If you saw Portland's 48 Hour Film Project this year, you'll remember the winning entry, Through The Door Productions' sitcom parody, "
P-Town Peeps," which featured a parody-within-the-parody in the form of a commercial break for a "24"-esque actioner called "48," which Through the Door outsourced to Uke Doiron of
Mainiac Films.
"We only had 1 hour and 40 minutes to go out and shoot footage within a half-mile radius," says Dorion. "For what we shot it came out decent and everyone seemed to eat it up during the event."
Eat it up they did, and audience enthusiasm for that brief snippet set the ball rolling on a longer, more ambitious take on the concept. Introducing Mainiac Films' entry into this year's
Four Minute Film Festival, an even more over-the-top parody of '80s action flicks, features guns, explosions, and an upside-down Air Force One (all CGI effects courtesy of the insanely talented cinematographer and editor Eric Michael Dawalga).
Conceived by Doiron, Dawalga, and Skip Brunelle, the "Unhinged" trailer was shot over eight Saturdays in several locations around Maine that could plausibly pass for a run-down city somewhere in Eastern Europe (Kennebunk Beach, the Sanford Mills, and Indian's Last Leap in Springvale, for example). With no budget to speak of, the filmmakers relied on the generosity of their cast of heroes, who also doubled as masked terrorists. Top bad guy Marc Gardner is also a talented stunt man, and was game to jump off roofs and be kicked through doors.
Mainiac Films plans to make a sequel trailer to "Unhinged" every year, each one bigger and better than before. They're also eying a web series, if they can secure the funding. This trailer offers a tantalizing taste of what those Maniacs may have in store for us down the line.
Ladies and gentlemen, "Unhinged."
