Made-in-Belgrade Horror Film Debuts at MIFF
Among the four made-in-Maine features to debut at this year’s MIFF, one of them stands out. Sight Unseen is the only fictional film — the other three are documentaries — and the only one to have been shot right here in Belgrade.
Sight Unseen is a ghost story of the type told around a campfire, but with a dash of millennial angst. Three young adult siblings, two sisters and a brother, slightly estranged from each other and extremely estranged from their late father, reunite after his death in a lakeside cabin that he bequeathed to them. But they soon discover that they not alone, as the cabin seems to be haunted.
The film will have its world preview at MIFF on Saturday, July 19, at 9:00 in Cinema 1 on the Schupf Center’s second floor, with a repeat screening in the same room the next day at 3:00. As of this writing, the Sunday screening has already sold out. Given the lateness of the hour, the Saturday screening is not likely to sell out, but it is better to buy your ticket or make your reservation early.
Oriana Schwindt and Stephen Parkhurst, who met in 2019 and subsequently married, wrote and produced the film. Parkhurst, who also directed and edited the film, grew up in St. Albans and Pittsfield, while Schwindt comes from, in her own words, “the other end of I-95, down in Central Florida.” The duo now live and work in New York City.
The film has just five speaking roles. Three New York City actors, Daniel Burns, Lauren Pisano, and Kellie Spill, portray the siblings, with two local actors, Bart Shattuck, as their late father, and Debra Lord (“Dee”) Cooke as a neighbor and real estate agent.
That last bit of casting is, to misquote Oscar Wilde, a classic case of art imitating life. Besides being an actress, Cooke is a real estate agent for Lakehome Group in Belgrade Lakes Village. That agency is sponsoring a reception following the Sunday screening, where attendees can meet the filmmakers and some of the cast.
Except for a few brief scenes of the siblings driving down country roads, the entire film was shot in and around Cooke’s family cabin on Great Pond. The shooting location may seem familiar, as most of the Maine scenes in Cooke’s previous movie, In the Moon’s Shadow, were shot at the cabin as well, although it has since been renovated and expanded.
What follows is an interview by email with Oriana Schwindt, edited for length, with a few parenthetical additions by yours truly. You can also learn more at the film’s website.
What gave you the idea for this film?
Steve and I are at a point in our lives where we’re thinking and talking a lot about inheritances, both literal and figurative. What have we inherited from our parents, emotionally? What’s going to happen to the homes in places adult children don’t necessarily want to live? On a broader scale, what kind of world are we being left, and what will we leave, in turn? The idea of inheriting a haunted cabin from an estranged parent naturally flowed from these conversations, and Steve and I quickly outlined the story and wrote the script.
We also noticed that there weren’t a lot of horror movies that center on adult sibling dynamics, which is something we’re both really interested in. I’m the oldest sister in my family, and Steve’s the youngest brother in his, so we combined our experiences to create a much more dramatic, complex dynamic among our three leads.
How did the story evolve during the making of the film?
Once we had our fantastic location locked down, we were able to adjust our script to the cabin itself. A major change was that key emotional moments — and our big scares! — originally took place in a basement. (Cooke’s cabin does not have a basement.) When we saw that Dee’s cabin had an upstairs space with these really cool hanging stairs, we knew they were going to serve as the centerpiece of the movie.
Why did you choose to shoot in Belgrade?
Belgrade as our location was the happiest of accidents. Steve had posted on Facebook asking for leads on cabins we could use as a shooting location in the central Maine area, and Steve’s former drama teacher, Deb Susi, put us in touch with Dee! (Debra Susi is a longtime drama teacher at Maine Central Institute, a private high school in Pittsfield, and also a longtime director of plays at the Waterville Opera House.)
When did shoot the film and how many days did it take?
We shot from the middle of September to the end of September 2024. It was a 12-day shoot, with one day off in the middle and a day of rehearsal before we shot. It’s quite a challenge to shoot a full feature script in 12 days, but our crew and actors really stepped up. Our actors, in particular, saved our butts by absolutely nailing their blocking and characters and being ready to deliver great takes. We managed to go more than 7 shooting days without a single blooper, which is almost unheard-of in the industry.
What was the time frame for the other major steps in the production of the film?
We officially decided to do the film in early April of 2024, and spent the first few months of pre-production working on a budget, rewriting the script to fit the budget, finding a location, and casting. In July, we launched our small Kickstarter campaign, which was fully funded very quickly.
We had an edited version of the film ready for our sound designer and colorist by December, and the film was ready to be screened by May 28. This was a much faster post-production process than you usually see. Most films take a year or more to work through post-production because of all the different layers of decision-making that needs to happen, especially when VFX are involved, and many movies will do some reshoots. We were able to move fast because Steve edited the movie with me at his side, and we only had three VFX shots in the entire movie. (Visual effects, or VFX, are the computer alteration of shots after the fact.)
What did it all cost, and how did you raise the money?
All-in, our budget ended up being about $85,000. Just under $70,000 of that came from our personal savings, and our Kickstarter raised $18,000 ($16,200 after Kickstarter’s 10% cut). Most of the Kickstarter money came from friends and family, but a few strangers were astonishingly generous (shout out to our executive producer Scott Emmett O’Donnell). We raised the Kickstarter money to help us with the added cost of using SAG-AFTRA actors, which was absolutely worth it, given the fantastic job they all did. (SAG-AFTRA is a trade union for actors and other media professionals.)
As for our savings, Steve and I got married during the pandemic, on a beach with just three other people present. Instead of having a proper wedding after the pandemic was over, or even putting a down payment on a house, we decided to use most of our savings on making this movie. We did this because, despite our respective experience in the industry, neither of us had actually made a feature film. We knew no one was going to hand us a pile of money to make a feature-length film when we hadn’t made one before, so we decided to do it ourselves.
What are your plans for the film after its MIFF debut?
We have a few other festivals that the film will be going to (we can’t publicly announce them yet), and our managers are currently shopping the film around for distribution.
Finally, is there anything that you want the audience to know about the film before they see it?
For all our lofty talk about literal and figurative inheritances, above all, we wanted to make a fun, scary movie — and I think we’ve really delivered. This movie is a blast to watch in the dark with a bunch of other people; hearing everyone laugh and scream at the exact same time is music to our ears!
miff
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