The Fate of Hacker Riley
We at Skipsterfilms have never been thwarted in our efforts more violently than in our attempts to bring Hacker Riley to cinematic realization. Despite our vision and determination, it just never works out. So, in honor of our 4th failure, we bring you...
The many fates of
First Attempt
The first attempt at a Hacker Riley movie occured in 1997. It was a spur of the moment idea, carried out by Darryl, Damon, Damon's sister Ashley and her friend Megan Payne, set at Damon's house. The plot was that 3 friends were terrorized by a psycho wandering around outside. Horrible acting by certain members of the cast (who shall remain nameless) and a lack of preparation resulted in the scrapping of the movie. All involved were embarrassed by the results and would prefer to forget that it ever happened. However, Damon was intrigued by the concept and vowed to try it again at a later date.
Second Attempt
The second attempt at Hacker Riley did not fair much better than the first. The plot line was basically the same, the only change being that Jodie replaced Megan Payne in the role of Christine and Chase Gibbon took over the technical side of the movie (as the cameraman). There was more planning involved in this attempt, and everyone was excited about the project. However, filming began late, and Damon's mom put up with us until 1:00 am and then sent us to bed. The movie was not complete, but we were all pleased with our work. Until we watched it the next day. Then we not at ALL pleased with our work. The entire concept just didn't work, and changes needed to be made. Damon and Jodie vowed to try it again at a later date at a different house with more actors and better special effects.
Third Attempt
The third attempt was one filled with conflict. It began with an argument between Damon and Jodie- Damon wanted to scrap the first movie and move to the second in the series (hacker 2). He felt that the 2nd was a better story and would be much scarier. HOWEVER, Jodie felt that they should finish hacker 1 and then do hacker 2, keeping it in sequence. Her point was that Skipsterfilms might as well just get hacker 1 out of the way and then move on. Against Damon's better judgement, he agreed to give it a try.
In order to combat the earlier problems, we planned many changes to the script. This time the story was set at Chase's house, which was a horror moviemaker's dream. The plot changed so that they were terrorized at a party. We added an extra character (Paige Gibbon, Chase's sister) and planned some more elaborate death sequences. There was an attempt at character development. Although we'd planned to start a bit earlier than last time, Darryl and Chase took off and played an elaborate 1 hour long prank involving "quickie creek" and Chase's car. So, we started filming at around 11:30.
All was well until around 12:30 am, when Ashley, a key character, suddenly decided she didn't want to act anymore. Damon and Jodie nearly puked. It would be impossible to lose Ashley as a character and continue. After much pleading, threatening and sucking up, we managed to get her to finish her death scene (which occured MUCH sooner than we had planned, since Damon and Jodie were both desperate to get her out of the movie while she was still willing to act). The first hurdle was cleared.
The second major problem became the approaching dawn. As it was late spring, the sun came up at around 5 am. So, by 4 am we were getting a little nervous. Plus, our cameraman and leading man were getting a bit delirious from lack of sleep. We shot the fight scene between Christine and Hacker, packed up, ate pizza and went to bed a little after 5. You can actually hear birds starting to sing in our footage.
A week later we begged borrowed and stealed to be able to meet again at Chase's house and finish filming. However, we were hosed by Darryl and he didn't come. We gave up, watched Halloween, then felt inspired and started filming at 2:30 in the morning (we're a very nocturnal film company, aren't we?). We changed the ending so that Darryl's character wasn't needed, then finished up.
So, grand you say, the movie got finished. However, upon reviewing the footage, Damon felt it wasn't even worth the trouble editing it, due to extreme cheesiness. Although he still blames Jodie for the incident (for both trying Hacker 1 and a certain scottish accent that was added for color), it was a very valuable learning experience for Skipsterfilms, and prompted our best effort yet.
Fourth Attempt
Shortly after the failure of the 3rd attempt, Jodie had an idea. She quickly typed out a 4 page intro to a new Hacker Riley movie. Her idea was that the plot of the 2nd movie became the 1st in the trilogy. The concept was that Christine and Jeff had met up with Hacker Riley in the past, and were still trying to recover. Also, the idea of dream sequences was introduced. She passed the script and idea over to Skippy, who was impressed and AGAIN bugged her about the last attempt. He took the 4 pages Jodie wrote and created an entire script. Many earlier problems were solved. The character development was VASTLY improved, and the script took place over more than one day. It had better rising tension and atmosphere. In general, it was an exciting new attempt.
From here on in, you can probably go review the Hacker Riley page for a step by step explanations of the preparation, filming and problems involving this attempt. However, a couple of things must be said about it. This attempt was GOOD. The acting was good, the scenes were good, it had some great moments. Where we were resigned to the failure of our other attempts, we were pulled away from this one kicking and screaming. The actors were simply too busy to come together for filmming. Also, although some of them really wanted to be involved, others just lost interest. However, it is also in part the fault of the filmmakers- we just weren't organized and it was good of the actors to put up with us as long as they did. It will eternally haunt us that we couldn't make this one work.
The Future
However, do not fear my little filmmaking friends. We REFUSE to allow this to slip away from us. The Hacker Riley trilogy has evolved to something much bigger than a few simplistic slasher flicks. Even though we want to finish 1&2 this summer, we'll hopefully re-create them when we're older and have money. It's our dream to re-vamp slasher flicks in the late 2000's. And it's gonna happen baby, it's gonna happen.
