Steven Schloss was very strategic in his creation of “Vape Glow,” his intense 5-minute short about a man who can’t stop hitting his vape, even as something hideous closes in.
Schloss wanted the film to get attention from top Hollywood executives, and raise awareness of his upcoming Hanukkah horror short, “Gimme.”
The first part worked out even better than he’d hoped: He got signed to top Hollywood agency WME and the management and production company 3 Arts, a success he credits partly to the race for new horror voices after the success of Curry Barker’s Obsession and Kane Parsons’ Backrooms.
Will it promote “Gimme”? You can help decide that by tuning into the short when it premieres this December on the YouTube horror platform ALTER.
In the meantime, attendees at the Provo, Utah-based FilmQuest — one of our favorite film festivals — can enjoy “Vape Glow” with a special Midnight Madness screening on Thursday.
We asked the Boston-based Schloss, who describes himself as “inspired by 90s video games with messy underground aesthetics and punk attitudes,” about how “Vape Pen” is opening Hollywood’s doors.
Steven Schloss on Making ‘Vape Glow’
Writer-director Steven Schloss at the Brooklyn Horror Festival. Photo by Sean Chee.
MovieMaker: So… do you vape?
Steven Schloss: Since making “Vape Glow,” I’ve gone full analog.
MovieMaker: This movie is playing Thursday at FilmQuest’s Midnight Madness, which is a super fun lock-in at the Velour Theater where you watch an insane number of insane movies. A short movie like this one really stands out and makes a stronger impression than a longer film with slower moments. How did you decide 5 minutes was the ideal running time?
Steven Schloss: At the heart of “Vape Glow” is an advertisement for my brand, and like ads, it should sell an idea quickly, deliver a memorable punch and leave you thinking about it after the credits roll — or flash, in the case of “Vape Glow.”
I wanted to make something splashy and fast enough that execs and industry people would watch it front to back if it landed on their desk. From the beginning of the process, I constructed limitations into the concept to make sure I didn’t drain the bank account (which I’ve done before). I wanted to find out how much I could achieve with one light and two lenses over the course of an overnight shoot. That opened my mind to look for ideas in my everyday life that could fit. At the time I vaped…
MovieMaker: This has to be the first movie from a vape’s POV, right? Were you inspired by any other films from the POV of an inanimate object?
Steven Schloss: I’ve sure as hell never seen it before! The market is so saturated with movies that these days I’m drawn to unique perspectives over story. Don’t get me wrong — story is always king — but it doesn’t have to be exotic for me to sink my teeth into it. Examples of recent indies that inspired this thought are following the killer in In a Violent Nature, or witnessing horror through the character of a dog in Good Boy.
I respect how these movies worked with lower budgets to create impact just through the choice of what seat to put the audience in where they haven’t quite sat before.
For the intermittent flash-of-light/darkness gag, I was inspired by Saw. We all know the scene, but I wanted to take it a step further and modernize it with a vape. To me it actually works even better since a vape comes with a timer. Both with battery life, and how long someone can stomach vape hit after vape hit.
MovieMaker: I love the whole lore/mythology you build around this particular vape pen. This story is obviously part of a much larger, more dangerous world. How deep does this go? Is this a full-length movie, or a franchise?
Steven Schloss: It’s funny, this was the first short I made where it was a short to be a short with no intention of expanding. However, I can’t help but always try to build a larger world than what ends up on screen, which I believe the audience can feel. After our premiere at Fantastic Fest, I got many questions and meetings about a feature version, with interest in making something bigger. So now, there might be. Stay tuned.
MovieMaker: One thing I find super unsettling about this movie is that it starts with the lead character (Samuel Dunning) asking his girlfriend (Kelsey Lea Jones) to check what appears to be his groin region for… something. We never learn what’s going on there. So what’s going on there?
Steven Schloss: This is, hilariously, the most common question I get during a Q&A and about one-fourth of people get the second layer. On the surface, this is a quick 15-second character beat that teaches the audience everything they need to know about their relationship before launching us into a POV. It’s invasive, uncomfortable and intimate at the same time. Sort of like a Vape.
The second layer to this is that he’s beginning to turn into the thing that comes for the Vape later, which is stages beyond his progression. It’s what he will become if he keeps vaping but he’s just not quite there….yet.
MovieMaker: This film has opened a lot of doors for you, including getting signed to WME and 3 Arts. Do you feel like a beneficiary of the trend we’ve heard so much about lately, of Hollywood looking for the next Curry Barker? Or was this already in motion before Obsession made so much money?
Steven Schloss: 100 percent due to what is happening in the industry. The audience is clearly craving fresh new voices, and “Vape Glow” was a right time, right place sort of film that I made in response to what’s happening. I shot and printed “Vape Glow” in less than a month, following a few months of development and testing.
Huge shout out to Steven Schneider of Spooky Pictures who found “Vape Glow” before it even hit a screen and set me up with my entire team: Luke Maxwell and Will Rowbotham at 3 Arts Entertainment, who discover fresh talent and rep Kane Parsons, Dylan Clark and Nicolas Curcio along with Nick Hoagland and Marco Alvarez at WME, who rep legends like Ryan Coogler, Joe Savage, Adam Sandler and Dave Franco. Lots of great things are in the works because of everyone who saw the vape glow.
MovieMaker: Between this and “Gimme,” for example, you seem to make a lot of films with franchise potential. Is that a goal?
Steven Schloss: For sure, I actually made “Vape Glow” to help “Gimme” — which is a longer short — get more attention before its online release on ALTER this Hanukkah. It did way more for me than that, and completely changed my career almost overnight.
You can read more about FilmQuest here and more of our film festival coverage here.
Main image: Kelsey Lea Jones in “Vape Glow,” courtesy of the filmmaker.
