Doug Osman
You could say that Doug Osman, a native of Detroit, MI, has had a life-long love affair with the horror film genre. His fascination with cinematic blood and gore continues to this day as Osman, who teaches television and film production at Winston-Salem State University, prepares to unleash his latest creative nightmare, Consumption.
Osman wrote, directed and produced the 30-minute film, which was shot over the summer with the help of area college students, including six from WSSU. Parts of the movie were filmed in a campus dorm and at O’Kelly Library, but the majority was shot in the lower two levels of Davis Garage, not far from campus.
Osman says he chose Davis Garage because the dark, dank cavernous spaces below the garage were so eerie. Osman rewrote parts of the script to accommodate the location. The garage was once a train station, and the tracks that led to the station are still in place. A boiler room, broken windows and boarded-up areas give the space a spooky feel.
“This place was perfect. It was just what I was looking for,” Osman says.
The movie’s main character is Jack, a street-hustling guy in his 20s with a soft edge. Jack witnesses a murder and is discovered. His captors, he later discovers, are vampires. He can either go along with them and save himself or try to stop them.
Osman calls his creation “a dark film” that looks at the way society treats people on the fringe. “On a personal note, film is the medium I choose to express my artistic side. My ‘artistic need’ is fed by making films that respond to something that either interests, bothers, or concerns me. Even this short horror film, which is superficially about vampires, is actually a commentary on the way people treat each other in life. There are people we either hear about or know personally who take extreme advantage of others. In a way, they ‘consume’ the people around them for their own benefit. That’s what vampires do, too.”
Osman’s use of students in making his film is part of his teaching philosophy. “I’ve always believed that those who teach should do what they teach. It’s the only way to make what you pass onto students relevant to them. If my students see me practicing what I teach them, it makes the lesson more real to them. When my students were able to come on-set and see the industrious work ethic taking place, it makes the reality (and the difficulty) of filmmaking apparent to them. It’s almost like watching a light go on in their heads when they turn around and start doing something original on their own.”
Osman financed Consumption on his own. He is seeking additional financial support to make his short film into a full-length feature film. He plans to market Consumption to film festivals across the United States in 2010, beginning with Arizona’s Sedona International Film Festival in February. He said the film will be screened at these locations for about a year.
“I am using the festivals to interest investors who would help to finance the project into feature film status,” says Osman. ”While most features cost millions of dollars, I plan to shoot this one on what’s known as a micro-budget, about $300,00 or $400,000.”
Osman is also considering another option. “There’s been interest expressed in Michigan to shoot the film there, which, in this economy, is very beneficial to the investor. That state will rebate 40 percent of any money spent there to the production team, meaning that an investor would immediately get that return on their money. The Federal Government also offers tax incentives for investors of U.S. films right now and that makes the prospect very appealing.”
Click here to learn more about Osman and to see a clip from his film.
