‘What is the poetry we are trying to create from page to screen?’
Spenser Cohen
Killer Shorts is very excited to bring you this interview with the talented Anna Halberg and Spenser Cohen. With a long collaborative partnership beginning at USC’s undergraduate film production program, Anna and Spenser have created the inaugural film for Sony’s Screen Gems’ new Scream Gems Horror Lab. The Scream Gems Horror Lab is a collaboration between Ground Control and Screen Gems, and was created with the intention to collaborate with rising filmmakers to produce horror shorts with the hopes it will expand into a full-fledged feature.
With the initial idea stemming from Spenser’s one night of sleep paralysis, Spenser and Anna wrote BLINK, starring Sophie Thatcher of Yellowjackets. With Spenser as director and Anna as producer, they found themselves feeling like they were in film school while in production. Collaborating with Ground Control producer Scott Glassgold, they found nothing but support and community with the team at Screen Gems. Anna & Spenser are an immensely talented creative duo, and their tenacity becomes evident in their work. This team has some incredible projects coming up so make sure to follow what they do next. You can now check out BLINK on YouTube.
Check out the interview with Anna & Spenser below.
Conversations with Anna Halberg & Spenser Cohen
Where are you both from originally? Do your surroundings have an impact on the projects you create?
Spenser: I grew up in Agoura Hills, California.
Anna: I’m from a small town called Chaska in the suburbs of Minnesota.
Spenser: I think your upbringing and where you’re raised always affects your view of the world and the stories you tell.
Anna: We have a lot of characters in our projects who end up being from small towns and we reference Minnesota a fair amount either on the page or as we develop projects. Probably because it’s a landscape I’m intimately familiar with. And Spenser has spent a fair amount of time there as well, so it’s a location and setting we know a lot about.
Can you give a brief description of what your short film BLINK is about?
Anna: In BLINK, Mary wakes up in the hospital after being violently pushed from a window. Almost completely paralyzed, she has to answer the nurse’s questions by blinking. Unable to add context and confined to answer yes or no, the film becomes claustrophobic; only the place we’re stuck is Mary’s body. As Mary answers the questions, she tries to warn the nurse that a sinister, inhuman force is trying to kill her and has made its way to the hospital. But when strange things begin happening around her, she realizes it may be too late.
What was the inspiration behind BLINK? Of course, some CGI had to be used to get the effects for this film, but I found that so much of the horror came from the realism of not being able to say or do anything in this horrific moment.
Spenser: So I woke up one night and I had sleep paralysis. It was the only time I’ve ever had it, and I remember waking up and I couldn’t move my body. I couldn’t move anything but my eyes, and I was trying to force my body to wake up. Then I heard a noise. My eyes ping-ponged into the corner of the room, and it was just darkness. I remember being so terrified at that point. I was shaking inside, trying to wake myself up, and I told Anna about it the next day. I was like, “this is the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me.” And she said she had a similar experience happen to her where she woke up in the middle of the night and saw a figure walk into her room. She went to scream and couldn’t. She went to turn her head and couldn’t. But she could see this shadow standing at the edge of her bed. She finally realized what was happening and got herself to fall back to sleep. Of course, when she woke up, that figure wasn’t there.
Anna: It was horrifying. BLINK isn’t about sleep paralysis, but we thought it would be a great jumping off point for a horror film – being in the comfort of your own home and not being able to scream or defend yourself if there was an intruder.
What was it like working with lead actress Sophie Thatcher?
Spenser: Incredible. Sophie is insanely talented as you can tell by her performance in this short and with all the well-deserved success she’s had in the past year.
Anna: They always say that your eyes are the gateway to your soul and that good actors can act with their eyes. Sophie literally had to act with her eyes here and convey so much emotion with one look or a single blink. It’s a very difficult thing to do.
What is Scream Gems and how did your collaboration with them come about?
Anna: Sony’s genre label Screen Gems created an incubator program called the Scream Gems Horror Lab, which collaborates with rising filmmakers to produce horror shorts with the hopes of developing them into full-fledged feature films.
Spenser: They started this with producer Scott Glassgold. We had pre-existing relationships with Screen Gems and Scott and had always wanted to work with both of them, but had never found the right thing to collaborate on, so when this opportunity came about we enthusiastically jumped on it and obviously wanted to do anything we could to be a part of the program.
How did it feel to be the inaugural horror short for Scream Gems?
Anna: Great. We feel really lucky and fortunate to have been the first one out of the gate with the program.
Spenser, when Anna and yourself wrote the script, did you always intend to direct?
Spenser: Yes. We’ve had this idea for a while and we actually had the idea for the feature first, so we reverse-engineered it into a short to work for the lab, but it was always something we intended to direct.
Did you look at the script in a new lens after directing? Do you find the process of directing harder or easier when you’ve written the script?
Spenser: Not really since the intention was always for us to direct, but in general we find it easier to direct projects we’ve written. For us, writing and directing are intertwined. When we begin writing a scene, we talk about where the camera is, how we are revealing each moment, what the characters are feeling, what the production design looks like, and how the score sounds in pivotal moments. What is the poetry we are trying to create from page to screen?
Anna: Even though many of those thoughts and decisions don’t make it into the script, we know exactly how we would shoot each and every scene in each and every script we’ve ever written.
You are the co-owners of Six Foot Turkey Productions. How did your creative partnership begin?
Anna: The two of us met in 2006 at USC where we were both undergraduate students majoring in film production. We started our first company, Six Foot Turkey, while we were in school to be the banner for music videos, commercials, and branded content that we were being asked to direct and produce outside of school. We started working together immediately and have worked together on almost every project since, so it’s been like 16-years now.
Anna, what was the producing process like? What was it like working with producer Scott Glassgold?
Anna: It was great. We didn’t have a lot of time or money to make this project so it was kind of a flashback to film school in a really fun way. Everyone who was involved in the short was doing it because they wanted to be there, so there was this really positive, collaborative energy on set. And Scott is fantastic. Spenser and I are writing and producing a few other projects with him because we had such a fantastic partnership on BLINK.
What stands out to you about Scream Gems that made you want to collaborate with them? How was it working with them?
Spenser: Working with good people is most of the battle and the team at Screen Gems is the best. They are incredibly supportive and easy to work with. They have great ideas, and that carried into production and post.
Anna: You hear horror stories about studios that get in the way of a filmmaker’s vision or hinder the creative process instead of contributing to it. Screen Gems were true partners. They came down to the set and were in the trenches solving problems with us. We obviously had limitations for this shoot, but they never said ‘no.’ If we couldn’t do something it was ‘no, BUT…’ and they would help us figure out a solution that often ended up being better than the original idea.
What do you find most compelling about writing in the horror space? Did you watch any movies to give you ideas?
Spenser: We never really watch anything that would be related to something that we’re doing. Anna and I will end up watching older movies, so for instance, we watched “Rear Window” a bunch. We went back to Hitchcock and all the James Wan movies — the first two “Insidious” films, the first two “Conjuring” movies — because he’s just a master craftsman. But really going back to Hitchcock and watching how he moves the camera in a way to create tension and build suspense. “Rear Window” is just a masterclass in filmmaking.
You have quite a few projects coming up. What can we expect from you two next?
Anna: We wrote a movie for Netflix called, “IVY” that comes out sometime this year. We wrote and produced a movie called, “DISTANT” for Amblin and Universal that comes out in September starring Anthony Ramos and Naomi Scott. And we worked on “Expendables 4” which comes out later this year as well.
Spenser: We also wrote, created and co-directed a scripted podcast starring Wyatt Russell called “Classified.” That’s out right now on Apple and Spotify.
Anna: And we shot the first season of a show that we wrote and created and served as the showrunners on called, “Ballistic.” It stars Jennifer Carpenter from “Dexter.” She is an absolute force in the show, and that will hopefully be released this year.
I have read that you will be doing a feature, Horrorscope, with Screen Gems. How did that come about for you? Were you approached after the success of BLINK?
Spenser: Yes! While, “Blink,” didn’t manifest into a feature film (yet) we are so excited to be co-directing, “Horrorscope” for the studio. We wrote this movie and always hoped we’d be able to direct it together. Like we said, Screen Gems came down to set each day on the short, so after watching us work together, and after witnessing our collaboration in the pre-production and post-production process, they whole-heartedly backed us as a team to direct the movie when we pitched ourselves, which was a dream come true.
Final Thoughts
Killer Shorts hopes that Anna & Spenser’s journey inspires all you rising filmmakers to take that horror short from script to screen. The Scream Gems Horror Lab goes to show that there is great support in the horror short film space, and BLINK is no exception to this. As Anna says, “They always say that your eyes are the gateway to your soul and that good actors can act with their eyes.” I found it particularly moving the intensity Sophie Thatcher brought to the role. With no dialogue to Sophie’s character, BLINK reminds you how terrifying it can be not to have a voice. Anna & Spenser have had a long standing collabortive partnership and that definitley shows in the delicacy and determination they bring to their work. They are a great example of what can come from a horror short film. We cannot wait to see the amazing projects Anna & Spenser have slated for the future.
Anna Halberg on Twitter.
Anna Halberg on Instagram.
Spenser Cohen on Instagram.
Screen Gems on Twitter.
Scott Glassgold on Twitter.
Featured Image by Ieva Berzina.
