Slither TV Spot contest entry (2006) - In March of 2006, the Universal horror film Slither had a contest--called "Slug it Out"--open to the general public challenging horror movie fans to create their own TV spot for the film about a month before its release.

The contest provided clips (all of which were included in the films long theatrical trailer that can be viewed on the website). It also included isolated dialogue, sound effects and music to be used at the discretion of the entrants. Since it was for a TV trailer, there was also a list of rules about what could be shown in the spot, including a restriction against toilet humor, direct references to transformations, guns/weapons to the head, etc. (I noted the ones that stuck out in my mind).

The logos for the film production company, Gold Circle, and Universal had to be shown, and the 30 second spot had to end with a 3 second clip provided, giving the name, rating and release date information for the film (limiting the actual spot to 27 seconds of content edited by the entrants).

The spot I created for the contest uses two different pieces of music which are cross faded at the beginning of the video. I tried to create a trailer that was indicative of the style of the genre and related very quickly the kinds of things in the film one should expect to see, while giving a small amount of information about the actual plot of the film.

Because I liked Nathan Fillion's performance in the TV show Firefly and it's follow up theatrical film, Serenity, I decided to give him a final comic moment for my trailer. Those two clips, of him asking "how's everybody this evening?" and the subsequent splatter of the slime hitting the window were separate clips, which I put together for comic effect.

Click here to view the video.

Click here to return to the editing menu.