Afflicted (Lee, 2013)
Production
The filming of Afflicted, with a budget of $318,000, which is a fair amount for a horror movie, took place in Barcelona, Paris, Italy and Vancouver. Funding was raised through a small grant between the directors, Lee and Prowse family and friends. Between the two directors, Afflicted was their first feature-length film, as although they were both successful, creative directors, they had only created prolific, short films before. The original concept of the movie was planned to be a 'web series', akin to Lonelygirl5 or Marble Hornets, where the two would create posts and upload videos over time which would, on the skin seem normal but gradually become more bizarre and disturbed. Of the concept, Prowse commented that 'You'd eventually have all these gaps because of eventually the characters would stop posting and then the feature film would be this skeleton key that would click at the very end that you'd present'. The disease the directors chose to make Derek contaminated with was 'Vampirism', this was generally decided because they felt vampires are used in 'very stylistic, cinematic, often melodramatic and romanticised films' and were not traditionally used otherwise.
The two directors were not familiar with filming in the found footage genre, as a result, Prowse and lee found it initially challenging and commented that they had a lot of respect for directors of such films such as 'The Blair Witch Project' and 'Paranormal Activity', which was made with a mere $15,000. Breakthroughs such as the assignment of actors such as the star of the film and main protagonist's made the production more fluent, as it allowed them more freedom to shoot and re-shoot scenes. Lee commented that his role of 'Derek' was very physically draining due to the weather in Italy and the demands of his role.
Distribution
Afflicted was distributed by CBS films who are a 'major mini' films company, showing the authority it provides in the Independent genre.The film's trailer is notable for showing a selection of the characters' 'travelogue' scenes in reverse order: Entry 206, Entry 185, Entry 163, Entry 151, and so on, with each different shot connoting that horror is emerging throughout the story. Germain Lussier of 'www.slashfilm.com' wrote; 'The Afflicted trailer might be one of the best 'Hollywood' has released in a long time. Unlike traditional trainers, which are presented linearly, this one starts at the beginning, jumps to the end and then works backwards, showing how two friends' trip around the world goes horribly wrong.
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