How To Marry A Vampire Is Back From The Dead
Yours truly in my role as evil producer Chance on How To Marry A Vampire.
In 2015 producer Chance McLurkenclurk set out to make a dating reality show unlike any seen before. Setting up fame seeking schmucks to be married to a real life vampire. After three months of shooting, none of the cast or crew were ever seen again. These tapes were all that was left behind.
They have been lovingly edited together in a spirit that we believe McLurkenclurk would appreciate.
This is the title screen that appears before almost every episode of How To Marry A Vampire. In the canon of the show, the cast and crew all went missing due to dangerous, unexplained circumstances. Eventually, as more tapes “resurfaced,” more episodes could be uploaded to YouTube.
It was a brilliant idea, and all credit for it goes to Ross Williams of XRATS Productions, who edited the first 5 episodes and the opening credits sequence. (And I am so happy to say that, at the time of this writing, he has not gone missing and is quite happily working as one of the most skilled and busy freelancers in Southern Oregon.)
The truth is that How To Marry A Vampire was a big pipe dream of mine that proved to be much more difficult to pull off than I had originally anticipated. My initial plan for the show was to shoot a “pilot” episode and a “next week on” teaser, to promote it at that year’s Oregon Fringe Festival, and then to continue shooting over the course of several weekends over the next few months.
Most of the cast of How To Marry A Vampire on location.
Origins
You might be wondering why I wanted to make a show like this in the first place. It’s so massively silly.
To understand why, I’m going to take you on a little field trip back to 2015. I was in my senior year at Southern Oregon University, and I had just written and staged a production of my one-act play, Energy Costs, which features vampires as roommates (and yes, I HAVE seen the excellent film/series What We Do in the Shadows, though regrettably not until after I had written a play with such a similar premise that I now feel like I can’t market without people making parallels—thank you so much for asking!) Regardless, I was on a big vampire kick. I had been invited to come play a vampire character on a talk show for my friend, Ian Fyfield (who is a real person and should absolutely host a show on TV). I prepared a character but ended up getting cut for time.
I am actually so glad my character didn’t make it onto the show, because that was one of my biggest motivators to make a web series, and had I made it onto the show, I probably would have just left the entire concept of what would eventually be How To Marry A Vampire as a simple sketch.
Me with co-director and DP Sean Marc Nipper of Reelhouse Films on the set of How To Marry A Vampire.
The Real Production Story
So, I set out to make the show, and everything came together really beautifully. Yes, we ended up having to shoot a show about vampires during the day. (Vampires can go in the sun in this universe, okay?)
If you’ve been following the show, you might notice that the cast is rather huge. Coordinating that many people proved to be very challenging, especially for a show with such a low budget. The location that served as Millarca’s castle proved difficult to swing for multiple shoots, and finding anything that compared to it was tricky, to say the least.
That being said, our How To Marry A Vampire shoot was one of the most fun experiences I’ve had on set, and perhaps ever in my life. Starring a cast of talented local actors from the University as well as from the local film community, and with a chill, super fun crew, the whole day was an absolute blast. Although there was a script, most of the shoot was improvised, and there were full scenes and sequences we had never planned on shooting that proved to be some of the most enjoyable parts of the whole thing.
Ross’ brilliant idea to break the content we had shot for the pilot episode into “bite-sized” chunks proved to be the best possible way to move forward. Combined with the “device” of the missing cast/crew, this allowed us to not only use extra content that had not been scripted, but also to cover up for any missing clips, patching the narrative together as best we could.
Aleah Zimmer as Millarca, the star of How To Marry A Vampire, from the long-anticipated finale episode. Behind her, lurking as usual, is her butler, Pokey (Hugo Lemoine).
Returning from Resting in Peace
Life happened, as it often does, but fortunately, some of us got together to shoot a finale episode to wrap up the plot the following year. Not everyone could make it back, so there are some off-screen deaths and disappearances that will remain a mystery, but I am still so thrilled that there is a conclusion to the series and that it doesn’t just end in the middle of nowhere. You’ll get to know who Millarca chooses, and that’s pretty incredible.
Of course, life was still happening and distracting me from getting more episodes uploaded. I took over editing for Ross once he got too busy with other projects, and I myself ended up getting too busy—producing and acting in the feature film Emma Was Here and making the massive undertaking that is The Diminished were definitely big distractions!
I am somewhat ashamed that it took me over a year to upload Episode 8 to YouTube, but once I saw how many subscribers the forgotten channel had, and how many people had e-mailed and messaged asking about it, I realized that I needed to pick it back up again and give people the ending they wanted. I’m sure a lot of people thought the show ended at the end of 7, with Vladislava and Sketch plotting to murder the other contestants. Perhaps that could have been a good stopping point, but it wasn’t what I had originally envisioned by any means. Like I said before, it’s all about seeing who Millarca chooses in the end.
Episodes 8 and 9 are now up on YouTube, after a long, long wait, and the finale will soon be joining them. Due to massive neglect on my part, the original website has been taken down, along with all of the hilarious content that was on it. I am working to get a new website set up as soon as possible, but in the meantime, you can visit my site migwindows.com and the YouTube channel to watch. Be sure to subscribe!
Season 2?
Some people have asked about a possible follow-up season, and it’s definitely a possibility I’m open to—perhaps even excited about. Would it be about another ex-bride of Dracula? Dracula himself? A different vampire entirely? Maybe Season 2 is about a different CREATURE entirely, like a Werewolf or a Goblin King. You’ll just have to stay tuned to find out!
In the meantime, happy watching. And a huge thanks to all of you who encouraged me to free this project from the crypt. I’ve been having a blast just watching the funny shit we came up with all those years ago, and I hope you have as well.
For those of you who have yet to see it, why not start from the beginning?
Full series playlist on YouTube!
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