What’s ARE WE MONSTERS about?
The film is about a young female werewolf searching for her identity. She sees herself as a monster and doesn’t know how to change that. On a full moon, she becomes a bloodthirsty creature powered by evil and must find a way to control it. She seeks the aid of a folklore enthusiast and two werewolf hunters, who are out of silver bullets. With a greater evil on the horizon they must understand the history of werewolves in order to fight what is to come.
ARE WE MONSTERS is a mix-up of the werewolf genre. Growing up, I loved watching fantasy films like The Pagemaster, Quest for Camelot, anime like Astro Boy (2003), Naruto, and of course the Harry Potter series. Somewhere in all that, you can see where my inspirations lie in ARE WE MONSTERS . I like to explore the reason behind the fantasy, explore it further than just an overview of a monster attacking people, I want to explore the ‘why’. ARE WE MONSTERS does just that by exploring the folklore behind werewolves, and where they come from.
Another quality I’ve got to include in my films is purpose. When I’m not making movies, I work as a secondary and A level Physics teacher and I am surrounded by young people looking to find themselves. I see this first hand and understand the importance of asking questions about who we are as people. When you study to become a teacher, you learn a lot about the psychology of the mind and what percentage of influence different aspects of life have on a growing child’s mind. For example, teachers only have ~14% impact on a child’s development, the rest comes from friendship groups, family, and media to name a few. That’s why I believe it is important to include messages to help self growth in entertainment media, it is our responsibility as content creators.
Behind the scenes of ARE WE MONSTERS.
We shot ARE WE MONSTERS in the summer of 2019 in the space of 9 days across a variety of beautiful English countryside and farmland. It was an absolute joy to film as the cast and crew were all passionate to make something that felt fresh and reminiscent of childhood fairytales.
One of the first things you’ll notice is that the werewolves don’t look like your typical werewolf, in fact, they don’t look like wolves at all. This stems from my exploration of the lore and history of werewolves. When writing the history, I went back to ancient Greek Gods and mythology. I learned about the origin of vampire lore and took inspiration from it to build unique werewolf lore. The film has in-depth animated sequences explaining all the details and it was great fun to bring all the history and mythology together to create cohesive unique lore. The premise is that werewolves are cursed individuals who have the evil of man poured into them on a full moon. This evil came in the form of the seven deadly sins. I actually designed all seven variations of the werewolves in the film, however, the film only explores the deadly sin, wrath.
As the film progresses, we start to see more overlap between the animation and live-action. This is a consistent style I strive for in my work. In this case, it was Maya’s way of understanding the otherworldly and herself, through illustration. The style choice was an important one for me because I think a lot of films are visually “boring” nowadays. Visual effects are so clean it requires no imagination to bring things together, which makes for a very passive experience. From teaching, I’ve learned that the most important part of displaying something to an audience is to engage. Including a style that requires some imagination to pull things together moves the film out of a passive experience and more into a playful one. It gives people the permission to be playful and imaginative.
The animation in WE ARE MONSTERS - Frightfest was a double-edged sword. Yes, the style is a lot of fun, but it took ages! Things timed up somewhat well. As soon as we’d finished filming, lockdown happened… so I was forced to complete the edit and 4 months of non-stop animation while being stuck inside. So, if you’re looking for something positive about covid, it provided the focus required to get such a mammoth task completed.
Celebrating our World Premiere at FrightFest.
FrightFest was an awesome experience! To premiere our debut feature at such a wonderful festival with such a supportive community was a delight. Getting the opportunity to speak with many other talented filmmakers, press, and FrightFest fans was an absolute pleasure.
At first, I was anxious that ARE WE MONSTERS would be out of place at FrightFest, as I felt that people would expect only horrors and thrillers at FrightFest, but this was not true. FrightFest and most of their community are well into fantasy films as well which is where ARE WE MONSTERS sits firmly with the occasional spooky element here and there.
The community was fantastic and it was great to make the most of every moment there. I documented the full experience as an animation that can be found here: https://youtu.be/u8YTK1E57go
Getting a movie released.
The release process was a complex one. It was my first time looking for distribution and I know of many mixed experiences with the process. I visited the European Film Market and chatted with many other producers, distributors, and sales agents. My main piece of advice to any upcoming filmmaker is to do your due diligence and cover your legal stuff appropriately. FilmHub was our choice for distribution which acts as an online film market for various distributors to pick films with assets ready to go for upload. Currently, the film is on Plex.TV which is a free-to-watch (no account needed) ad-based video-on-demand service which is one of the most accessible ways to get an independent film seen by many, it’s awesome! We have many other platforms coming down the line, so visit arewemonsters.com for a full list of where the film is streaming.
As well as the film, we have also manufactured a board game for the film which was inspired by Dungeons and Dragons meets snakes and ladders while being chased by a werewolf with a jump-in and play dynamic without setup time. The game plays very well and is a lot of fun. Currently, we are updating the artwork and that’ll be ready for purchase on the Are We Monsters website soon too. Can’t wait for that, as it really was a lot of fun to design and play with.
What’s next?
If you didn’t know, I’ve been directing short films for YouTube since 2008 amassing over 200 projects of various genres, and now I have tested the waters of feature film making, I am now embracing my style and am currently in post-production with my second feature film and mid-way through production of my third feature film. Both of which play on the qualities I love, mixing live-action with animation and more action mixed with fantasy, all inspired by early YouTube days content and 2000s anime.
It’s a realm of film that I haven’t seen enough of, but really want more of. Embracing the content that made my childhood awesome and bringing a fresh perspective and style to it.
To summarise what I mean, here is the logline to my second feature film: Three young adults battle interdimensional creatures with skateboard swords for gemstones that unlock their life goals and ambitions.
So yeah, for me, it’s a lot of fun to combine important questions like identity, and aspirations with entertainment and escapism and I hope you have a lot of fun with the film as well!
To keep up to date with my work, you can follow my Instagram, Twitter or YouTube channel @sebcoxfilms
Special thanks to BritFlicks for letting me have this space to talk a bit about my creative ventures!
Seb Cox
