Olivia de Jonge in Scare Campaign.
Monster Fest winners Colin and Cameron Cairnes have given an insight into the making of Scare Campaign, the follow up to 100 Bloody acres.
The film, which stars Ian Meadows, Meegan Warner, Olivia de Jonge and Sigrid Thornton, recently won Best Film at Monster Fest, as well as best direction, feature screenplay and sound (Chris Goodes and Steve Burgess).
The plot is based around a reality TV prank show and explores what happens when a prank goes too far.
The Cairnes brothers said they had their hearts set on shooting in an abandoned asylum and were waiting for the right story to present itself.
"As one does when undertaking the sort of assiduous research we think is key, we found ourselves watching a lot of YouTube videos," they said.
"We kept coming across these often quite disturbing pranks, mostly from Japan and South America, where a ghost girl or a ravenous zombiewould appear out of the darkness and scare the bejesus out of someone.
"We wondered just how far the producers of a prank show might go to get theirscream and top the last gag.
"And what if they took it too far and the victim really didn't like what they’d been put through and turned the tables on the pranksters?
It is a simple premise, but they thought would be fun to pursue and which would lend itself to the classic horror movie location we had in mind.
That location was the Beechworth Lunatic Asylum in Victoria, which was orginally known as the haunted Mayday Hills Lunatic Ayslum.
Mayday Hills closed in 1995 after 128 years of operation.
"Victoria seemed to go on an asylum building spree in the 19th century, so we wrote the script in the hope one of them would become available to us," the Cairnes brothers said.
"Fortunately the people who had taken over the Mayday Hills Asylum in Beechworth (now Mayday Hills Village) were not lunatics but just crazy enough to let us shoot there!
"The location is dripping with atmosphere and certainly not the sort of place you want to be creeping around in after dark, unless accompanied by a modestly sized film crew, which thankfully we were most of the time.
"We had a ball shooting there and quite a few of our team claim to have experienced anomalies, as paranormal investigators might say.
"Mayday Hills run very popular ghost tours and one of the guides experienced a major anomaly one night when a member of our cast, covered in fake blood, provided an unexpected and very effective scare during one of their tours."
Jonathan Page’s Bonsai Films will handle theatrical distribution in Australia with event screenings in the first half of next year
Madman Entertainment will release on home entertainment, while Paris-based Films Distribution is handling international sales.
Following on from the success of their 2012 horror comedy, 100 Bloody Acres the Cairnes brothers fielded a strong cast for the Julie Ryand produced film.
"We’ve been fortunate to work with some amazing Aussie talent, including some great up-and-coming names.
"We try to write characters that actors can really sink their teeth into.
"Watching 100 Bloody Acres I think you get a sense of how much fun Damon Herriman and Angus Sampson had playing their respective roles."
The characters are very Australian, but have universal appeal.
"It’s the character actors like those guys that we really admire and we think there should be more parts for those sorts of performers.
"In Scare campaign audiences should look out for Josh Quong Tart who plays the baddie.
"It's one of those rare performances where it's impossible now to imagine anyone else in the role.
"One of the great pleasures of our job is having amazing talent revealed to us, then collaborating with the artists to bring it all to life.
They said Scare Campaign was tense, fun, scary, a little disturbing at times, and had a twist or two up its sleeve.
"We believe that we make films that regular cinema-goers can enjoy as much as the hardcore genre fans… as long as they're not too squeamish.
"There’s some darkness in there, but it's not nihilistic. While not played for laughs like our last film, it certainly has a couple of outrageous moments that should elicit a smile or two.