A Few Clouds and 89° F

It's just after 10 p.m., and you're counting down your till after a night of ringing up people's groceries. You're tired, and the store is deserted. You wait for the manager to return from checking on the bag boys and his store.

Then the lights go out.

You wait for a sound, call out to those still in the store. No answer. Not what you want to hear.

"The Piggly Wiggly Horror," a parody of the scary movie genre influenced by the work of Alfred Hitchcock, offers up a fun, small-town feel while telling the story of a deranged killer's murderous rampage in a Piggly Wiggly store.

The nearly 10-minute film will be shown as one of the five student productions selected for the Indie Grits Film Festival, which will be held April 9-13 at the Nickelodeon Theatre in Columbia. "The Piggly Wiggly Horror" will be shown at noon Saturday, April 12.

"I'm pretty excited about that," said filmmaker Emily Harrold of Orangeburg, who said she previously tried to have one of her works admitted to the festival but was rejected.

"I was very wary of actually putting this forward. It took a lot of people twisting my arm to submit it," she said.

Harrold has been making films since she was in eighth grade. In fact, "Horror" was the portfolio piece the 17-year-old writer and director submitted that helped her gain admission into New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. There, Harrold plans to double major in television and film production and history.

"I loved making PowerPoints," Harrold said of her film beginnings. "I would make the most extravagant PowerPoints and just went into movies from there."

The Heathwood Hall Episcopal School student attended a summer film camp in 2006 sponsored by the New York Film Academy and held at Harvard University. She said classes on topics like lighting effects and setting up shots helped her gain needed knowledge about the industry.

"It's quite embarrassing, but when I went to film camp, I was the one who didn't know anything about film," Harrold said. "From there, a few of my friends and I would get together" and make short movies.

"The Piggly Wiggly Horror," she said, is her biggest undertaking to date.

Preproduction began in late July 2007, with Harrold purchasing equipment online, getting actors to fill her cast (many of whom use their talents regularly as members of the Orangeburg Part-Time Players), writing the script, preparing storyboards, finding costumes and props, enlisting film camp friends to help and securing a filming location -- the Piggly Wiggly on Columbia Road, where Harrold works as a cashier and the site that inspired her idea for the flick.

"Finally, in August, we were able to shoot it," she said. "I thought I could get it done in three days." But it ended up taking twice as long to film "Horror," with cast and crew working from the time the store closed at 10 p.m. until 1 or 1:30 a.m. to get the right shots to edit together for Harrold's movie.

Harrold said she couldn't have accomplished her feat without the film's cast and crew -- actors Carly Harward, George Barlow, Daniel Harward, Quincy Clark, Bo McBratnie, Sterling Seegars, Dakotah Anderson and Gregg Waters; assistant director Deanna Thomas; make-up artist Jessica Johnson and director of photography Katherine Wolford.

Tucked away in the short film are allusions to Hitchcock. Harrold said although she didn't know who he was when she went to film camp, she admires Hitchcock because of his success in the film industry and enjoys his use of suspense and music to affect the viewer.

"I knew he was real successful," Harrold said. "And the fact that I was doing a parody on horror films ... it just fit together. It worked."

In the end, Harrold said she has a product she is, for the most part, proud of.

"I'm always going to be able to find little things wrong with it," Harrold said of her film. "Now that I've kind of stepped away from it -- it's been a few months -- I can't believe I did this. It's definitely what I want to do."

Harrold is the daughter of Judy and Stan Harrold of Orangeburg.

More information about the Indie Grits Film Festival can be found online at www.indiegrits.com.

T&D Features Editor Wendy Jeffcoat Crider can be reached by e-mail at wjeffcoat@timesanddemocrat.com or by telephone at 803-533-5546. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.

You must be logged in to comment.