket . While scoring the movie, I watched this scene many times before I realized that Syeria and Lucretia were in the background! There’s no light on them at all.
Mythos
The world of Eric Saveau and Cassie Banning is extremely detailed. There is a very rich history (and future) conceived for these characters by Rick Sullivan, and Pray For Daylight covers one small adventure on their timeline. The characters are well thought out, and for those who haven’t seen the previous installments of ‘Cassie Banning’ there’s a quick rundown/flashback near the start of the movie to bring you up to speed on her story.
Eric Saveau is complicated and mysterious. I don’t really know if he’s a good guy or not, and that’s part of what makes him an awesome character.
Plot
Despite the strong background mythology, the story in Pray for Daylight had several weak spots.
The character development and motivation of Cassie Banning is a mystery to me. Why Cassie returned to Minneapolis after a two year leave of absence is never mentioned. Why Cassie returns to Minneapolis and thinks everyone Won’t try to kill her IS brought up, but the answer Cassie gives is “So?…” She seems to intend to live and let live and “do right by herself” and she “doesn’t need guns anymore” but this is inconsistent with the end of the story, and nothing during the story makes me think this would have changed.
When Lucretia orders Syeria to bring Cassie to her, Syeria says, “She won’t come willingly.” But after a short driveway fight scene, we get this battle of wills:
Syeria: “Lucretia wants to see you.”
Cassie: (Sighs) “Well, you gonna lead the way, or do I have to Mapquest it?”
Seems willing enough to me.
I did not like that Syeria, the remorseless killing machine goes to Cassie’s house, beats the tar out of her, and is just about to lop her head off, and THEN? Relents. “You’re pathetic” she says, and walks away. Huh? Did I miss something?
It bothered me that Syeria always snuck up on Cassie from behind. Three times. I’d expect more from someone supposedly so powerful. After the third time it happens, Cassie says, “You need a new shtick!”
Music Score
We could have had ten years to score this film, and I’d still be making excuses here for why it wasn’t better. You can look back through the archives for more about the scoring adventure, but I can say this much: Colin Mallon’s improv guitarwork is amazing, and my improv Casio Keyboard skills are not.
Audio
Heavy noise filtering on the audio tracks created some strange artifacts. Sometimes the dialog would sound like it was cycled through a coffee can, and the hand clapping at near the end of the movie sounded mechanical, but that’s probably better than a constant hissing noise. I suspect the volume level of the score was raised to cover ambient noise caught on tape too. It’s not how I would have mixed it, but no one who’s watched the movie has complained about the audio, so I’ll chalk it up to being an audio guy.
Fight Choreography
The fight scene in Cassie’s backyard was great, you don’t generally see women punch each other in the face like Indiana Jones. Syeria’s spinning kick is top-notch for someone who’s never taken a martial arts class.
Near the end of the movie, there is a short bout between Syeria and Cassie where they kick at the same time and their legs hit. They limp backwards, cursing at each other. It was both funny and brilliant.
Unfortunately, the two worst fight scenes in PFD happen to the same character; (played by Teresa Lhotka, who is the fight coordinator for the movie) she gets taken out by a kick to the knee from Cassie (?) and then a sucker punch from Saveau (??). Disappointing, especially once you learn that Teresa is a real-life black belt in Kung Fu, and could kick all four of your back teeth out at once. Also, I felt kind of cheated that I didn’t get to see a real fight scene with Saveau.
The group fight scene at the end of the movie was dubbed “The Wheel of Death”. It was a great idea, but it did not play out well in the video. I was actually at the shoot for the Wheel of Death, and while I know that there was little prep time for the fight scene, it could have been salvaged by using more tight camera angles and/or moving the camera through the fight scene while filming, and more aggressive editing.
The End Credits
I call “padding” on the end credits. Large fonts. Slow moving. Stacked up instead of side-by-side. The same names coming up over and over again. It screams “indie” and it screams “we can make this movie a couple minutes longgggerrrr…”
Also, the producer, director and stars of the film should never be listed under ‘gaffer’ or other production positions. Give them fake names at least.
The Executive Summary Review
Issues aside, Pray for Daylight is a far better movie than other indie films like Open Water or SuperCroc. I’d put it on par with Dragon, a movie with a real budget.
Actually, it really isn’t fair to compare Pray for Daylight to other movies, because that was not the original scope of the project. The original idea behind Pray For Daylight was the Stone Soup philosophy – to pitch in our respective talents, and making the best movie possible with the available resources, and then share the rewarding feeling of creative accomplishment. The original scope of the project was to make another short follow-up to “Steve the Vampire” and “Hunter”. Within that scope, minor things like plot holes or poor lighting can be forgiven. In that respect, Pray for Daylight is fantastic, far beyond anyone’s expectations, and a movie everyone who contributed to can be proud of.
Converting Pray For Daylight from a fun, 15-minute weekend project into a serious, full-length feature film over a year in the making… well, Bilbo Baggins said it best – “butter scraped over too much bread.”
Anyway, I hope everyone involved with PFD had as much fun and got as much out of working on it as I did.
Blog on,
-CZ
Hey, Conrad –
I was just working on my 2010 VFX Demo Reel and TD resume and, while looking up some references, came across this review. Can’t believe I hadn’t seen this before!
I more-or-less agree with your review. Yes, the end credits were definitely an exercise in padding, to say nothing about the “My-God-Can’t-We-Finish-This-Now?” font. Also, my focus on trying to tell a comic-book like story (complete with cheesy dialogue) distracted from how important the fight sequences would be. Still, given the limitations, it could have been worse.
That being said, I do have to address this:
“She seems to intend to live and let live and “do right by herself” and she “doesn’t need guns anymore” but this is inconsistent with the end of the story, and nothing during the story makes me think this would have changed.”
The reason she finally took up arms again was to save her friend. She also denied coming back to her old life two times in the story. This was designed to follow the Campbellian “Call to Adventure” model, where the hero denies the call twice, and finally succumbs when given the right catalyst.
Aside from that (and your complaints about the score; I loved it then and, as of my last viewing in 2008 down at school, I loved it then) I agree with what you’ve written here.
In the half-decade since the movie was shot I’ve been lucky enough to screen it out of the region, for people who had zero connection at all with the project. It was immensely gratifying. Seeing strangers laugh, lean forward, and get engaged with the story was almost worth the pain of the production. Sure, all of the flaws were still there, but they didn’t kill the movie. As rough as the final project is, in the end the movie doesn’t stink. For that, I’m extremely happy.
Now, for the million dollar question: Would I do it again?
Absolutely not.
You put it well: It was, in the end, the whole thing was butter scraped over too much bread. Good intentions in this case took me down a genuinely hellish road.
Fortunately, it wasn’t for nothing. The experience led to my writing for “Videomaker” magazine, and ultimately to my training at the DAVE School. Add in my for-pay video editing and VFX projects, and “Pray for Daylight”, in the end, turned out to be just one long, painful thesis project for the Stone Soup Films School of Hard Knocks.
Thanks for the review, and thanks once again for the part you played in the production.
– Tony Bruno
Hells, that seems forever ago. I barely remember writing it! Re-reading it now, there isn’t much I would change, and I’m glad you agree for the most part.
I see your point about Cassie taking up her guns to save Garrett, but that hinges on how strong the audience thinks their relationship is. I saw Garrett as more of a work acquaintance than a real friend to Cassie. Now, if she was knocking boots with him I’d think differently, but she left town for a long time and didn’t bother to contact him or tell him where she was going. Not to mention they bickered constantly. Lucretia gave Cassie a second option, “Be gone by tomorrow and never return,” which made more sense to me, given Cassie’s new life philosophy.
I’ll never forget when Colin first told me you had offered us the opportunity to score a short, indie vampire film. We were so excited, we couldn’t write enough material fast enough. When the project got bumped up to a full-length feature film, I knew it would drastically change the time commitment and the amount of work we had to do. But I love writing, recording and editing music and I knew it could be challenging but still fun at the same time. I decided to stick around and see how far the rabbit hole went.
After all was said and done, I calculated that each Minute of video took between one and two Hours to score. Now condense all that work into a 21 days. That’s not including time spent writing and recording music for the film before the actual scoring process, or the time I spent on set acting in the movie, or the time spent helping out behind the scenes on shoots, or my ADR sessions, or the upgrades to my computer, or the time spent on the final mix with the director (which later got scrapped and re-mixed) or the time I spent cleaning the hum of appliances out of the kitchen scene audio…
All told, I spent well over a hundred hours on PFD, probably closer to two hundred.
Was it worth it? Absolutely. Scoring PFD really stretched my musical creativity and added immensely to my audio recording and mixing abilities . But beyond that, I now have a better appreciation for good movie production, especially good sound, film score, and ADR. I understand why Howard Shore is a demigod of film scoring. I know how fun it is to be behind the scenes on a real movie set and make things happen by pushing yourself and pulling miracles out of your ass at one in the morning. I know how hard it is to work on a ten-second snippet of audio for days, and realize once it’s perfect that no one will notice or even care. And I know the looks on people’s faces when I tell them I helped to make (and starred in) a vampire movie.
Would I do it again? That depends. A short film intended for youtube, like a music video, or a book trailer, or an episode of The Guild? Definitely. (Especially if I get to touch Felicia Day’s ass.) But a full-length motion pic? Probably not. Not for free, anyway. After working on several 48-Hour film festivals, 24-hour film festivals, music videos and other short projects, I’ve come to realize that shorter projects are way more fun and rewarding to work on than movies. They are easier and faster to make, they get viewed more often, and they don’t get compared to Hollywood films done by professionals who spend more on office supplies than the entire production cost of PFD. The extra time/quality/effort spent on a feature film ends up being more work, less fun, and doesn’t result in a product I’m *more* proud of, but I had to go down the rabbit hole to find that out for myself.
I have no regrets working on PFD, and I’m pretty amazed at the results of how much we were able to do with the Stone Soup philosophy of everyone pitching in to help make the best film we could with the resources we had available. If Stone Soup ever contemplates another project, let me know. Especially if Felicia Day is involved…
-Zero