How does a scary story make you feel? And what adds most to that feeling? Look around your favorite horror movie or chilling TV series, and you’re likely to remember creepy details: the way a character’s approach is framed, how a picture hangs on a wall, the score that flows underneath it all. Every little bit counts, every little piece gets under your skin.
“Monster: The Ed Gein Story” production designer Matthew Flood Ferguson gets that. During IndieWire’s Craft Roundtables, Flood Ferguson reflected back on some of the seminal viewings of his life, like a little picture called “Night of the Living Dead.”
“I remember when I was 11 years old, I saw ‘Night of the Living Dead,’” Flood Ferguson said. “And most of the film takes place in a dilapidated farmhouse. The first time you see [the farmhouse], you see it from afar and there’s a horizon line and the house sort of rises up like a tombstone. It had this very hollow, scary feeling.”
When it came time to work on Netflix’s latest entry in Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s groundbreaking anthology series about some of history’s most horrifying real people, this one starring Charlie Hunnam as a man so sick he inspired a slew of classic horror joints like “Psycho,” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” and “The Silence of the Lambs,” Flood Ferguson turned to his own horror movie experiences to guide his work.
“When I got the call to do [‘Monster: The Ed Gein Story’], obviously I thought of research and Ed Gein and his house, but I remembered that moment and I remembered how I felt. So then I think, OK, [how do I] take that feeling and turn it into materials, turn it into wallpaper, space, scale, wood, tone, and try to hopefully evoke that same feeling to the viewer and to the actors?”
How does it feel? Pretty scary!
This conversation is presented in partnership with Netflix.
IndieWire’s TV Craft Roundtables is now streaming on @PBSSoCal and the PBS App as well as IndieWire.com and our social channels.
