Satan’s Servant Interview
Over the weekend I was able to interview the co-directors of Screenager Productions’ new film Satan’s Servant. Jack McDermott (writer, co-director) and Ethan Gomez Zahnley (co-director, cinematographer) are two California teens that made this independent slasher during quarantine. Satan’s Servant is a killer first feature for Screenager Productions that perfectly encapsulates the spirit of horror filmmaking. Gen-Z is taking over.
Why did you start screenager productions?
J- So me and Sean, who plays Tyler in the movie and made the score, we started Screenager Productions in eighth grade for a school project where we had to make a short film and we kept going after that. It’s always been our goal to accurately portray teenagers and what our life is like. We actually named it Screenager Productions because there’s this documentary called Screenagers which was about how our generation’s just always on our phones and we felt like it wasn’t a very fair depiction of us so we basically wanted to take that word back.
Inspiration for the film?
J- Watching a lot of slashers, mostly from the eighties but some from the seventies and nineties, and thinking about how we could do that but with people we knew in it- instead of these older characters.
How did you put together the cast and crew, was it your friends? How many people were on set each day?
E- It kind of varied from day to day but I think it was usually somewhere in between five to ten people on set. It was a pretty solid mix. A few people like Jojo, who plays Jane in the film, or Emily, who plays Ms. Booker, we didn’t know before we started this project. We hired them on a casting website. But the rest of them were just people that had worked on our short films previously like friends from high school and parents.
You two co-directed this film, what’s it like co-directing and how do you make sure you’re both on the same page?
J- A lot of preparation.
E- Yeah, it was nine months or so of pre-production and planning everything, and honestly just the biggest part for splitting up our work on set was just figuring it out day one. Day one we kind of found places we were best at because even though we were directors we had to do a lot of other stuff like cinematography, setting lights and all that. So we just kind of found our grooves within each role and we divided up our work like that. Then we’d obviously have to come together and argue about changing a shot or anything like that.
What do you hope audiences can take away from Satan’s Servant?
J- I think one of the main things we wanted to show with this movie was that pretty much anyone can make a feature film and there’s not that much stopping you. Just come up with an idea, get some friends together, and shoot it. When we were making it, we didn’t really have in mind that a big audience would get to see it, we just thought that our friends and family would. So this response has been really incredible. But yeah, just that anyone can do it.
It’s gotten a crazy response, how did you go about that or did it just happen?
E- We originally planned it as kind of a small side project but after we raised a good amount of money for it and after looking at all the footage we had, we kind of realized that it could be bigger than just a small thing to show our classmates. So we started sending it to people and doing advertising online and we got a pretty decent audience from that.
You fundraised for this film, how was that experience? And you donated half of the funds to the Equal Justice Initiative. Why was that important to you?
J- The fundraising was definitely a challenge because we’d never done that for any of our projects before. Normally we just spend around a hundred dollars on our short films and then do it. This one we definitely wanted to be more ambitious with. We ran a fundraiser on our own website, because we didn’t want to pay any hosting fees, and it was a really great experience. People were so supportive. I think part of it was that they liked our purpose and part of it was that they wanted to support us. Since we had the privilege to make a feature film during this pandemic, which was a time that was so hard for so many people, we felt it was really important to use this as an opportunity to give back. The Equal Justice Initiative was an organization that we all were really big fans of- we learned about them in school- and we felt like if we could do a little to support them and what they’re doing we should.
Was it difficult shooting during the pandemic, how did you navigate that?
E- It was definitely hard because there was a long period of time where we had to keep moving our shooting dates because we had rough estimates after looking at online data of when would be the safest time to shoot because when we shot this there weren’t vaccines yet. We had to create a lot of protocols on set- like people wearing masks, hand sanitizer, face shields, all of that. So it was definitely worrying because we kept having to delay the shoot, but in the end our shooting went great. We had no covid cases at all and it all went really smoothly but it was definitely a little nerve-racking. We ended up shooting from February to March 2021, but we had originally planned to start at the end of 2020 in December and January, so when we had to push it back we were worried that we would have to keep pushing it back over and over to the point where we wouldn’t be able to finish it. Eventually, we kind of had to sit down and say “we have to do this regardless of if covid is increasing, we just have to follow all of our safety procedures and hope for the best.” And it went flawlessly.
J- I think pushing it back also ended up being for the film’s benefit because during that extra month of preparation we had I was still working on the script, so I was tweaking it constantly and we were able to go into the shoot feeling a lot more prepared. I do not think the movie would’ve turned out nearly as well if we had filmed on the original dates, so we definitely got lucky with that.
Speaking of the script, how long did it take to write?
J- I started the script in late March-early April of 2020 and had a pretty solid draft that we were okay with around the end of May because that’s when we were getting ready to do fundraising, but then throughout pre-production I continued tweaking it up until a month before shooting. It was definitely a lot of work but a lot of fun for sure.
Why did you decide to shoot it now, why not wait until the pandemic was over?
E-Honestly, we decided to do it now because we all knew there was a very low chance of everyone in our crew going to the same college and we felt it was kind of a now or never time to do it.
J- Yeah, it was really important to us to get the movie out before we left for college so that we could have a premiere with all of our friends and family around before everyone split up. So we knew that if we didn’t film it in February we’d have no time to finish the movie before we all had to head off on this new journey.
Speaking of the new journey, what can we expect next from Screenager Productions? Are you going to continue working together in college?
J- We definitely want to keep working together, that’s obviously going to be tricky when we’re going to two different colleges. We’ll probably keep making short films together in the summer. I think this year Screenager Productions might slow down a bit and just focus on getting through the first year of college, but I think after that we’ll probably keep making short films. Maybe down the road another feature.
E- Yeah, since we’re going to separate colleges we’ll probably be doing individual work. Possibly working with more people to add to our Screenager crew. We definitely plan on keeping in touch and working together over breaks because we have a really great team and we don’t want to sacrifice that or throw it away after our biggest project yet.
Why did you choose to make a horror film?
J- I’ve been getting really into horror movies over the pandemic. I’ve been watching a lot of movies on Shudder. Especially slashers from the eighties, I’d see them and think “oh, that’s something I can make for very little money at home.” So I found that really inspiring and that’s one of the main catalysts for writing the script. Also, in general, we’ve found that filming horror movies is just the most fun. You get to decapitate your characters and do stabbings. They’re really enjoyable to make and they’re pretty forgiving for low budgets so it was the perfect mix.
You used a lot of cool effects in this, how did you work with those?
E- We created a lot of fake blood. Jack would be brewing it up an hour before we’d started shooting for each day. That plus some basic visual effects like for the Devil’s Butcher’s eyes to make them black, which took a long time (props to Jack for doing that), plus the explosions were a lot of visual FX. For stuff like the head decapitation or the arm ripping, we had a fake hand that we had attached to a pool noodle. And we had a flannel that we ripped up so it could be easily pulled out of. The head we bought online from Dapper Cadaver. Our sound recorder/poster artist Anna had an idea of painting blood on the bottom of the head and cutting off pieces of Jack’s t-shirt to make red entrails so it looked like guts coming off of it. We had it attached to this fake body that we created in Jack’s backyard and we just pulled it off.
J- Building props for this project was really fun, and they turned out pretty good. We had three fake bodies stored in my basement for a while.
What do you hope to see change in the horror genre in the future, especially when it comes to teen horror?
J- I think not having thirty-year-olds play teenagers is big, I felt like with our movie the teenagers look and act a lot more like teenagers. I don’t think it has to change entirely because some of the fun of teen horror movies is that they’re kind of cheesy, they don’t all have to be super realistic, but I think more of an effort to modernize them would be nice and to make them seem more authentic.
E- Yeah, adding onto Jack I think making the teen horror genre more teen-central because there are many teenagers around the world who have loved making short movies and love watching horror movies. Incorporating more people who are the right age into these movies would definitely be beneficial.
Why do you think it’s important that you’re teens making this film, and for teens to be involved in filmmaking?
E- Personally, our story revolves around normal teenager experiences- not Satanic issues- but arguing with parents, going on crazy night adventures, and hanging out with friends. A lot of people can relate to the film, and that’s kind of our whole idea: it's Screenager Productions, it’s for teenagers by teenagers.
J- I also think that a lot of the time once people are capable of making a feature they’re already in their twenties, and the experience of being a teenager right now is changing so rapidly with technology and everything. So I think once people are able to make feature films a lot of the time they're a little out of touch with what it’s like to be a teenager at the moment, so it can come across as a little outdated which is why I feel like a lot of teen slashers today are set in the eighties because that’s when the creators grew up. I feel like Satan’s Servant is unique in that way because it’s really set right now and I hope to see more of that in the future.
What advice would you give to up-and-coming teen filmmakers?
E- If you have an idea just go for it. If you feel passionate about a project and you want people to see it, people will watch it. So don’t be afraid to just put it out there.
J- Adding on and slightly disagreeing, I think people might not watch it at first but just keep making stuff and eventually people will. We’ve been making films for around four years now and most of them have like a hundred views on Youtube, and it’s taken a while to make something that people are really excited about. But also just use what you have to make the best movie you can and write stories about the stuff that you have access to. When I was writing this movie I was trying to think about “what’s a movie that we can actually make? What’s a movie that connects all these things?” So just think about what you have and what kind of story you want to tell and just tell it.
Why do you think Satan’s Servant got such a different reaction from your other projects?
J- It was better.
E- That’s definitely one way to put it. I think because just so many people were involved in the process of it, so many people from different families and so many different people supported us through our fundraiser. Also through word of mouth, so many people knew that we were spending all of our weekends shooting this film in the cold March nights, and the label “feature film” definitely got people interested in it.
J- Yeah, when I was writing it I was thinking that a lot of teenagers were making short films better than ours but there are a lot fewer making feature films better than ours so it’s a lot easier to stand out with longer-form content.
If you could work with any horror filmmakers, who would you pick?
J- Chris Landon who did the Happy Death Day movies, I’m a big fan of what he’s doing with the horror genre and that would just be really incredible.
E- That’s a good one. I have to say Ari Aster, he’s an incredible filmmaker and just the chance to be on set with him would be amazing, learning from the way he crafts his films.
What teen horror content do you think is the most accurate besides Satan’s Servant?
J- I can’t think of that many modern ones. Definitely Freaky, it was really close. It's a little polished and stylized but Freaky was very close.
E- I think some of the older teen horror films are a little more accurate because a lot of the teen horror films now take place forty years ago in the eighties, but older films were taking place in the time period they were released so they’re a little more accurate than someone looking back and imagining what the time was like back then.
J- One that’s definitely an older film but when I was watching it I was able to connect it a lot to my experience, and I don’t think it’s too dated is the original Black Christmas- it’s portrayal of college-aged students was pretty authentic and I could connect to some of the characters there for sure.
So after that ending I have to ask, is there a chance at a Satan’s Servant 2?
E- Never say never.
J- We definitely have ideas, I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently, but a sequel feels sort of limiting because you have to go back and do some of the same stuff and you’re kind of restricted by the rules that you set up in the first one. I feel like a sequel could be really fun and there are a lot of exciting ideas we have for it, but also going off and creating a new world is pretty appealing right now.
E- I think if we did a sequel it would be down the road, it wouldn’t be our next immediate project.
Would you want to make something like the “James Wan-iverse” where a lot of your movies exist in the same place but they’re not necessarily all sequels
J- That’s definitely tempting.
E- Yeah, there are some little tidbits of Satan’s Servant that if you’ve seen some of the other Screenager Productions shorts you’ll see a lot of similarities and little easter eggs and stuff.
Now that you’ve made a feature film, do you enjoy them more than shorts?
J- I like feature films better. Shorts are super fun but they don’t feel very rewarding unless you make a really good short because there are so many of them, and it’s so hard to stand out. This has been a really fulfilling experience for me, it’s been so great to have people seeing our movie so I definitely want to be doing that again. But I’ll probably be going back to shorts for a bit.
E- We’ll definitely be doing more short films, but like Jack said it’s more rewarding because you can fit a much more in-depth story into eighty minutes than five. It’s much more exciting to work on something that people can get really invested in that isn’t only a couple of minutes.
You can watch Satan’s Servant now on Amazon Video, and I can’t recommend it enough! You can find Screenager Productions’ short films and other works on Amazon Video and Youtube.
