The murder scene in "Beneath The Veneer of A Murder" was - along with some other footage - shot at the same time "Stocking Stuffers" had been filmed back in 2001. The additional footage was used to bolster the demo reels of the actors involved in "Stocking Stuffers" (Eric Scheiner and Christy Scott Cashman) as well as the demo reel for the film's director (Angel Connell). Connell paid to have the actors' respective demo reels re-edited (with additional copies made for them) as a form of compensation for the work they did on "Stocking Stuffers".
Connell also wanted to pitch the murder scene to potential investors as a visualization of one of many scenarios he had outlined for a possible thriller that had yet to be written. The downturn of the economy following the terrorist attacks against America on 9/11/01 put an end to any funding opportunities he sought for new film projects. That - along with taking "Stocking Stuffers" through the film festival circuit for a few years, getting married/having a son, and being involved in other projects - resulted in the murder scene languishing away in a storage chamber.
A different set of investors at the start of 2010 expressed interest in Connell's film work and they wanted to see something new from him.
In a fit of inspiration, Connell dusted off the murder scene and reworked it to create an experimental short. Through the short, he sought to challenge film audiences on what they perceived to see and hear in a deceptively simple narrative bookended by credits designed to distract said audience.
Connell re-wrote the original script and quickly assembled a small team of people to make sure all additional material blended smoothly with the murder scene which had been shot years earlier. Scheiner recorded new voice-over material so that the actions made by his on-screen character Judd had a richer contextual basis to them. The additional voices provided by Mark Grant and Jennifer McCartney lent another layer of complexity to all the characters as well as the story itself. The film was completed by December, 2010, after a few months of recording, mixing, and re-editing.
Connell also wanted to pitch the murder scene to potential investors as a visualization of one of many scenarios he had outlined for a possible thriller that had yet to be written. The downturn of the economy following the terrorist attacks against America on 9/11/01 put an end to any funding opportunities he sought for new film projects. That - along with taking "Stocking Stuffers" through the film festival circuit for a few years, getting married/having a son, and being involved in other projects - resulted in the murder scene languishing away in a storage chamber.
A different set of investors at the start of 2010 expressed interest in Connell's film work and they wanted to see something new from him.
In a fit of inspiration, Connell dusted off the murder scene and reworked it to create an experimental short. Through the short, he sought to challenge film audiences on what they perceived to see and hear in a deceptively simple narrative bookended by credits designed to distract said audience.
Connell re-wrote the original script and quickly assembled a small team of people to make sure all additional material blended smoothly with the murder scene which had been shot years earlier. Scheiner recorded new voice-over material so that the actions made by his on-screen character Judd had a richer contextual basis to them. The additional voices provided by Mark Grant and Jennifer McCartney lent another layer of complexity to all the characters as well as the story itself. The film was completed by December, 2010, after a few months of recording, mixing, and re-editing.
The anonymous quote used at the end of the opening credits is a quote based on an actual folk rhyme ("One Fine Day In The Middle of The Night") whose origins in folk songs and folklore from the British Isles can be traced as recently as the 19th century and as far back as the Middle Ages.
Filmmaker Angel Connell observed that most audience members leave a movie before the closing film credits begin to roll. He asked himself what would happen if - while said credits were rolling - key elements of a movie were to occur offscreen which would provide a twist to the narrative and consequently change the nature of the story. Connell decided to incorporate that insight into his experimental film short, "Beneath The Veneer Of A Murder" (BTVOAM). He used the opening and closing credits as an intentional distraction of what was being said by the off-screen characters (whose comments, Connell added, should not be regarded as trustworthy in the first place). The filmmaker posited that the film's structure reflects the kind of mediated mass communication structures that dominate our society and usually distract citizens from their desire to have a society that operates on a more transparent - if not open - way of running itself. Thus the opening and closing credits of "BTVOAM" act as that kind of distraction for its audience much in the same way media-generated narratives act as a similar kind of distraction pertaining to significant - if not controversial - social events.
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