Filmmakers Nick + Lexie Discuss Their Horror/Dark Fantasy Series “Tales from Black Manor”
By: Joseph Perry (Twitter - Uphill Both Ways Podcast)
Filmmakers Nick Trivundza and Lexie Findarle Trivundza, who work under the shared moniker of Nick + Lexie, scored big with their film-festival favorite throwback action feature Danger! Danger!, and they are following up that project with Tales from Black Manor, a brand-new three-episode series about a family whose lives intertwine with Death himself.
Nick + Lexie interviewed each other about Tales from Black Manor, and When It Was Cool is happy to share their fun interview with our readers.
Nick + Lexie welcome you to Black Manor, a world where one of the 7 Books of Death has gone missing, having been handed down through the generations of a family, each searching for and learning its secrets. You can check out the trailer here.
Lexie: With the upcoming release of Tales from Black Manor, I thought it would be interesting to reveal some of the backstory as to how this project came to be.
Nick: When we started, we thought, maybe this could be a fun little 2-minute short film. And who knows, maybe it would work way better that way, but we just had so many ideas that the story seemed to keep growing. Learning more about Black Manor and the Seven Books of Death was a lot of fun. I could even see doing more episodes!
Lexie: Definitely. And not just as a series of shorts — although these have been really fun to make. But I could see this becoming a full-length series or an anthology series, which almost feels more appropriate. Amazon has been doing a lot of those lately.
Nick: Do you think it would work as a feature-length film?
Lexie: It could, but series seem to be so exciting these days. The amazing content on Amazon, Netflix, HBO, Disney+, Hulu — there just seems to be limitless possibilities. The rules have been thrown out the window. What if you want to tell a story for 40 minutes or 6 hours? Time constraints are gone, which is really freeing.
Nick: It would also give us the chance to work with more talented people!
Lexie: Like more people that happen to be talented or people that are more talented than us?
Nick: Yes!
Lexie: Exactly. Now, let’s talk about casting!
Nick: Let’s do it!
Lexie: You hate the casting process, while I love it. I don’t want to say it’s my favorite part of filmmaking, but it’s definitely up there. Why do you hate it so much?
Nick: Casting is so difficult because it’s based on personal preference. Nothing else. There’s no reason someone may be good for a role or bad for a role other than if they line up with the fictional character in my head.
Lexie: For Tales from Black Manor, we worked with two actors we’ve worked with before and three new ones.
Nick: Yes! We worked with James Brinkley, who had previously brought Jack the Ripper, Phileas Fogg, and our three brothers to life from the Umbrella Factory. Every time he portrays a character I’ve written, it comes out a hundred times better than I imagined. Same goes for Paul Haapaniemi, who was in both of our feature films. It just comes out better than I ever could have hoped!
Lexie: And you constantly throw really hard characters at Paul! A loving serial killer cowboy, a somewhat delusional 1980s adventurer, and now a guy that talks to and eats rats in a fantasy horror series.
Nick: That’s the fun of it though! What do you like about the casting process?
Lexie: The first time an actor or actress brings the character to life is kind of like watching a magic trick. Whether it’s on set or in a recording booth, it doesn’t matter. When you work with talented people they disappear and this character is suddenly there and it’s so exciting!
Nick: Let's talk about how this wasn’t supposed to be our next project . . . originally we had discussed two other projects. A completely different horror film and a sci-fi horror film.
Lexie: We had so much momentum going into our next project, but then 2020 — so we wanted to take all of that creative energy we had going and still create something fun, even though most productions had been shut down around the world.
Nick: And since we were using stock and pre-existing materials with all of the voice talent recording from their own homes and studios, it was also a really safe way to do that.
Lexie: And it was sort of a mutation of one of the previous projects we had been discussing. A dark Harry Potter or Tim Burtonesque type of film.
Nick: Exactly. The idea of doing a really dark Knockturn Alley or Bellatrix Lestrange film. A horror film set in the Harry Potter universe is sort of the dream, right?
Tales from Black Manor cast:
Ivy Black - Donnla Hughes
Atticus Black - Paul Haapaniemi
Lilith Black - Briony Rawle
Anastasia Black - Holly Standbrook
James Brinkley - Death
Tales from Black Manor website:
https://adventurecompany.org/black-manor
Joseph Perry is one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast (whenitwascool.com/up-hill-both-ways-podcast/) and Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast (decadesofhorror.com/category/classicera/). He also writes for the film websites Diabolique Magazine (diaboliquemagazine.com), Gruesome Magazine (gruesomemagazine.com), The Scariest Things (scariesthings.com), Ghastly Grinning (ghastlygrinning.com), and Horror Fuel (horrorfuel.com), and film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope (videoscopemag.com) and Drive-In Asylum (etsy.com/shop/GroovyDoom).
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