Pitch in to boost reach of HOLLER
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The thirty days that September hath are winding down quickly, dearest friends in local film, but the folks from Subterranean Sound & Video are now beginning the thirty-day home stretch of a Kickstarter campaign that is designed to help along the creation of their first full-length motion picture and fulfill the early promise of their production studio based in Jacksonville. HOLLER, which is written, produced, and directed by the team of Samuel David and Devin Smock, is “a zombie movie that isn’t really about zombies” according to their self-promotion, for “the dead are in the world, but this story belongs to the living.” Planned as a project that could be accomplished on a very low budget and with locations and other resources that could easily be harnessed, HOLLER has proven to be a bit of a fright for the duo, who are asking the general public for their gracious assistance one more time.
As they recounted at length in an interview done with Jim Eaves on “The Honest Filmmaker” podcast, Smock and David are weathering a learning curve and using a self-imposed break in the schedule to course correct so they can stick the landing and come away with an overall better film as a result. “We’re roughly sixty percent through HOLLER at this point,” confirms Smock to CUBlog in a recent email exchange. “The next big step is putting together one concentrated ten-to-twelve-day production block to finish principal photography,” which is expected to occur in the spring of 2027. “We’ve already shot a substantial part of the movie, so this isn’t about trying to get something started,” he continues. “It’s about getting what we’ve already built across the finish line.” A trailer released to YouTube in August is comprised of footage from the first major leg of filming, which took place earlier this year in the Jacksonville region to the west of Springfield, and can be watched here – moody, foreboding, and shrouded with lush rural greenery.
For those in the audience who may be tempted to step up and pitch in, further proof of their progress can be found on a solid website for all things HOLLER and the aforementioned Kickstarter page, both of them dressed with behind-the-scenes images and high-quality still frames. “We previously raised around $5,000 through Kickstarter, brought in additional independent support, and have shot a major portion of the film on roughly $20,000 in total production resources,” reports Smock as to how far the Subterranean team has already come. The campaign they plan to sunset after Friday, October 23, is set at a $6,000 goal, which has already been eclipsed by a modest amount, and the funds will go towards paying and lodging their returning cast and crew. Much of what remains to be staged will involve confrontations between the living and the undead, including the proverbial effects work that comes with the territory.
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Smock and David are hardly resting on their laurels during a pause that really isn’t – “We are mostly focusing on getting what footage we have shot through post-production,” says Smock – in their drive to create a thoroughly Midwestern entertainment that also aims to be cinematic and smart. HOLLER takes place in a landscape that looks familiar to us on the surface but has been drained of its energy; stragglers eke out an existence in the wake of an outbreak that devastates the populace on this continent. Burly and rugged Ray (Rick Jensen) lives in the remnants, alone by choice and partnered with a pistol and a liquor bottle in order to persist, and eventually meets a young woman named Sydney (Teagan Ealey) who is pregnant and needs to travel the unsafe countryside. Reluctantly, Ray sets out with Sydney in his truck and an uncertain road trip ensues. Scott Michael Dunn, David Krostal, and David Sanchez also play main roles in the film along with “Cotton Candy,” a stuffed bear that is loaded with memory triggers for Ray.
Plenty of motion pictures over the history of cinema have depicted near-future worlds that are the sum results of cataclysms ranging from the highly operatic to the mundane. HOLLER seems poised, through its careful and steady compositions as well as tempered interactions between its characters, to take a more introspective, realistic, and tactile approach to what might happen if such an event would befall a society and natural ecosystem like in the North America we know. “The film uses the apocalypse as a backdrop for a character-driven story about grief, isolation, survival, and the fragile reasons people keep going after the world has already ended,” elaborates Smock. Termed a “Western” more than once in the vernacular that Subterranean uses to talk about HOLLER, the allusion makes sense based on the media and materials they’ve released so far. During the discussion with Eaves, the co-directors clearly relish in drawing from a wide swath of film genre that also includes arthouse and Hollywood fare.
Speaking of taking pride in one’s influences, Subterranean is not relying solely on the Kickstarter effort to provide a positive jolt to their filmmaking journey. They have been working with a first-run and locally-owned venue in Jacksonville, the Illinois Theatre, to program movies they dig; on tap is Wes Craven’s A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, slated for Saturday, October 17, at 9 p.m., and it will double as a late-inning vehicle for the studio to promote the finishing campaign, which will include a showing of the trailer and merchandise being offered for sale. Future bookings of “classic horror and Nineties movie nights” are in the works, per Smock, “because it gives us a way to support repertory screenings locally while also connecting with what we’re doing with HOLLER to an actual communal film space.”
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The Illinois is not the only real estate in the town of more than 17,000, nestled along I-72 and the seat of Morgan County, where Smock and his wife and business partner, Heather, have been carving out spaces friendly to connoisseurs of niche and alternative tastes. As recounted in this article published last year by the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, the couple has spun a side hustle of selling choice music finds into a family of homegrown businesses that started with Pizza Records, an emporium for vinyl, CDs, tapes, gear, and collectibles that can accommodate concerts, and continued with both Street Trash, a sister site that trades in clothing, décor, media, and ephemera for those who favor the subsets of punk, hardcore, horror, and “trash” culture, and Subterranean, which Smock and David operate out of the Street Trash location. That address is also home to a tattoo parlor, Hard Honey Ink, and live show promoter, MKM Entertainment. “We are trying to work hard and have fun doing it,” expresses Smock. “We have created, along with other like-minded businesses, a little arts/creative community in Jacksonville.”
HOLLER itself, as it’s completed and then presented to the world at large, is playing a crucial role in all that is being nurtured by David and the Smocks. “The bigger goal with Subterranean is to build something sustainable where we can keep making our own films while also working with other filmmakers on theirs. Editing, color, development, production, whatever makes sense,” explains Smock; the breakdown of their services and a portfolio can be reviewed on the studio’s website, which also includes their own essays on recent and retro cinema. “I really don’t want it to become a content company. I want it to say centered around movies, storytelling, and helping interesting projects actually get made,” he continues, expressing a spirit of collaboration and integrity that will be a selling point to other camps that are seeking out their own resources in central Illinois, offered by like minds who equally want exciting things to happen.
Other than planning ahead to shoot what remains for HOLLER, Subterranean Sound & Vision has not announced a time table beyond that, and it may be just as well in the effort to regain their footing and plow forward with what needs to be done. “We’re getting closer to the finish line now,” concludes Smock, “and the goal is still the same as when we started: make something that feels like a real movie, not something that apologizes for being independent.” We think that, somewhere in the distance, we can hear the echoes of HOLLER’s Ray grunting in acknowledgment as he grips his hammer tight. Back to work…
HOLLER is a Subterranean Sound & Vision production directed and written by Devin Smock and Samuel David and produced by Seth Beavers, Heather Smock, David, and Smock. Director of photography and colorist is Taylor Hoos. Sound recordist is Scott Murphy (Scotty Gee), special effects coordinator is Tammy Pritchett, and script supervisor is Alexis Hammitt. Composers are Stuart Smith and William Fitzsimmons. The cast includes Rick Jensen, Teagan Ealey, Scott Michael Dunn, David Krostal, and David Sanchez.
~ Jason Pankoke
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