For better or for worse, we made Toy Boat.
When Cale decided to push back work on his initial short film project until next year, Dusty gave him a call to encourage him to make something anyway. The idea was less about making something with concerns about its worth and more about making a short film for practice’s sake. Our purpose was to experiment a little bit and try some new techniques. Cale readily agreed, but neither he nor Dusty had a great idea to go with. Then Luke got involved. The brainstorming began and we built on the idea of recreating the boat scene from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. On top of that foundation, we piled ideas from our nightmares and from the recesses of our collective subconscious.
Thus, Toy Boat was born. Partly an experiment and mostly a catharsis. But it wasn’t necessarily created by merely goofing around and seeing what we could come up with. Instead, we decided early on that all three of us had to be completed dedicated to the project in order for it to turn out exactly how we wanted it to. There was a great deal of brainstorming, outlining, improvisation, and expe
We hope to make people feel uneasy. To bring them back to the nightmares that have and still do haunt them. To remind them anew of the feelings they may have felt as a child when they first rode in the boat down Wonka’s tunnel. When we think upon our nightmares, we notice that there is a certain thrill to reliving the horrifying moments we experience in our sleep. It would be delightful if we can make everyone’s skin crawl, or to give them a dose of fear, or at the very least to fill them with disgust. Additionally, we would like to shake things up a bit for the audience and give them something a bit different than what they might choose to watch. Perhaps we are trying to be provocateurs, and maybe we are not doing anyone much good. However, we wanted to work on a project, and ultimately, we hope it will elicit certain emotions. For better or worse.
