How to Make a Monster (on Ektachrome)

My day-to-day job for the last 15 years has been spent producing and marketing low-budget movies to the US home video market. The daily grind is rewarded anytime I can get away from my desk and into the studio for hands-on filmmaking or photography.

This was the case in early December when I had the opportunity to collaborate on the poster art for our upcoming DVD release of Chris LaMartina’s movie “Book of Lore.”





Paige Davis and myself designed the poster concept. She handled the make-up and I shot the images. The soon-to-be-horrifying model was Erin Russ. Gordon Roberts handled final layout in Photoshop CS.





Because of the time to apply make-up to Erin, I absolutely made sure that I had enough coverage by shooting with three cameras. Overkill perhaps, but you know the old expression, “better safe than sorry.”





I loaded my Shanghai Seagull 4A and Yashica-A cameras with Ektachrome 64T 120 tungsten balanced film. Since each camera only holds 12 exposures per roll, I used two cameras to speed up the shooting process (by not having to stop and re-load film). The third camera was my Canon AE-1 35mm loaded with Kodachrome 40 tungsten balanced film. Shooting with the AE-1 really didn’t take much more time and served as the “back-up” should anything go wrong with the 120 film in processing.

The shoot went smooth and was a lot of fun. Ultimately the final image chosen for the poster was shot with the Shanghai camera on Ektachrome film.



Chris LaMartina's BOOK OF LORE/GRAVE MISTAKES Horror Double Feature will be released on DVD May 12th, 2010

All images shot by Michael Raso
Poster art © Camp Motion Pictures, L.L.C.
Film processing: Dwayne’s Photo
Scans: Epson v700