The prop room at North Hollywood Studios felt like a forgotten time capsule. Stacks of 1970s TVs lined the walls, one still sporting a faded Jaws promotional sticker. Yellowed film reels dangled from ceiling ropes, rustling faintly in the breeze like whispers in your ear.
Leon Donaldson crouched beside a pile of rusty projector parts, his fingers brushing the metal casing of a 1972 Bolex 16mm camera. The paint was chipped, revealing a silver undercoat, and a faded sticky note inside the lens cap read: "Careful, shutter sticks—March 1974."
He was cross-referencing a copy of the 1974 Cinematography Equipment Almanac borrowed from the UCLA library, his notebook filled with green screen lighting diagrams: main light at a 45-degree angle, fill light dimmed by 30%, and a softbox to illuminate the green screen's edges. These were the technical specs he'd stayed up half the night refining after hashing out the green screen plan with Eli yesterday.
Tucked between the book's pages was a dog-eared Kodak waterproof film manual, its fifth page—detailing the discontinued 1974 Panavision C-series lenses—highlighted in fluorescent marker.
"Don't touch that junk!" Eli Roth's voice hit like a red-hot iron plunged into cold water, startling Leon so much his pencil scratched a crooked line across the page.
The director wore a black leather jacket splattered with fake blood, his cargo pants torn at the knees, a half-tucked script peeking from his pocket. The script's cover read Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Next Generation (Revised) in marker, with a sloppy chainsaw doodle next to it.
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Eli slammed a heavy paper bag onto the prop table with a loud clunk. A Red Bull can rolled out, spinning three times before stopping, a dribble of brown liquid clinging to the rim.
"Look at this." Eli yanked open the script to page 17, a sharp triangle folded at the corner. He jabbed at the character's name. "Your role, Carl, just went from 'college kid chased by a chainsaw' to 'documentary filmmaker tracking a serial killer.'"
He raised his voice, spit flying onto the page. "Your screen time's gone from seven minutes to thirty—how's that for a deal?"
Leon's fingers paused over the words "documentary filmmaker," the page edge stained with coffee. He recalled Eli's rant in front of the set board: "Realism! I want realism that'll make the audience wet their pants!" It clicked now—this wasn't just adding scenes. Eli wanted him to use a "documentary perspective" to shoot the swamp sequences originally planned for Florida, using the shaky, raw feel of handheld footage to mask the artificiality.
"Why me?" Leon asked, flipping through the script. Eli's notes littered Carl's lines: "Tremble here," "Camera shakes like it's drunk," and a doodle on the final blank page—Leon running with a camera, a chainsaw-wielding maniac behind him.
"Because you get camera language!" Eli grabbed the Bolex, the uncapped lens catching a blinding glint of sunlight. "Yesterday, I called Kodak's West Coast manager. He said you not only know the ECN-2 developing process inside out but can rattle off the shutter speed of a discontinued 1974 Arriflex 16BL. Are you an actor or a damn gearhead?"
He leaned closer, and Leon caught a whiff of cigarette smoke mixed with the sweet tang of fake blood. "Plus, Larry says Fox specifically wants more of you on screen. They think your fridge scene could snag an MTV Movie Award for Best Scare."
Leon's eyes flicked to page two of the script, freezing like he'd been nailed in place. A passage describing Carl tracking the killer to a swamp was underlined in wavy lines: "Carl raises a night-vision camera, the green-tinted frame catching the chainsaw's glinting teeth and the killer's face, bloated like waterlogged pork."
He frowned, pulling the almanac from his backpack and flipping to the bookmarked page 47—a black-and-white photo of 1974 civilian cameras with bulky shoulder mounts, no trace of night-vision tech. The caption was clear: "First commercial night-vision camera launched by Sony in 1980. In 1974, only military models existed, weighing over 5 kilos."
"There's a problem." Leon circled "night-vision camera" in red pen, pressing so hard the tip tore the paper. "This equipment didn't exist in 1974. Even if it did, no documentary filmmaker would have access to it."
He pointed to the almanac photo. "See? Cameras back then didn't even have autofocus, let alone night vision."
Eli's face turned the color of raw liver. He snatched the script and almanac, comparing them, his knuckles whitening. "Son of a—Dave!" He hurled the script to the floor, its hardcover cracking against the cement. "I knew we shouldn't have hired a film school intern to write this! He thinks horror doesn't need research? If 1974 cameras had night vision, I'd have an Oscar by now!"
He bellowed, "Trevor! Find that idiot Dave! I'm gonna make him feel what it's like to have his script sawed in half!"
"Wait." Leon picked up the script, brushing off the dust. A memory from his green screen research surfaced—1970s indie documentaries often used equipment flaws to create authenticity, like the iconic shaky shots in Salesman.
He had an idea. Grabbing a coil of rough rope from a prop box, he clumsily wrapped it around the Bolex. "Let's try a different approach." He aimed the camera at a shadowy corner. "Have Carl use an old-school film camera, no night vision, just a flash for lighting."
Eli squinted as Leon clicked the shutter. The flash popped, illuminating a fake human skin mask hanging on the wall, its pale surface glowing eerily. "Each flash only lights up part of the killer—half his face, or the bloody chainsaw. Let the audience's imagination fill in the rest."
He pointed to the swamp scene in the script. "Fear in the dark is scarier than seeing everything clearly."
Eli's eyes lit up. He grabbed the camera, clicking the shutter repeatedly, the flash strobing across skulls in the cramped prop room. "That's got legs…" He frowned. "But the swamp scene? He can't just hold a flash the whole time. It'll look like a birthday party, not a documentary."
"Make the lens out of focus," Leon said, pulling three hand-drawn storyboards from his backpack. The first showed "deliberately blurred reeds," the second a "shaky chainsaw shadow in soft focus," and the third a "blurry frame from the camera hitting a tree."
"Play it like an amateur filmmaker shooting under stress. The rougher the footage, the more real it feels." He tapped the storyboard notes. "I checked out 1970s indie docs. Grey Gardens has tons of out-of-focus shots, and audiences ate it up because life isn't always crystal clear."
Eli stared at the storyboards for a full five minutes, then chugged his Red Bull, soda dripping down his chin and staining the script. "You're a damn genius!" He slapped Leon's shoulder hard enough to rattle bones. "Those film school punks ramble about 'Kuleshov effect' and 'montage theory,' but they don't even know there were no night-vision cameras in 1974!"
He shouted, "Trevor! Cut Dave's script fee in half—no, two-thirds—and give it to Donaldson! Teach him what happens when you fake expertise!"
The set's lights dimmed as the tech crew adjusted the green screen backdrop. Leon watched them hang a massive green cloth on a steel frame, its edges still stained with dark red from shooting Werewolf in Manhattan.
Eli was arguing with the cinematographer, waving Leon's storyboards and spitting on the lens as he gestured wildly about out-of-focus angles. The camera was a 1998 Panavision Genesis, clashing with the script's 1974 setting, but Eli didn't seem to care.
"Mr. Donaldson, here's the reference material you asked for." A wardrobe assistant lugged in a box of 1970s documentary filmmaker photos. In one, a director wore mud-splattered cargo pants, a Bolex camera like Leon's hanging from his neck, the lens cap secured with a rubber band to keep it from falling off while running.
"Eli said to use this for your look," she said.
Leon's fingers traced the director's face in the photo, recalling his own words to Eli: "Fear comes from the unknown." Maybe that was the new role's allure—a filmmaker chasing truth, limited by shoddy equipment and a hostile environment, capturing only fragments of reality that fueled the scariest kind of imagination.
Wasn't he doing the same, piecing together his own truth in this era through fragments of memory?
His pager buzzed, displaying a message from Kodak's sales manager: "Waterproof film delivered with 1974 film sensitivity chart. Use ECN-2 process."
Leon looked out the window. North Hollywood Studios' neon lights flickered on, casting the green screen in an emerald glow. In the distance, Eli's shouts mixed with the roar of a test-run chainsaw, like a heavy metal concert about to kick off.
He pulled out a pen and scribbled a note next to his character's lines: "When the director says 'action,' you're not acting—you're frantically recording a world about to be torn apart by a chainsaw."
The scratch of his pen blended strangely with the chainsaw's hum. Eli rushed over, shoving a black coffee into his hands, the cup branded with Blood Moon Productions' wolf-head logo, its rim crusted with dried brown liquid.
"Script read-through starts tomorrow—don't be late!" Eli's bloodshot eyes gleamed with excitement. "And draw ten more storyboard pages, especially for the swamp scenes. I want the audience thinking we shot in Florida, so those jerks saying I'm cutting corners with green screen shut up!"
As night fell, Leon stayed in the prop room, tinkering with the Bolex. He popped open the lens, wiping dust off the glass with alcohol swabs. Neon light filtered through the green screen, casting mottled shadows on the floor.
Tomorrow, shooting would begin again. Leon tucked the revised script into his backpack, next to his Fight Club adaptation outline. Whether playing a filmmaker documenting a serial killer or becoming the screenwriter who'd shake up Hollywood, he knew he had to approach it with absolute professionalism.
He locked the prop room door. Turning, he saw Eli still pacing the studio, clutching his storyboards and muttering to himself.