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Your new documentary Halloween
Obsessed - The Misconception of Witches - in a few words, what is
it about?
Halloween
Obsessed - The Misconception of Witches represents 4 different
modern-day Witches. Each explains how they incorporate the
practice into their everyday lives. Our goal is to dispel the
myths that have lingered for centuries of what it truly means to be
a Witch.
Now how did the project fall together in the
first place, and what drew you to the subject? During Covid, my producing
partner/husband and I decided we would delve into documentary work more, and chose a subject we love, Halloween, to start with. Neither
of us has shot or edited prior (other than promotional work), so
there was a big learning curve on the Black Magic pocket camera and
Premiere Pro editing suite. We partnered with some of our
favorite film partners, who also happen to be Halloween fans,
brainstormed topics and chose The Misconception of Witches
because two of them are modern day witches and the
rest of us are fascinated in the practice. There are two
more episodes due out this year dealing with the paranormal and
haunted houses. What can
you tell us about your major co-conspirator and researcher on The
Misconception of Witches, Barbara Dolny-Bombar, and what was your
collaboration like? Barbara
is a writer, filmmaker, and award-winning producer of projects for
commercial and public television. In addition to writing for
broadcast, her articles and short stories have appeared in numerous
publications. She's also a longtime practitioner of a nature-based
spiritual path, and infuses her magick into everything she creates.
Honestly, we could not have pulled off the film without her guidance
in story and research. She was the perfect partner for us
entering this new medium. We're lucky to have her on our team! Some of the facts about witches
you've learned when making The
Misconception of Witches you were previously unaware of? Most
of the facts I was unaware of! For me, the journey of telling
this story has resonated in a way I did not expect. I've never been
a religous person. In fact, I would always say I was more spiritual,
but after learning more about the practice of witchcraft and the
lifestyle of modern day witches and pagans, I feel closer to that
path. Are
there some stories about witchcraft that actually didn't make it into the
final cut of The
Misconception of Witches?
There
was a lot of material from our practitioners. Close to four hours in
total without the research, so yes, a lot of that didn't make it
into this 40 minute episode. What can you tell us
about your directorial approach to your story at hand? As
a director / production designer, and enthusiast of the holiday,
visuals and color were my primary focus. You can't always control
that in documentaries, but one particular thing I wanted to
accomplish was keeping the color palette close to fall and Halloween
colors. This obviously helps this story since witches are very
earth centered as well. When searching for imagery, that
played a big part of my selection. I also wanted it to have a
magical feel, so there are a lot of VFX pieces that my husband and
editing partner, Mark Cardone, added that gave it a whimsical feel. Do
talk about your interviewees, and why exactly these people? Barbara
Dolny-Bombar and Rae Davis are very good, long-time friends of mine so that was the
start. Roger Lockshier was a friend of Barbara's that she was able to
talk into joining, and Dalea Faulkner is the daughter of another of our
producing partners from our previous feature film, Turnover. When we chose to interview Rae,
who really considers herself more of a pagan or solitary witch, that
was the first time she openly discussed being a witch with me.
We've been partners in many films and co-hosts of a podcast called Bat Chat. I knew she was not religous and lived a
lifestyle closer to paganism, which goes to show how cautious people
are about their personal lives even though modern day witches are
coming out of the "broom closet" more and more! With
Dalea, I was seeing social posts that led me to believe she may also
be a witch and sent her a private message on Facebook. She was
thrilled to talk about her practice and let me know she had
considered broaching the topic herself either through a thesis or
book. We had hoped to get a few more different types of
witches (Green Witch, White Witch or even the mother of witchcraft,
Z Budapest), but ultimately we had a lot of material and felt the
four we had were enough for this episode. Hopefully in the future we
can delve a bit more into it with those type of guests.
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What
can you tell us about the shoot as such, and the on-set atmosphere? We
are really operating on minimal to no budget, so Barbara arranged
her shoot and Roger's in N. Carolina. Mark and I shot Rae's
interview at her house in N. California and Dalea filmed herself
after we had a lengthy discussion and I sent her a list of
questions. Each of the shoots had only a few people involved at most
and so they were pretty calm and relaxed. The
Misconception of Witches is only the first episode of the series Halloween
Obsessed - so do talk about the rest of the series and the topics
picked up in later episodes for a bit! Yes, The Misconception of Witches
is our pilot. The next episode
deals with people who live with the paranormal, followed by an
episode all about home haunts and professional haunted attractions.
Those are due out this year. Next year, we will be doing an
episode on the fascination of horror, another dealing with people
who live a Halloween lifestyle, and the final deals with the business
of Halloween. The $64-question,
where can The
Misconception of Witches be seen? Right now, we have released it early
on our Vimeo channel at this link:
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/witches
It will be available on Amazon Prime and Tubi later this year. For
any of your fans that want to see it, use this promo code to see if
for free: SMT Anything you
can tell us about audience and critical reception of The
Misconception of Witches? It recently won an Indie Spirit
Award and was nominated for Best Documentary Featurette and Best
Documentary Director at the Idyllwild Int'l Festival of Cinema.
It's been getting great reviews critcally and from viewers which can
be seen at our IMDB page:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13073378/ratings/
- we would love to hear your fans' thoughts if they see it as well! Will there ever be a Halloween
Obsessed season two - and/or other future projects you'd like to
share?
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Ultimately, we're hoping it gets
picked up by a larger company that can increase it's exposure.
Until then, we will keep putting out approximately three shows per
year. Your/your series' website, social media, whatever
else? All of our info can be found here:
https://www.runawayproductions.tv/halloween-obsessed Anything else you're dying to mention and I have
merely forgotten to ask? We are still looking for people to
interview for our Hallowedding episode, so if any of your fans were
married on Halloween or have had a Halloween wedding, have them
contact me to share their special day. This is part of the
Lifestyle episode I mentioned above. Thanks for the interview!
Thank you!I appreciate you offering.
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