Shelby Oaks: Chris Stuckmann’s Journey from YouTube to NEON

It felt a little like a thanksgiving to Chris Stuckmann when Shelby Oaks first appeared earlier this month at Fantastic Fest. The seasoned YouTube video writer and host has attended the event for years. And he always admired the fact that well before he made the leap that divides film critics from artists, he always admired. ]

The article Chris Stuckmann’s journey from YouTube to NEON: Shelby Oaks appeared initially on Den of Geek.

When Chris Stuckmann first introduced Shelby Oaks earlier this month at Fantastic Fest, it sounded like they were coming home. The seasoned YouTube film critic and host has attended the event for years. And well before he made the decision to split film critics from filmmakers, he had often admired the atmosphere of a Venice neighborhood that treated horror with the same enthusiasm as an Oscar blog.

When Stuckmann visits our theater on the ground in Austin, Stuckmann says,” They treat it at a fame level.” He furthermore confirms that his directing feature film debut will be in the hallowed place. Shelby Oaks ‘ career on screen actually began below.

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Stuckmann claims that the original concept was to simply make this movie for a small fee and post it on my YouTube channel. But it just kept growing and the text grew bigger and bigger until about six years ago when I was able to angle around at Fantastic Fest.” The music lover who found his voice digitally by being surrounded by peers and horror aficionados presently knew enough like-minded storytellers to make the big screen debut.

Shelby Oaks ‘ charm is also due to its intimate knowledge of 21st century narrative and internet, whether it be at the theater or on a social media platform. Sisters Mia and Riley are in the movie as well as Sarah Durn and Camille Sullivan. The former is our main character, an older child sibling who continues to fret over Riley’s strange disappearance from the 2000s. Riley vanished into the evening after recording spooky, unrecorded film near an abandoned amusement park outside of Shelby Oaks, Ohio, thanks to a DIY paranormal research line she filmed with associates in the product’s earlier times.

However, in a bitter sarcasm, Riley’s disappearance later developed into its own net myth, feeding many various YouTube videos and later documentaries, including the one that opens Stuckmann’s film. This documentary-within-a-movie appears to be about Mia dissolving Riley’s lingering unknown. However, that changes once the devices stop moving and a potential customer shows up at Mia’s entrance door with a copy of the missing DV tape.

Stuckmann’s personal long-running YouTube channel dedicated to reviewing fresh releases as well as antique deep cuts frequently in the horror genre gave the characteristic its inspiration for the function.

In 2016, Stuckmann and my wife and I did a cabin in the woods thing where we went to a cabin in the woods and discussed cabin in the woods movies. Very original, I am a YouTuber. But we did this wrap-around sketch where a killer was attempting to kill us, and we did it alone and had a great time while driving home from Tennessee, which is a six-hour drive, and we were asking,” Why aren’t we just making something?” We’ve grown weary of waiting.

The movie obviously touches on elements Stuckmann knows from his own life, right down to Riley missing at Shelby Oaks in 2008, which comes into play with Stuckmann starting his own channel in 2009.

The filmmaker claims,” I can recall the quaint, charming days of early YouTube, when there were only a few people talking about stuff on that platform. Because it felt like a tiny community, it felt very small, so that was important to me. One of the most intriguing aspects of Shelby Oaks is how it breaks free from preconceived notions of how a story about a missing filmmaker can unfold, despite the movie starting from a well-known location. In Stuckmann’s debut, there are obvious homages to found footage movies, most notably The Blair Witch Project, but the movie shifts too far into a conventional narrative with Mia turning the camera off after a mockumenatry-like first act.

Stuckmann explains,” I remember the first time I was writing the treatment, it started as this sort of found footage, mocumentary/moc-doc approach, and I thought, what are the rules of this?” And as soon as I began to think in that manner, I was angry with myself. since I want to break some laws. When I called a friend who was involved in filmmaking, I was like,” Am I allowed to do this where it just changes?” You want to try and reinvent something and do something new. And he says,” Do whatever you want!”

He continues,” Whenever I watch a moc-doc, which I love, and Lake Mungo and Noroi are my two biggest inspirations on this one, I always think,” We are all in on the joke.” Why can’t we experiment with it since we know it’s fictional?

The end result is a film that can include extended scenes from Riley’s paranormal YouTube series shot inside a decaying, abandoned prison, which was also used to film The Green Mile and Shawshank Redemption, as well as sister Mia’s return to the same location years later.

They literally walked around the prison and said,” This is where we put the solitary confinement people, and this is where they put the people they couldn’t even enter,” Durn recalled. You literally are walking on these sluggish platforms four stories up and think,” This is not great.”

Co-star Sullivan even recalls having her own impromptu shooting experience on the prison’s platforms.

” While performing the reshoots, I was running to the end and there was nothing back there,” says Sullivan, who explains that when I heard “no, no, no, no, no,” I ran as fast as I could and only did it a few times. And I looked around and I couldn’t find anything; instead, I thought,” Is there someone there?” And I’m told,” I’m just me. That is not at all comforting.

It turned out to be a joke, but it gave off an unsettling atmosphere that comes from producing a real movie in real time. For Stuckmann, it all represents a kind of full-circle, including how Mike Flanagan, the game director for <a href=””>The Life of Chuck and Gerald, found Shelby Oaks ‘ biggest champion.

Stuckmann claims that” I’ve known him since Oculus.” When I reviewed Oculus, he reached out to me when he was just” Mike.” He wasn’t, you might recall, Mike Flanagan from Doctor Sleep and Haunting of Hill House at the time. So I reviewed his film, which was fantastic, and we later became friends. Over the years, he’s given me a lot of script advice. When Shelby approached, he would read my scripts and act as a mentor for me, and his involvement took off. He enjoyed the script after reading it.

Following that, Stuckmann shot the supernatural chiller, bringing back an assembly cut that had been screened for Flanagan and lasted for more than three hours.

Stuckmann asserts that “it was basically every scene in chronological order without any artistic intent,” making it a nightmare. It’s so embarrassing to disclose that to anyone. But he adored it, and he formally stepped up to be one after that, and he quickly established himself as a force in post, making excellent suggestions about editing. Flanagan would even offer additional guidance on how to best market the movie and which producers to work with.

Stuckmann is back at Fantastic Fest after all these years as a filmmaker rather than a critic, and with a film coming up for distribution by NEON in time for the creepy season. Who says that happy endings can’t be in horror movies?

Shelby Oaks is the only film in theaters that opens on October 24.

The article Chris Stuckmann’s journey from YouTube to NEON: Shelby Oaks appeared initially on Den of Geek.