A recent Baltimore Sun feature profiled filmmakers (and former Emerson College roommates) Dan Griffiths and Jeremy Kasten, both Class of 1993. The two, both Baltimore natives, are in the process of creating the feature-length horror film called The Dead Ones. “Since Dan and I first became friends, and really partners in filmmaking, in college, we’ve had this idea of coming back to Baltimore,” Kasten told the paper. Kasten will be directing The Dead Ones. The film is about four teen-agers who find themselves trapped inside a haunted school building.

Griffiths, a former kid actor, is producing and making sure the film stays within its $600,000 budget. “I feel a real connection to the idea that independent film really comes from Baltimore on some level,” says Griffiths. “This movie is the first time…we were able to raise the financing, and we were able to put the business model together,” Griffiths says. “We were able to say, from Day 1, that this is what we’re trying to do. Nobody’s been our boss this time.” When he’s not working with Kasten, Griffiths is head of a company that brokers deals for international distribution of American films.

The duo’s first effort, The Attic Expeditions, “about a convicted murderer in an insane asylum who begins to question whether the crime ever happened at all, turned out pretty well, earning money for its investors (including Kasten’s aunt and uncle) and eventually getting bought by Blockbuster,” said the article.

Since The Attic Expeditions’ 2001 release, Kasten has directed a handful of films, including Gayosity (2004), All Souls Day (2005), The Thirst (2006) and his second film with Griffiths as producer, The Wizard of Gore (2007), a remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis’ 1970 cult classic about a hypnotist with a somewhat extreme stage act. The Wizard of Gore remake starred cult hero Crispin Glover.

www.emerson.edu/news