Today we’d like to introduce you to Dylan Clark.
Hi Dylan, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
My family moved around frequently when I was a kid. Home base is Virginia, but we lived in Austria and Germany as I was growing up. It was in Germany that I first started making short films. The spark for those early projects was a love for comic books and the encouragement of YouTube. I was following tutorials on how to make stunt dummies, explosive visual effects (that I couldn’t hope to accomplish yet), and costumes out of duct tape and felt.
Aspirations for these superhero-centric short films were high. We were gonna rival the projects DC and Marvel were putting out. Then, of course, once the first film was finished, I realized our stories weren’t quite as believable as what Hollywood was putting out there. Frustrated, I went back to the drawing board.
It wasn’t until we moved back to Virginia that I started to take an interest in horror films. After an introduction to “Poltergeist” by my uncle, I started to peel back at the genre and fall in love. I became enamored with “The Blair Witch Project”, recognizing the strength of low-budget horror filmmaking. I realized that caped crusaders were a lot harder to sell than boogeymen we could hide in the shadows. So, in sixth grade, I wrangled a group of unsuspecting pals to make my first short horror film. After a year of trials and tribulations, we had a finished, if not incoherent, film. We submitted it to a local film festival and won an award. Riding the high, we moved on to the next project. And the next… and the next — slowly improving.
During this process, short horror films were beginning to see success on YouTube. David F. Sandberg’s “Lights Out” showed that Hollywood was willing to gamble and win on filmmakers on the platform. I started uploading the shorts to YouTube. They still sucked. They weren’t getting any views. But they were getting better.
I went to film school at Ithaca College in upstate New York and continued to make horror shorts in and out of the classroom. My YouTube channel was starting to gain traction with a couple of shorts having some success. The pandemic interrupted my time at school, but being back home in Virginia gave me time to keep making very small, short horror films with family. These projects helped me grow exponentially as a filmmaker and pushed my channel even further.
Returning to school, I made a short film titled “Portrait of God,” which seemed to strike a chord and helped open doors for me. I’m continuing to write and direct short horror films, but I’ve spent a number of years now writing feature films as well with the hopes of making a feature debut in the near future. We’ll see what the future holds, as it’s extremely difficult for these things to come together.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I’ve been humbled time and time again talking to wildly successful filmmakers when they talk about the rocky road to get where they are. Needless to say, just about nobody’s road is smooth when it comes to filmmaking.
What I’ve been most fortunate about is that I started making short horror projects so young. The ample time to learn and refine before even going to film school helped me significantly. I’ve also been incredibly fortunate in following behind filmmakers who have successfully transitioned from short horror to feature filmmaking. These people are helping pave a smoother road and have been so gracious with their time and advice to up-and-coming filmmakers. The larger horror community is such a vibrant, tight-knit, and inviting community, which has also made things smoother.
One of the biggest struggles I’ve faced is that COVID-19 has impacted a few short films pretty dramatically. My biggest project to date was completely scrapped by a case of Covid just a few days before the shoot. A recent short film was also pushed back thanks to a COVID scare. Making films at any level requires miraculous planning and Covid is a wild curveball that’s always lurking. Learning to adjust to this curveball has been tricky.
More generally, it’s said time and time again — but there’s never enough time or money to make what you want to make. Even the TINIEST projects find a way to become the most difficult thing you’ve done. None of these roads are smooth, but you figure out how to navigate the bumps better as you go.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Part of my love for horror is the range of stories that can be told under its genre blanket. A gothic horror story is radically different from a sci-fi horror story. As a fan, I enjoy watching just about anything that falls under the genre. But as a filmmaker, I’m particularly drawn to horror stories that feel like fairy tales and fables. I love the archetype of these stories, and I find it fascinating when complicated characters are dropped into relatively simple terrifying situations.
A storyteller that taps into this beautifully is Guillermo del Toro. What I admire so much about his horror films is that they operate in this fairy tale realm where beautiful and terrifying imagery can coexist. This is something that I hope to tap into. I’d love to create stories that can instill both dread and awe in them. That’s partly why I’m so interested in mythology and religion, which involves stories filled with both.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
Among the many teachers, family members, and friends who have helped me get where I am, there’s a particular set of peers that have had a notable impact on me. I’ve uploaded my work to YouTube, where I’ve been fortunate enough to cultivate an audience. I’ve also been fortunate enough to meet other short horror filmmakers on the platform who have become close friends.
The YouTube horror community is home to some of the nicest, most hardworking, supportive people I know. They’re unafraid to reach out to each other, champion each other’s work, and lend a helping hand when it’s needed. Those folks know who they are, and I’m really lucky to have them. I owe some of my biggest steps forward in this industry to their advocacy.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dylanmcclarkus/?hl=en
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylan-clark-9ba702197/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/mcclarkusjfox?lang=en
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLvcw3m1dgjm6wDCXhlXo7g
Image Credits
Khameron Auerbach
