The script was rather weak, as my brother has never been in drama classes before. Thankfully many of the 'actors' (my cousin, her beau, myself, and my beau) took several drama classes in secondary school. We livened it up a bit with some good improvisation.
Basically, the story is about two couples who go out camping. They get bored at the cabin and ring the local summer camp for suggestions on what they can do. The camp director invites them to camp out on an island on the other side of the lake. All is good until it begins to get dark. This is when the 'island primitive', a swamp monster begins to kill off the characters. First, my cousin gets tripped and carried off. She had an excellent blood-curdling scream; it was great! Then my cousin-in-law gets stabbed in the stomach. He was the lucky one who got to drink fake blood and spit it up all over the place. (It tasted like cherry drink mix and flour, yum! - not quite
) Then, of course, my beau dies with an axe to the chest; lovely. It looked so real! The people at the (real) summer camp walked by and thought someone had really died until my beau started waving at them; what fun! His death drives me compeltely insane (is that really far from the ordinary?) and I end up covered in blood and dirt, cuddling with an axe in a teepee, mumbling and freaking out. Eventually I die too with a knife in the neck. In the end it turns out to be a story being told by a camp counsellor to some kids sleeping on the island. Or so you think... until you see the island primitive walking up behind her holding a sigh (those things they use to cut reeds... a blade on the end of a pole...)
Anyway, it was heaps fun, and I think I surprised a lot of people by how well I could act. I cannot wait to see the fully edited DVD version of the film, bloopers and all! (I am terrible for bloopers, I laugh a lot when I'm pretending to be scared...)
If people are interested, I will try to get my brother to make a low resolution version of his film to post on the internet. It could be quite lengthy, upto 45 minutes long, so the internet version might be edited more.
Movie tricks, acting, props, and improvisation are so much fun! I hope I'll get to do some more work with his films in the future! I learned a lot about making films too, what a great experience.
PS - Getting involved with mud and fake blood is great fun, I looked like a total train wreck!
