ORIGIN:
Barkhoff had the idea for the film in early spring 2021 when he awoke at 11:37pm from a dream that made him realize even the people who were disloyal to him lead to something he had to be grateful for. Barkhoff wrote out a series of odd ideas for dreams, many of which were pulled from actual dreams of his during this timeframe. Barkhoff began filming suddenly one day, not having planned it, due to feeling a surge of inspiration to start his fourth film. He only wrote the script after filming a couple segments he couldn’t get out of his head.
Structure:
The film follows a loose structure and interweaves between the character dreaming and brief moments of him waking up. The film, which was released with only a week’s notice, was teased by a title page for a pseudo script, which the character in the film is involved with producing. This is Barkhoff’s first film as director where he had no involvement on the score whatsoever, and he entrusted Piero D’agostino’s talent.
The Definitive Cut:
Barkhoff decided, after watching “Zack Snyder’s Justice League” cut, that he had a complete film unedited because he wasn’t willing to tinker with it a bit. This lead to Barkhoff reformatting the film he’d scrapped about six months earlier in November of 2020 and trying to add segments to it to make it feel more “complete”. Barkhoff was happy with the end result in April of 2021 and set it for release the following month, giving Jarrod Van Hauen’s debut film “Death, My Darling” it’s own time to shine. Unlike the previous two films, Barkhoff didn’t develop a full soundtrack for the film, but he did make three songs that are used in the film.
Bonus Track Edition:
On his birthday in 2019, Barkhoff released the “Bonus Track Edition” which, ironically, cut all of the artist’s songs from the film and replaced them with original scores done by himself. This was to make one version of the film worry-free of future copyright strikes in case any of the musicians unknowingly caused one on the film when submitting their music to streaming services. It is also the version of the film featured on the Blu Ray.
cast:
Mike Barkhoff, Harry Scott, Nicholas Merchant, Sarah Kellysen
DIRECTOR, WRITER &EDITOR:
Mike Barkhoff
PRODUCER:
Conner Paulsen, Jarrod Van Hauen, Dylan Van Hauen and Zach Delfs
LIGHTING & AUDIO:
Mike Barkhoff
original soundtrack:
Piero D’agostino
