The monsters of “Cursed Candy”
For Halloween 2022 I put together a Halloween dance video that follows three girls who decide to snack on some “Cursed Candy” — candy that is said to contain the power to transform the eater into a random Halloween monster. By the way, my favorite Halloween candy has got to be, hands down, 100 Grand.
The Monsters
From a list of monsters, I narrowed it down to three finalists they would turn into upon eating the cursed candy;
- Vampire
- Witch
- Zombie
These were chosen as a matter of cohesiveness as all three of them could be done with make-up style make-up effects, rather than relying on prosthetic pieces and parts.
The Location
Cursed Candy was shot in two different locations. The first was George’s Corner Store in Burbank, California. The second location was Bob’s Big Burgers, also located in Burbank.
This wasn’t by design, but rather out of necessity: the police kicked us out of the location after the worker at George’s thought he’d teach us a lesson by calling the cops. The cops didn’t really care what we were doing, but the store worker was going to make a big stink out of it.
My two cents is that Burbank is a heavily Armenian-run town and that they probably have pull with the police, so keep that in mind if you decide to shoot at an Armenian run establishment.
The Filming
Filming Cursed Candy took a total of 5 hours. This included rehearsal time, makeup time and location changes. The video was shot on a Sony a7iii with a Zhiyun Crane 2 gimbal. I also used a combination of a vintage, Nikkor 24 mm lens, and Nikkor 50 mm lens for some of the dialogue shots and close up shots.
Make-Up
Cursed Candy’s make-up was done by Annika Ross and Reaper Effects. Annika also appeared as the witch in the video. All three monsters were a combination of makeup and colored contacts for their eyes. Reaper Effects also did a gash effect with a silicone prosthetic on the zombies arm.
Cast and Crew
Cursed Candy’s dancers were
with the choreography done by Kyleen LIkas.
If you’d like to work with either of them, they are all three available for hire and a great dancers.
Additional make-up and lighting help was done by Reaper Effects.
PA and BTS photos were done by Peter Kovic.
Original music was created and performed by Larry Wyatt.
And I wrote, shot, directed, edited and colored it.
Check out the final video below!