Menu
La Lechuza is still in development, but here is a short doc about the myth of the creature
The call
A post-pandemic reprieve from boredom
It was 2022 and I was dry for work. I had some corporate work on my plate, but I needed something fun. I needed a distraction from the doom scrolling news cycle, and stiff uninspired corporate direction. Mitch Altieri called out of the blue with a short collaboration in mind. He was putting together a pitch deck for an upcoming horror film about an owl/witch/god. The myth comes from the southwest and Mexico, a creature that stalks children and drunks at night. I had worked with Mitch on two previous projects, Holy Ghost People, and Raised By Wolves. This was perfect, I was in.
The creature
a couple choices
The first thing we had to do was decide what the creature should look like. Mitch had a few meetings lined up in a week, so time was definitely not on our side. We decided to try to use the Midjourney AI (version 3) to rapidly describe our creature. After a while we ended up landing on 3 choices, a malevolent forest god made of intersecting branches, with some birdlike adornments, A Lovecraftian horror that was always shifting and changing, and a traditional owl/crow creature. And given the amount of time we had, I would love to say that this was all on purpose, but really, it was due to the best case scenarios we could get out of Midjourney at the time. We soon realized that whatever we concepted there, would have to be heavily adjusted to be usable. But again, without the ability to rapidly get our ideas on screen, any other method would have fallen short.
more decisions
Look/tone/feel
We then moved to the next thing, the vibe of the deck. Mitch had put together a deck that was very straight forward, but to my eye lacked the graphic love that a project like this needed. I asked him what appealed to him, design-wise, for this project. He gravitated toward something vintage, retro, and gritty. We both love the look of actual film, and I had been shooting a lot of it at the time. I begged him to let me mock up something, and he agreed. I created a sort of analogue look and borrowed heavily from 60s exploitation and grindhouse flicks, under his very specific direction. My love for the opening sequence for the film Se7en, and my adoration for Tarantino/Rodriguez collaborations made this concept come to life easily.
assembly
Consistant look
Once we locked the aesthetic, I designed and assembled the remaining 21 or so pages. I used a combo of traditional tools like photoshop and illustrator, shot and used photographs of my own elements, and used midjourney to fill in the gaps, while staying on schedule. The deck was delivered and now its mostly a waiting game.
Til the next one...
This was scratching an itch
Working with Mitch solo, or with his comrade in arms, Phil Flores, as the duo that completes the Butcher Brothers, has always been fun, and I'm tickled whenever I get to. Mitch is one of the most relaxed guys you’re likely to meet, and the dude is a living encyclopedia on all things horror. Our 15-minute calls about a project coming up have turned into 3-hour zoom calls going over the finer details of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Or why the 70s was one of the greatest decades for horror in general. The other thing about working with Mitch is that since he primarily works in the Indie film space, which allows me much more creative control than I am used to having. It can be a ton of pressure, and that can be stressful, but each time I do, I find my career and my knowledge base seems to have a “Monolith” moment. Looking forward to the next one….