Skinamarink is like a waking nightmare. A film that feels like it’s transported into your life as a cursed VHS tape, it teases the audience with sparse visuals, creepy whispers, and vintage visions that are delightfully unnerving.

It’s an experimental horror film — not quite the straight narrative most viewers will be used to — but with the right environment (headphones in a dark room), you’ll be transported to a dreamscape drenched in atmosphere.

In the film, two children wake up in the middle of the night to find their father is missing, and all windows and doors in their home have vanished. While they decide to wait for the grown-ups to return, they realize they’re not alone, and a voice that sounds like a child beckons them.

I spoke with Skinamarink‘s writer/director Kyle Edward Ball about the film, making nightmares, and how exactly he crafted his first feature.

Kelly McNeely: I understand that you’ve got the YouTube channel, of course, and that you sort of developed Skinamarink from your short film, Heck. Can you talk a little bit about the decision to develop that into a feature length film and what that process was like? I understand you did some crowdfunding as well. 

Kyle Edward Ball: Yeah, for sure. So basically, a few years ago I wanted to do a feature length film, but thought I should probably test out my style, my idea, the concept, my feelings, on something less ambitious like a short film. So I did Heck,I liked the way it turned out. I submitted it to a few festivals, including Fantasia, it didn’t get in. But, regardless it was successful to me, I felt the experiment worked and I could print it into a feature. 

So earlier on in the pandemic, I said, okay I’m going to try this out, maybe start writing. And I wrote a script over a few months. Then shortly thereafter, started applying for grants, etc. Didn’t get any of the grants, so transitioned into crowdfunding. I have a very close friend who had successfully crowdfunded before, his name’s Anthony, he did a fairly well respected documentary called The Line for Telus Story Hive. And so he helped me through that.

Successfully crowdfunded enough money, and when I say crowdfund, like, from the get go, I knew it was going to be micro budget, right? I wrote everything to work within a tiny, tiny, tiny budget, one location, blah, blah, blah. Successfully crowdfunded, assembled a very small working group, just me, my DOP and my assistant director, and the rest is history.

Kelly McNeely: And how did you make your way into that specific style of filmmaking? It’s that sort of experimental style, it’s not something you see very often. What brought you to that stylistic method? 

Kyle Edward Ball: It happened by accident. So before Heck and everything, I started a YouTube channel called Bitesized Nightmares. And the concept was, people would comment with nightmares they’ve had, and I’d recreate them. 

I’ve always been attracted to an older style of filmmaking. So 70s, 60s, 50s, going back all the way to Universal Horror, and I’ve always thought, I wish I could make movies that looked and felt like that. 

Also, during the progression of my YouTube series, because I can’t hire professional actors, I can’t do this, I can’t do that, I had to do a lot of tricks as far as implying action, implying presence, POV, to tell a story with no cast. Or even sometimes, not the appropriate set, not the appropriate props, etc. 

And it kind of morphed over time, developed a little bit of a cult following – and when I say cult following, like just a couple of fans who have watched the videos over time – and discovered I really liked it. There’s a certain uncanniness to not necessarily showing everything, and transitioned that into stuff like Skinamarink.

Kelly McNeely: It kind of reminds me a little bit of House of Leaves that type of vibe –

Kyle Edward Ball: Yes! You’re not the first person to bring that up. And I’ve actually never read House of Leaves. I know what it’s vaguely about, the house is bigger inside than outside, blah blah blah. Right. But um, yeah, lots of people have brought that up. I really should read it at some point [laughs].

Kelly McNeely: It’s a wild read. It takes you on a bit of a journey, because even just the way you read it, you have to like turn the book around and sort of jump back and forth. It’s pretty neat. I think you’d enjoy it. I like that you’ve mentioned childhood nightmares and nightmares in particular, disappearing doorways etc. How did you accomplish that on a micro budget? Where was it filmed and how did you make all that happen?

Kyle Edward Ball: I had been experimenting with rudimentary special effects when I was doing my YouTube series. And I had also kind of learned a trick where if you put enough grain on stuff, it hides a lot of imperfection. Which is why a lot of older special effects – like matte paintings and stuff – they read well, because it’s kind of grainy, right? 

So I had always wanted to film in the house I grew up in, my parents still live there, so I was able to get them to agree to shoot there. They were more than supportive. I hired the cast to do it on a fairly low budget. The girl who plays Kaylee is actually, I think, kind of technically my god daughter. She’s my friend Emma’s child. 

So another thing too, we didn’t record any sound in the moment. So all the dialogue you hear in the movie was the actors sitting down in my parents living room, talking into ADR. So there were just a bunch of little tricks we did to do it on a super low budget. And it all kind of paid off and actually kind of elevated the medium. 

We shot it over seven days, we only had the actors on set for one day. So everything you see that involves either the actors talking or on screen, that was all shot in one day, with the exception of the actress Jamie Hill, who plays the mother. She was shot and recorded over like, I think a three four hour period on the fourth day. She didn’t even interact with the other actors. 

Kelly McNeely: And I like that it’s a story that is kind of told through sound, just because of the way that it’s presented and the way that it’s filmed. And the sound design is incredible. I was watching it with headphones on, which I think is probably the best way to appreciate it, with all the whispering. Can you talk a little bit about the sound design process and again, telling a story solely through sound, essentially?

Kyle Edward Ball: So from the get go, I wanted sound to be important. Through my YouTube channel, playing with sound is one of my more favorite things. I wanted it very specifically to not just look like a movie from the 70s, I wanted it to actually sound like it. The movie House of the Devil by Ti West, it looks like a 70s movie, right? But I always thought oh, this sounds too clean. 

So all the audio we have for dialogue was recorded clean. But then I dirtied it up. I spoke with my friend Tom Brent about okay, how do I make this sound like audio from the 70s? He kind of showed me a few tricks. It’s fairly simple. Then, as far as a lot of the sound effects, I actually found a treasure trove of public domain sound effects that were recorded in I think the 50s and 60s that have been used ad nauseam and have that tinny feel. 

On top of that I underlaid basically the entire movie with hiss and hum, and played with it too, so when it cuts different scenes, there’s a little bit less hiss, little bit less hum. I think I actually spent way more time on the sound than I did on actually cutting the movie. So yeah, in a nutshell, that’s how I achieve the sound. 

Another thing too, I basically mixed it in mono, it’s not a surround. It’s basically dual mono, there’s no stereo or anything in it. And I think it kind of takes you into the era, right? Because the 70s I don’t know if stereo really started until the late 60s. I’d have to look it up. 

Kelly McNeely: I love the public domain cartoons that are used as well, because they’re so creepy. They build atmosphere in such a great way. The atmosphere really does a lot of the heavy lifting in this film, what’s the secret to building that creepy atmosphere? Because that’s kind of the main chilling point of then film.

Kyle Edward Ball: Um, so I have a lot of weaknesses as a filmmaker. Like a lot of them. I would say that in a lot of ways, I’m fairly incompetent, but my big big strength that I’ve always had is atmosphere. And I don’t know, I know how to swing it. I’m really good at the, here’s what you look at, here’s how you grade it, here’s how you make a sound. Here’s how you do this to make someone feel something, right. So I don’t know how, it’s just kind of intrinsic to me. 

My movies are all atmosphere induced. It really just comes down to grain, feeling, emotion, and attention. The big thing is attention to detail. Even in the actors’ voices, most of the lines are recorded in whispers; that wasn’t an accident. That’s in the original script. And that was because I knew that would just make it feel different, if they’re whispering the whole time.

Kelly McNeely: I like the use of subtitles to go along with it too, and the selective use of subtitles. You know, they’re not present through the whole thing. That adds to the atmosphere. How did you decide what would have subtitles and what wouldn’t? And also, there’s parts of it that have subtitles, but no sound.

Kyle Edward Ball: So the subtitles thing, it does appear in the original script, but which audio was in subtitle and what wasn’t has evolved over time. Originally, I liked the idea of it for two reasons. One is there’s this new horror movement on the Internet called analog horror, which incorporates a lot of text. And I’ve always found it creepy and unnerving and very matter of fact. 

If you ever see, like this stupid Discovery documentary where they recount a 911 call, but there’s text of it, and you can’t really make out what they’re saying. It’s creepy, right? I also wanted parts where you could hear people enough to understand that someone was whispering, but you couldn’t understand what they were saying. But I still wanted people to understand what they were saying.

And then finally, the person who recorded the audio is my good friend, Joshua Bookhalter, he was my assistant director. And unfortunately, he passed shortly after the filming had commenced. And there’s a few pieces of audio that I probably could have recreated that didn’t quite fit. So either the audio didn’t fit or probably needed to be re-recorded. But instead of re-recording it, I really wanted to just use Josh’s audio as a memoriam to him, so I just put subtitles. So there’s a few reasons. 

Kelly McNeely: And for the creation of this Skinamarink monster, first off, I’m assuming that’s a Sharon, Lois and Bram reference?

Kyle Edward Ball: So that’s how I came to know it, and I think how most Canadians anywhere from Gen X all the way to Gen Z kind of knew about them. So it is a reference to that. But in the same vein, the movie’s not associated with that [laughs]. 

The reason I came to that, is I was watching, I think it was a Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. And there’s kids in the movie singing it, and I had always just assumed they had invented it. And then I looked it up and it turns out, it’s like an older song from the turn of the century from some musical, which means public domain, right? 

So the word kind of sticks in your head like an ear worm. And I’m just like, okay, it’s personal to me, sentimental to a lot of people, it’s a nonsense word, and it also is vaguely creepy. I’m like, [checks a bunch of invisible boxes] this is my working title. And then the working title just became the title.

Kelly McNeely: I love that. Because yeah, it does sound vaguely sinister in its own cheerful way. So what’s next for you?

Kyle Edward Ball: So later on this year, I’ll start writing another script. We’re probably going to be playing at a few other film festivals in Europe, which we’ll be announcing at some point, then hopefully theatrical distribution and streaming. And then while that’s going on, I always find I write best when it’s winter or autumn, so I’ll probably start writing around September or October, the follow up. 

I’m undecided on what movie I’m gonna do. I would like to stick with filming an old style movie today kind of motif. So I’ve got it down to three movies. The first one is a Universal Monster style 1930s horror movie about the Pied Piper. The second would be a 1950s science fiction movie, alien abduction, but with a little bit more Douglas Sirk. Although now I’m thinking, maybe we’re too soon to Nope coming out for that. Maybe I should put that on the shelf for a little bit, maybe a few years down the line. 
And then the third one is another kind of more similar to Skinamarink, but a little bit more ambitious, 1960s technicolor horror movie called The Backward House where three people visit a house in their dream. And then horror ensues.

Skinamarink is part of Fantasia International Film Festival‘s 2022 lineup. You can check out the super creepy poster below!

For more on Fantasia 2022, check out our review of Australian social influencer horror Sissy, or the cosmic horror slapstick comedy Glorious.