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Tremont
Avenue Productions
‘Haunted R&R
Station’ film trailer launched at studio Web site
CHICAGO – The official
Web site and film trailer is now available for Haunted R&R
Station, shot on location in Mt. Pleasant, PA, June 2006, by
Tremont Avenue Productions.
Web users can go to hauntedrandrstation.com
to see the trailer, tour the R&R Station Hotel & Restaurant,
and browse character-driven film
merchandise in the film store. Director Roger Marsh, a Greensburg
native, said the post production work on the film is going well
and a date is being worked out now for the World Premiere in Mt.
Pleasant sometime in mid-February 2007.
“We’re planning
a special Cast and Media Night early on,” Marsh said, “as
a way to give the cast a special viewing. More than 50 people from
Mt. Pleasant and surrounding communities appear in the film. The
World Premiere weekend will follow a few days later.” Marsh
said they would offer multiple show times of the film throughout
the weekend at the R&R Station.
The DVD will also be
available for sale during the premiere weekend. Advance
orders for the DVD are being taken now at the film’s Web
site at a special discount rate. The film will retail for $19.95
during and after the premiere. The advance order price until the
release is $14.95. Advance orders will be shipped 24 hours after
the premiere. Area retailers will also be offering the DVD for sale.
Hotel owner Sherry Wingrove
says she is going to shut the entire hotel and restaurant down for
the Cast and Media Night. “We’re really excited about
the premiere,” she said. “I decided to shut everything
down and focus on the cast.”
The film is a docudrama,
Marsh said, and mixes interviews with reenactments of the R&R’s
ghostly activity. “We also added a production style element,”
he said, “where we show each reenactment sequence being set
up by the crew and everyone getting into place. The scene then morphs
into the reenactments. So you get to enjoy seeing pieces of the
stories told at the R&R, but you also get the behind-the-scenes
look.”
Marsh said he and his
film crewmembers all experienced some piece of the reported haunting
activity while they were shooting. “Sherry closed off the
first floor Banquet Room to serve as our film headquarters for meetings,
equipment, and other business. I was alone one afternoon when a
male voice distinctly called out my name. I looked up and no one
was in the room. I walked out of the room in search of who might
just have stuck their head in the room that quickly and called my
name. And I never found anyone nearby.
“Everyone on the
crew experienced something. I know Shawn Galligan, our assistant
director, heard the furniture moving on the second floor. Each of
us has a story. It’s a haunted place.”
Marsh said that he is
in discussion with the Wingroves and community members about the
idea of shooting two more films in Mt. Pleasant.
“I developed a
serial film,” Marsh said. “It’s a series of comedy
scripts that use recurring characters in recurring settings. I produced
Dime Novel Radio Theater for three years on Chicago stages
and I like working in this format. Our first stage episode was Mars
Attacks Chicago, but it was written to be adapted into whatever
community it’s being produced in. So if this film version
is shot in Mt. Pleasant, the project would be titled Mars Attacks
Mt. Pleasant.
“The ‘Mars’
script is full length, but I have a short, called Black Box,
that will probably go about 20 or 30 minutes. It uses the same character
set and settings as ‘Mars.’ We’re mapping out
a production schedule where we can shoot both films simultaneously.”
Marsh said the comedy
series centers around a local couple, Donna and Al Steele, nice
apartment dwellers who somehow get into a lot of mischief. “I
like to put very ordinary people into very unusual situations. My
characters go out of control pretty early on. And then it’s
a domino effect. You tell one little lie, and now you’re inventing
people who don’t exist. The 'Mars' script is really a parody
of the media and its audience. It’s how sometimes we get all
caught up in a story and can’t let go of it. So when it’s
a really big news story and not much is going on, the audience tends
to get a lot of really small details blown up like they’re
really important.”
Both films will be shot
with professional actors from the local region, he said, and there
are scenes where many extras will be needed. “There is one
scene where we will be asking for 300 extras,” Marsh said.
Marsh said he will make
an announcement in February about both films. |
