“Who’s There?,” directed by Ryan Doris and written by the buzzed-about A24 screenwriters Todd Spence and Zak White, a loving stepfather played by Garland Scott awaits his daughter’s return after a big night out. He hears her voice behind the door, but doesn’t see her — and soon he realizes something insidious is at his doorstep.
“Who’s There?” is about sometimes feeling like an outsider in your home: The dad was married to the now-deceased mom of his stepdaughter (played by Kallie Tabor), and they’re still learning to be a family without her.
The process of making the film, playing this weekend in the first Shorts Block at the 40th annual Boston Film Festival, is also a story of cohering relationships.
Northeast Meets Midwest
Producer Alecia Orsini Lebeda is a key figure in local film production who met Doris through the pivotal local rental house Talamas, which provides equipment to everything from indie filmmakers to big PBS productions shot in New England.
Orsini Lebeda believes her Massachusetts ancestry may go back to the Mayflower. And when she hears limericks that begin, “There once was a man from Nantucket,” she jokes: “I’m related to that guy.”
Doris is a transplant from St. Louis who moved northeast when his wife got into veterinary school in the Boston area, and “Who’s There?” melds his Midwestern roots with Orsini Lebeda’s Massachusetts ties.
He was a theater kid who intended to be part of the acting conservancy at St. Louis’ Webster University — until, he jokes, “I realized conservatory means you can get kicked out if they don’t like you.” He switched to Webster’s film school, where you have more control over your fate.
Webster is where he met Spence and White, who graduated a year ahead of him. He was a production assistant on several of their shorts in college, and the duo gained attention this past summer when A24 bought their hot script Mice.
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By then, Doris had already been hard at work on their script for “Who’s There?” for more than two years. It started when he was doing lots of commercial work, but wanted to make his own short.
“In 2022, I just called them. I was getting tired of doing a lot of corporate stuff, and was like, ‘I gotta shoot something creative,'” he recalls. “I was like, ‘Hey guys, let’s work on something. Let’s just do a few phone calls and let’s see what we’ve got.’
“And we did three or four Zooms in a row where we just pitched ideas, and they had a version of ‘Who’s There?’ that was pretty close to where it ended up. It was sort of perfect for what we needed: It was a single location, it was two actors, one of them is behind the door the whole time. And it had a creature element that wasn’t on screen a lot.”
That allowed Doris to focus hard on the door — which is on screen a lot — and the creature, which makes a very fast, very strong impression. Audiences at the excellent Sidewalk Film Festival, where we first saw “Who’s There?” — gave out a loud collective gasp when it makes an appearance.
‘Who’s There?’ and Opening The Door
After Orsini Lebeda and Doris considered several houses for “Who’s There?,” they ultimately opted to shoot in Doris’ own home. It was perfect in many ways — like the way it would allow swooping shots in and out of windows, and the fact that they would have total control over the set — but the front door was wrong. It needed a mail slot, and Doris’ door didn’t have one.
“I live right next to a Restore,” Dories explained. “So I would just go there every weekend and see if any doors would work: What doors were coming in? I had the measurements, and the plan was like, OK, we’ll take off my existing front door. We’ll build a door to the exact specs that we need and put the right lock on it, put the keyhole in — all of these elements. And we’ll just screw it in the week of the shoot. And eventually, yeah, we found the perfect door.”
The process involved stripping paint, installing a mail slot, painting the door, installing it in the frame, and other configuring. But Doris likes that part of filmmaking.
“That’s the most fun part — OK, let me get my hands dirty. Let me make the thing to be exactly what we need.”
That quality would prove very helpful when it was time to make the monster.
Stop-Motion
To create the creature, Doris and Orsini Lebeda wanted a being that would have qualities of a chameleon, trapdoor spider and praying mantis. They enlisted VFX artist Tim Maupin, who created a CG version compelling enough to shock audiences.
As good as the creature was, it didn’t have exactly the feel that Doris had envisioned. And his producer stood by him.
“He’s got to feel really good about it,” Orsini Lebeda says. “If you’re going to make a film, you have to live it to get the film made. But then you also have to really live with it when you need to go out there and show it to audiences. And you better feel good about it.”
Soon they met sculptor Doug Armitage, and sent him the script and the version of the film with the CG creature. He was so impressed that he signed on, and so did his brother. They are credited as The Armitage Brothers.
To cover the added costs, Doris reached out to friends and family, showing them the version of the film with the CG creature. They soon had enough money to get a creature sculpted — and Doris and cinematographer Nick Kolinsky did stop-motion recording of a 1/12th miniature over two all-nighters in Doris’ basement.
They used a stop-motion program called Dragonframe, and — pro tip — recorded all the movements right side up, then layered the creature into the film upside-down, for added scares.
Falling Back in Love With Short Films
Orsini Lebeda has worked in many elements of filmmaking, as a cameraperson, cinematograper, line producer and production manager — among her credits is the new Cape Cod-shot High Tide, presently earning raves on the festival circuit. Working on “Who’s There?” reminded her of early collaborations on 48 Hour Film Project challenges.
But it is also a reminder of how most successful film communities outside of New York and Los Angeles: a group of friends get together and make cool things, trading hats and titles. People who are directors on one film will be editors on another, to repay their gaffers, producers or cinematographers when they go make their own films.
“What this project did for me is, I re-fell in love with short films,” she says. “And honestly, I’ve been saying yes to more short films after having done this project. Because I had kind of left short filmmaking behind.
“I had had a lot happen. I like did my last 48, I had children, I started becoming a serious production manager and a line producer, and I was doing big movies: And it felt like, ‘Now we do big things — we don’t do short films.’
“And then, you know, I didn’t have anything going on. I was like, ‘Yeah, this is something I could do. This sounds fun. I love working with Nick. I love the script.’ And man — I forgot how much I love doing short film.”
The 40th annual Boston Film Festival takes place through Monday in Boston.