Talking with the Dead: 18 questions with M.J. Dixon

1. Mycho Entertainment Group was founded in 2004, specializing in making high quality productions on the lowest budget possible. What was the inspiration for forming Mycho and what films and directors helped to nurture your twisted visions of horror?

At 16 I started trying to find my way in the world of media production I wasn’t really sure where I sat within that, But I ended up working on any indie productions who would have me and eventually ended working on a slightly more permanent basis for a local film maker in my home town. The guy was a few years older than me, but was definitely on the trajectory that I was aiming for, the only problem was, every-time I tried to get anything serious off the ground, he would fill me with reasons why I shouldn’t, why it was a bad idea or that I would make a fool of myself and as his he was my elder I listened, I listened for way too long in fact. It wasn’t until I discovered that he had tried to steal our wages from a job that I really called his reasons for saying these things into question.

I quit working with him and decided I was going to make something on my own. I had a billion ideas that had been shot down by this guy and now I could make one, It really just means that I had to go out and do it on my own. This was 2004 and Mycho would come along soon after. But at the time all I wanted to do was make something that was my own. At the time I was also attending a college in Newcastle, in the North Of England, they operated as a production company and because of that we were only ever taught how to shoot news items and panel shows. For my final piece I was given free reign on what I wanted to do, and so, as everyone suspected I would, I made a short horror film called Destination.

2. The earlier years of Mycho produced trailers for Destination, Before the Dawn and Confine. What can you tell us about these earlier projects and how do you feel they have helped to shape the film maker you are today?

Well Destination started life as something a little bit different, a few years earlier, when I was unsure about the kind of filmmaker I was (which honestly seems like madness now) I came up with an idea for a kind of depressing love story. I hated it, but after looking back over it I kind of just thought “If I turned this into a horror film what would it be about?” and Destination was born. I shot the film, it was about 11 mins in length I think, In May of 2004, I formed Mycho later in that year in September.

It wasn’t till 2 years later in 2006 that I actually shot the first Official Mycho film , it was only after that Destination got the Mycho label. Before The Dawn was our first official short under the label and the story was inspired by something that had happened in some student residence that year (albeit not to that extent) but I just found it a great idea for a horror. I think in the end I didn’t make the kind of film I should have based simply on the fact that I went out with the intention of being shocking and in some respect feel that I didn’t give enough care to the story.

Confine was planned to be my first feature that was to be shot in 2007, unfortunately the producer we got on board was, well, a complete b**l end, and the film got knocked back and back and back until in the end it just didn’t happen. Then Ryan Reynolds did ‘Buried’ which was essentially the same film just with a different ending and I realized that I had missed the boat and shelved the idea completely.
These all paved the way for what happened next.

3. It is quite obvious from the teaser and trailer for West that Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator is a favorite of yours. Is the film more of a re imagining of the cult classic, or a further continuation of the science and madness that drove Herbert West to his ghoulish experiments into reviving the dead?

I love the Re-Animator movies, I didn’t really get into them until my late teens, but after that I was hooked. West happened at a huge turning point in my life, I had just managed to get out of a terrible relationship and had lost a lot of personal friends over it for one reason or another, including most the team I had worked with on productions for the past few years. I was also in the final year of University and it was requested that we do an adaption of some kind. I figured what better to adapt than the short story ‘Herbert West : Reanimator”. So back to basics and out my own again I set out to make the best film I had ever made… and it sucked.

I wanted to make a film that kind of told the story from a young, fresh perspective, kind of like Smallville meets Lovecraft, but due to time and money (or lack of) the short very quickly became less and less what I wanted it to be and more an exercise in just getting it completed. We actually shot half the film twice due to the lead female dropping out halfway through without telling anyone. That killed any spare time we had on the project and it ended up being rushed to the finish line somewhat rough around the edges.

I did plan to try and continue the story and recently that has seemed to crop up as an option with us doing it as a potential web series for our channel. I’ve roughly planned out the first two seasons should it happen, but I think that what we’ve come up with currently is something pretty special.

4. The UK “Paranormal Activity Prepare To Be Scared YouTube Competition” brought about your next short, entitled Eye Spy. How did you conceptualize this short, how long did it take you to make it and how do you feel it stacked up against the other shorts in the contest?

EyeSpy was actually produced for a different Competition that the UK Horror Channel used to run annually, It was for a 2 minute piece and we put together the film for that. We did however miss the deadline. But the idea with the film in general was to take everything I had earned from making things like West and Before the Dawn and ‘up my game’.

It was only after the film was released online that the guys doing the Paranormal Activity UK DVD dropped me a line asking me to enter it into the competition. It didn’t win but looking at the films that did, I think ours just didn’t represent the film well enough. EyeSpy did however win the Dread Central 8 Shorts To Die for Competition judged by one of my fave artists ‘Dee Snider’.

5. “Three friends attempt to kill a killer who has pursued them for most of their adult lives, tonight they plan to stop him forever. As long as nothing goes wrong” is the set up for Thorn. The audio and visual look and feel of the film appears to be a leap forward in your film making technique. What led to the making of this short and how did you feel about the positive response that it received from the online community?

Thorn was put together for a couple of reasons, First of all myself and Creepsville Producer Pete Lowe wanted to stretch our muscles a little before just going out there and trying to shoot a feature. We were conscious to make it look as professional as possible and used what we had around us to bring the whole thing together. The second reason was that I’d had the script for Thorn sitting around for a fair while and even longer in my head from when I was a kid.

I’m not sure why it was so well received or if it even was, we won first place in a competition at scaryordie.com and that helped the films profile quite a bit. But if I’m honest I’d like to think that it works because of several different things, The writing (I had writer Paul Thomas do a polish on it which I felt brought it up to standard), the Camera work which was crafted so well by Pete Lowe and the acting was pulled off well for the most part by the actors, I think because it was so self contained as well, it gave me a lot of time to direct and think about what we were doing and how we were doing it.

6. My guilty pleasure from your trailer page is The Evil Tree. You state on the page that it is “the never produced worst film of all time”. The use of the theme music from Friday the 13th was a nice touch in my opinion. What concept spawned this trailer and is there ever a chance that you would expand on this idea?

Lol Evil Tree was actually a test shoot for a concept trailer we planned to put together for a film I’ve now been working on for about 10 years called ‘From Out Of Nowhere’. We were looking back over the footage and it kind of all just fell into place. We found it so funny at the time that we felt we had to put it out there and we’ve had a lot of great response from it.

7. In 2010, you released your first feature length film, Creepsville. Can you tell us a bit how this film came about, and what challenges did you find making a full length film as opposed to a short?

Creepsville started life in 2005, I knew I couldn’t make From Out Of Nowhere because quite simply, I didn’t have enough money to make the film I wanted to make and stripping it back I felt would only harm the final product. Originally FOON was written based on the write round what you have rule, but I’d shifted halfway across the country at this point and so the thing I had we no longer relevant.

Creepsville was written on these rules once again, I wanted to utilize what I had at my disposal and so the bare bones of Creepsville were born. I sat down with Paul Thomas in January of 2009 and I was essentially a pain in the arse for 3 months as we tried to grapple down the script for the whole thing. Eventually the first draft was done and Paul left the project after acting as producer for the first 5 months or so along with myself and Pete and me and Pete then went into principle as just the two of us and a largish team of crew and actors all working for free.
We didn’t have any money, so we just borrowed what we could, begged what we could, and asked everyone to pay their own expenses and we just blindly moved forward on nothing more than belief that we could do it. We did, but it took us 5 months over the 14 days shoot we originally planned. Currently the film is stuck in post for various reasons, so it still doesn’t have a release date, but that is what happens when you move blindly forward into something, you kind of miss the forthcoming obstacles as well. We have the film planned for completion and potential release mid-late 2013, but we’ll see how that goes.

8. Slasher House was your next feature film. The two trailers for that film again show an incredible visual style. What can you tell us about the genesis of this film, and what sets this film apart from the standard slasher film?

Slasher House was my big budget idea, I wrote it as a script to sell back in 2005, something very high concept that I could pitch to a studio. Whilst we were making Creepsville, it kept coming up and before long I think it became obvious that I was going to tackle that next. Only on a much smaller budget than planned.

The film itself was kind of my answer to Freddy vs Jason, I wanted to see the big slasher villains battle it out, But for obvious reasons that seemed unlikely to happen, so I figured, ‘why not make my own even better Slasher villains?’ The idea came directly from that and of course my absolute obsession with the sub genre. The idea was to make it something fresh that no one had seen before and had characters that could essentially be from their own franchises and have there own unique back stories and then treat this movie as a kind of ensemble movie with different characters from different movies coming together in one slasher Battle Royale.

9. One of the things that stands out in your film making are some of the locations you use in your films. Can you tell us where and how you got some of these locations, in particular the location used for Slasher House?

Well I think when you work on a low budget location is everything. You can’t build a set as that’s money you simply don’t have, So finding a suitable ‘real world’ location is your only bet. In regards to Slasher House, we spent months searching England for somewhere to shoot the film and came up with nothing for various reasons, mostly to do with health and safety. Adam Williams, our male lead, was out at home at the time and came across an old abandoned prison on the Isle of Man, after a few meetings and phone calls we managed to not only secure it, but secure it well within our budget.

10. Films in the horror genre have always come under fire from the so-called critics and worry warts of society. While the U.S.A. Has a somewhat rigid system known as the MPAA that makes “recommendations” to film makers to make their films more accessible to the public for theatrical viewing, the U.K. Has had it worse. In the U.K., The Video Nasties era butchered many films beyond recognition. What are your feelings on how horror films are viewed in the U.K. as opposed the the U.S. and what problems have you encountered in your films because of it?

I think we’re starting to see the end of that now here. Everything is passed just about now, the last thing I think that came under any kind of problem was Human Centipede 2 but even then it landed on shelves shortly after so I think the whole era of these things being banned has moved with the world. We’re less scared of blood and guts and violence now because what’s going on in the real world has more coverage and that is about as horrible as it gets. I think the fear that films corrupt is now being thrown more at video games which I guess is better for filmmakers in the short term, but better for nobody in the long run.

11. Your films have been distributed in the U.K., but what about the U.S.? Have you found distribution easier there or here and have you had to make changes to your films in order to do so?

Well Before The Dawn was self distributed world wide I think we sold copies to the US and Australia as well as several others, but US is still something we’re hoping to break open with the features. We’re in talks about some stuff with some interested parties so it’ll be interesting to see what that brings. Personally I can’t wait to see our stuff hit Japan as they always come up with some pretty out there artwork for Indie films.

12. Your films do have a very distinct visual style that helps to lend to the creep factor. Do you shoot everything in a digital format or have you expanded into 35mm film? If not, is that something that you are planning to do?

I’ve always shot on tape or Digital, I was always worried about movie to film stock and when I started out I figured that one day that was going to become an expense. But the world has changed and film in the Indie field is just simply no longer a viable option. Getting a project to look cinematic is about knowing your equipment and understanding what makes a shot look expensive and if you work hard enough you can achieve that with a £100 camcorder.

In the end it matter very little what you shoot on, to a degree at least. A film shot on a handy cam is better than no film at all, that being said you should always aim for the best quality available to you. In our case that was mid range SLRs, I often get asked why I chose to shoot on an SLR and the answer is always “Why wouldn’t I? They are cheap and if you know what you’re doing can capture a fantastic cinematic image for about an eighth of the rental cost of a red”. But all of this is meaningless if your story is pap.

13. Christmas 2014 looks to be a banner release for you with the upcoming Blood on Santa’s Claws. The synopsis states “One year ago, George Landers shot an intruder on his roof, an intruder dressed like St. Nick himself. Panicked, George buried the body in the woods and never told a soul, in the hopes that it would all just go away. One year later and Christmas Eve is here, but it has brought something with it, and as George’s family and friends are picked off one by one it comes down to his daughter who may hold the secret of where this all began and how to stop it…”. What more can you tell us about this upcoming film and what will set it apart from other Christmas themed horror films?

Well I first mentioned this back in 2008 in another interview and it was my next planned project after Creepsville. I’ve always hated Christmas since I was a teen and so to overcome that hate I turned into a second Halloween and would spend December tracking down Christmas Horrors and watching them in the lead up to Christmas day. Whilst I was trying to prep Creepsville Christmas was coming and I had begun my annual slog through films such as the Silent Night series and then had a thought.

With some noticeable exceptions (Mainly Black Christmas and Tales From The Crypt) Christmas Horror films kind of sucked, I felt like no one had ever really got it right. Don’t get me wrong I love almost all of them, but more I think because of their potential rather than their execution. I found that they never got down to what we wanted to see. I just then kind of dreamt up what I would like to see and the story fell out of me quite naturally. I was working on an art piece of Blood On Satan’s Claw at the time and the title sprung from that and added the cherry to the awesome Christmas cake.

With pushing Slasher House into production (mainly because I became terrified that a similar film would appear if I didn’t act fast) BOSC got pushed back and back and back until I forgot all about it. It was only as Christmas drew in at the end of 2012 that I suddenly came back to it and thought this is something I want to make and now felt like the time.

14. I see that Thorn is being made into a feature film as well. The killer in the film has a very distinctive look, including his mask. How are you planning to make him different from the standard slasher we see these days, and how is the film going to expand past the short you made earlier in your career?

Thorn was created as my answer to Halloween Resurrection. I’d never watched a Halloween film before that had made me angry, I loved the franchise, even flops like Halloween 5 and this was a very strange and new experience for me. To be so disappointed in a franchise that had until that point never let up for me. I went away with a realization that Myers was dead and someone needed to take on that mantle. I created Thorn in an attempt to bring something back to the genre, but with a fresh twist to him.

Thorn was created to be a kind of step up from Myers and Jason and that kind of serial killer, I wanted him to be a force of nature. The way I looked at these guys as a child before the sequels watered it down and made them parodies of themselves. That was the first step in putting this together.

Writing the feature, as with the short, I wanted to convey an idea of Legacy, I didn’t want to be bogged down with an origin story that we ‘had’ to tell first off, so the idea was to start with the sequel and recap on what we had missed through flashbacks. So Thorn runs as essentially 2 45 minute movies side by side. I felt this was the best way to keep it interesting throughout the run time and we wouldn’t fall into the origin story trap that so many films do.

15. You are also going to be involved with a bunch of different directors in a project entitled Blaze of Gory, slated for 2014 release. What kind of challenges do you expect working with several other directors and what can you tell us about your involvement in the project?

A friend of mine, Chris Yardley, first brought my attention to it, I was in the process of thinking about putting together my own anthology feature with some other filmmakers, but released that spending the time finding several directors and such was just unfeasible at that time. So when I came across Blaze Of Gory I knew I wanted to do something for it. I e-mailed Chris about it and he put me onto David VG Davies who concepted the project.

Dave had a look at some of my work and told me they had a couple of scripts left, I asked him to send me the one he thought I would suit most and he sent me a script called ‘If You Were Here’. It was some pretty gruesome stuff and then when he told me it had been created by a 16 year old girl (along with all the other stories) I was shocked. Once you see the film you’ll see why. It’s definitely unlike anything I’ve ever taken on before, although it does bare similarities with my earlier work.

16. Part of any project is finding the right cast to convey your characters. Can you tell us a little bit about what you look for in an actor or actress and how much creative latitude do you give them on set?

Casting, for me, is about two things, Personality and Adaption. I’ve worked with people who have been prefect as the character they have been hired to play, but they have been a nightmare on set and so the impossible task of finishing an Indie film, becomes 10 times harder because you’re dealing with an ego too and that is making everyone’s life harder. So I try to cast based on how well someone gets what we’re doing. We work round the clock, without sleeping some days and it’s hard. We don’t have room for the princesses of the world and there is no need to.

If you learn to be adaptive, then you can make your character work for an actor who might not have been exactly what you imagined at the start, but you can mold them into that image and it usually works out for the better. Corben in Slasher House was originally supposed to be played by someone else, the actor dropped out 3 weeks before the shoot. Two years later, I cannot imagine anyone else being that character and playing it any other way than the way Wellington Grosvenor played it.

17. With a full plate coming up over the next year, what other projects do you have coming up and what dream projects would you like to work on?

Officially we have Thorn and Blood On Santa’s Claws, but there are a couple of other little projects that we have under the radar for now, two of them tie directly into Slasher House and another is something I wrote a few years back that has found new life as a very different kind of movie.

As far as dream projects go, I think that’s kind of what I’m working toward. These films that we’re making have an end goal, they are all inter connected in one way or another and there is a plan that leads to something much, much bigger. But it’s hard because you can’t say where you’re headed as people lose interest in where you are now, so everything always has to stay quiet. It a tough balance. All I’ll say is, think ‘The Expendables’ Of Horror.

Outside of that I would love to work on a remake, I know everyone hates them, but genuinely I don’t have a problem with any film, as long as it’s good. If I could remake something it would be Hellraiser or Sleepaway Camp (I feel its about time for that one). Outside of that I’d love to re-imagine some of the cool stuff I loved as a kid, Like Jayce and The Wheeled Warriors, I think would make a great action movie.

18. What advice would you give to up and coming film directors?

It’s hard, because all the advice I got growing up contradicted itself, but that’s kind of the best thing that can happen. Because I very quickly realized that there is no right way of doing things. The best thing you can do is just go and do what you know you have to do. If you read that and think “Everyone says that” and you’re waiting for some magic problem solving sentence that will make you a filmmaker, then enjoy your life sitting on a coach waiting because you will never, ever do it.

Film making is hard work, but sometimes it’s fun, rewarding hard work (so I’ve heard anyways) and as long as you’re prepared for that you can do anything. One thing I want to relay back is something that Gabriele Albanesi, (director of ‘Last House In the Woods’) said on his commentary for that movie that woke me up and made me get up and make my first feature film was this “If You’re Still waiting for money to make a movie, you’re not a real filmmaker” and he’s 100% right. Me? I read that as a challenge and I’ve never stopped since.