August 26th, 2016

This weekend marks seven years since principal photography began on a little horror parody that was to become a labour of love, blood and guts for Red Dream Productions. Following on from shooting a comedy web series “Time of Our Lives” written by Oldcastle Co. Meath native David Tynan, John Stewart decided to enter the Vodafone/Blackberry “Touch Film Festival” a short film competition asking film enthusiasts to remake their favourite film in a 3-minute time allotment.

After many bar stool debates and a 3am eureka moment, An Unfortunate Friday the 13th was born. The short was Filmed and edited in its entirety over the course of a weekend (and looking back it kind of shows), but it was a great experience, bringing Jason Voorhees back to life and seeing him marching around the woods after actress (and now writer) Yuna Commault in a hockey mask, frightening young walkers and their parents alike. Once the short was submitted, Red Dream Productions went into development mode, gathering equipment such as light’s, sound recording gear, a real camera, basically all the things that we didn’t have when shooting Jason’s debut outing. 
​Shortly afterwards we received an email inviting our team to the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin to attend the red carpet awards ceremony and attend we did. We watched all the entries on the cinema screen and were blown away by the talent. Truth be told, we didn’t hold out much hope for old Jason to take home anything other than good memories from the night, but to our delight, An Unfortunate Friday the 13th was named as Best Horror entry and we collected our mini Oscar from RTE Presenter and Broadcaster John Kelly. What a night that was.   

​Since then, there have been many, many contributors to the double trilogy series without which no sequels would have been possible (Thank you one and all) The journey from a few hours shooting in the woods to a ten-month production filled with cold, long nights and hours of set building and CGI and practical FX work, has been one of the best educational experiences ever. Our Jason sleeps once again, but rest assured Red Dream Productions are far from finished making films. Every creative step we take is another lesson learned and next up we plan to pull out all the stops. So as they say, watch this space.

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