April 27th, 2016, at 7:30 a.m.
Film director Trent Duncan created the epic slasher battle, “Jason Voorhees vs Michael Myers.” This fan film, released over 10 months ago, is now nearing one million views on YouTube. In addition to his video work, he is also launching his own horror film festival. Known as The End of Days, it will debut in Southern Florida on Saturday May 14th.
It’s always a pleasure to talk with Trent, because he is a true fan of the genre as well as a movie director. Trent answered some questions about his upcoming movie, “Michael Myers vs Candyman.”
Trent Duncan talks about “Michael Myers vs Candyman”
Slickster: Hey Trent. Glad to have you back on the site. How are you doing?
Trent: I’m doing fantastic. Glad to be back.
Last time we talked you were preparing for The End of Days festival and riding on the success of “Jason vs Michael.” What have you been up to since then?
Well after “Jason vs Michael,” I’ve been working on “Michael vs Candyman.” It’s another little short film. It’s going to be less than 10 minutes. But, it will put the iconic Michael Myers versus the wonderful Candyman in an epic battle to the death!
Are you going to tell us who wins, or not?
I am most certainly not going to tell you who wins! You’re going to have to watch the to find that one out. But I usually go with the fan consensus on who would win or otherwise I will endure definitely criticism.
Trent, will you be collaborating with some of the people who you worked with on “Jason vs Michael”? Ryan Monnier as the actor and costumer? Anthony Giovanni Elias as the stunt coordinator and choreographer?
Yes. Ryan is Michael Myers. He played that in “Jason vs Michael” and will be reprising his role as Michael Myers in “Michael Myers vs Candyman.” I also have a new guy named Clifton Joseph, who will be playing Candy Man.
Fantastic. Will Kenny Marshall be scoring the new movie as well?
Yes! Kenny will be back doing all new original music for the movie. All of the songs are similar to the original soundtrack, but different enough to avoid copyright issues. Kenny is great at this.
[Editor’s note, if you want to know more about this music process check out the original article here.]
What are some of the differences between this newest movie and “Jason vs Michael”? What have you done differently?
“Michael vs Candyman” is definitely more subtle. With Candyman, he’s not a huge horror icon as some of the other slashers. But I definitely wanted to throw him in there because he has a nice presence within the horror genre. So, I wanted to keep it simple but effective enough where I didn’t exclude him. In the grand scheme of things, when I put all these films together, with a bunch of different horror characters, Candyman will have his little part within all of that. As well as several other horror characters that have yet to be made movies of.
I know these films are not free or cheap to make. How can fans best support you?
The best way the fans can support my work, and the Epic Horror battles, is to share the movies and subscribe to the YouTube channel. Tell your friends to subscribe to the YouTube channel. The more subscribers we have, the more influence we have out there. That will allow us to make more movies.
Was there a makeup artist who worked on getting Clifton Joseph into Candyman look? And how long did it take each day in the makeup chair?
I did not have a makeup artist for Clifton. We only shot the fight scene in one day. The other stuff we shot the day before, so it was a two-day shoot. I wrote it in a way that was very easy. Very simple. Very feasible to use a small crew at a small location, and we actually did some crazy production design. We took everything out of my living room and hung all kinds of craziness around. To dress up the set. That was probably the most intense thing we did for the production. Was to create this weird iconic room that symbolizes Candyman. And it’s kind of like a worship room that that we put up a while ago that these people just stumbled upon.
Trent, The End of Days film festival is coming up soon. Fill us in on what is happening with that.
Yes, it is. The End of Days Film Festival is the first annual. We are showing comedy films, sci-fi films, action films, and horror films. This will be over the course of one day. It will last 12 hours from 11 a.m. till 11 p.m. It will be at a large comic collectibles and toy store called Gods and Monsters. It’s a pretty fantastic place, so to be there is kind of like a collector’s dream come true!
Plus, we’ll be showing all of these apocalyptic films alongside all of these great collectibles. They have all these wonderful toys and games and comics. It makes this an ideal place just to hang out for the entire day and enjoy the festivities we have there. So, we’re really excited to put this on and looking forward to having a lot of people show up, and it’s free to attend this year. So you can come out look at some toys watch some movies and have fun.
Natalie Stavlova never contacted me after the previous interview, what’s up with that!?
Haha! I gave her your number, man. I know she just won some big award for best actress in a comedy romance. We were lucky to get Constance Payne to be in” Michael vs Candyman.” She’s awesome.
Many times in creative situations, tensions rise between strong minds. Did you work with Cheyenne Hess again on this film and was there any time that you two had disagreements on the set? Did things ever get heated between you two?
When Cheyenne is on the set, every moment is a heated moment! He is a really fun guy. He actually makes the set more enjoyable. Cheyenne was the production designer, so he helped to create the environment where Michael and Candyman fought in. All of the production design was Cheyenne’s work.
But sometimes this heated tension results in a better overall product. Would you agree with this?
Yes, a lot of times I bring in folks and give them creative control with their roles. I let them run with it and express themselves. I just give them a general direction to go and let them be creative and do their thing. A lot of times they’ll come out with something better than I would have thought of. But that is what the creative process is all about. It’s important to get a good team around you.
When can we expect “Michael Myers vs Candyman” to debut?
I would love to debut “Michael Myers vs Candyman” on Friday the 13th. Wouldn’t that be fantastic?
