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u/MattTibby

I’m Theodore Salisbury, SFX Hair, Makeup & Prosthetics artist. I've worked in the departments for Dune: Parts 1 & 2, Moon Knight, and Covenant and I just built a complex, 100% practical creature for the indie horror feature Follow the Dark. AMA!
▲ 265 r/sfx+2 crossposts

I’m Theodore Salisbury, SFX Hair, Makeup & Prosthetics artist. I've worked in the departments for Dune: Parts 1 & 2, Moon Knight, and Covenant and I just built a complex, 100% practical creature for the indie horror feature Follow the Dark. AMA!

Hi r/Filmmakers! This is Theodore Salisbury, taking over the official Happy Sisyphus Productions account today. I’m an SFX Prosthetics and Creature Designer (CEO of Exilian Studios), and I’ve spent my career working with molds, foam, and silicone to bring characters to life.

While I've spent time as a prosthetic technician and makeup artist in the massive department machines of studio blockbusters like Dune: Part One, Dune: Part Two, Marvel's Moon Knight, and Covenant—as well as serving as designing on features like Last Man Down and Stand Your Ground—my true creative passion is independent genre cinema.

Most recently, I stepped up to design, sculpt, and physically fabricate the core creature—The Guardian—for u/MattTibby's upcoming elevated horror feature, Follow the Dark.

In an era dominated by generic, weightless CGI, we chose to do this the hard way: 100% practical. We engineered a massive, stretching physical entity that the actors could actually stand in a room with and react to.

I've put together two comprehensive behind-the-scenes videos breaking down exactly how we pulled this off logistically on an indie budget:

Part 1: From Concept to Creation https://www.reddit.com/r/Filmmakers/comments/1tiwh6f/bts_creating_the_creature_for_our_indie_horror/

Part 2: Bringing the Guardian to Life https://www.reddit.com/r/Filmmakers/comments/1tjmenv/bts_part_2_how_we_engineered_a_stretching/

The Reality: The movie is 90% shot, and the footage looks unbelievable. But we are currently in our final 4 days on Kickstarter trying to secure finishing funds for the final pickup scenes and high-end post-production. We are exactly 83% funded and need around 22 more backers to cross the finish line.

I'm here today to be completely transparent about foam fabrication, mold making, working with actors in intense prosthetics, the structural differences between studio background work vs. designing your own indie monster, and how to build nightmare fuel without a $100M studio budget.

Our Kickstarter Campaign: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/happy-sisyphus/follow-the-dark/

Verification Photo: https://postimg.cc/qtsfqwpg

AMA! I'll be answering questions live at 2PM BST all afternoon!

u/HappySisyphusPro — 4 hours ago
▲ 170 r/AMA+2 crossposts

I’ve worked for Blumhouse, Sony Screen Gems, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, and Supermassive Games—now I’m 90% through my first independent horror feature. AMA about the "Indie Grind" and finishing a film!

EDIT: That's a wrap for today!

Thank you so much to everyone who stopped by and asked great questions. The indie grind is tough, but it's great chatting about the process and the film with everyone. If you have more questions, drop them in the comments and I'll try to answer them over the next few days.

If you want to hear more about the specific SFX creature creation of our Guardian, our SFX Makeup Supervisor, Theo, will be right here this Friday, May 22nd at 2 PM BST to do a deep-dive AMA on how he brought our monster to life!

If you love independent horror and want to help us get through the post-production finish line, please check out our live Kickstarter for Follow the Dark: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/happy-sisyphus/follow-the-dark

See you Friday, and thank you again for the incredible support! 🙌

Hi r/Filmmakers!

After 10+ years in the studio machine, from working as Director’s Assistant and editing most of the Super 8 movies on Blumhouse's Sinister to narrative designing and performance directing the newly released Directive 8020, I stepped out to direct my own independent horror feature, Follow the Dark.

We have 90% of the film completely in the can with an incredible cast including James Cosmo (Game of Thrones), Arifin Putra (The Raid 2), and Hannah Al-Rashid (V/H/S/2).

Right now, we’re navigating the wonderful post-production "valley of death" and preparing for our final pickup shoots in June.

Ask me anything about:

  • Budgeting and getting 90% of a feature shot independently.
  • Attaching legendary "name" actors on an indie budget.
  • Running a live Kickstarter while managing a production.
  • Applying studio-level dread (Sinister) to indie filmmaking.

Our teaser trailer was recently released on Fangoria: https://www.fangoria.com/follow-the-dark-horror-movie-trailer-exclusive/

Proof: https://postimg.cc/VJrNhJyw

I’ll be dropping in to answer questions throughout the afternoon, and will be fully live tonight at 9 PM BST / 5 PM EST! Let's talk film.

Disclaimer: My views are entirely my own and do not represent Blumhouse, Sony, Supermassive Games, or any other company I’ve previously worked for.

Let's talk horror, filmmaking, Sinister, indie producing. Ask Me Anything!

u/MattTibby — 2 days ago
▲ 89 r/PeakyBlinders+1 crossposts

I was a VR Narrative Designer, Writer, and Performance Director on Peaky Blinders: The King's Ransom VR. Now building an indie VR studio. AMA.

Wrapped for tonight — tomorrow’s AMA is on Follow the Dark and indie filmmaking at r/filmmaking, 1pm BST. Leaving questions open here, I’ll answer stragglers when I can.

Hi r/virtualreality.

I'm Matthew Tibbenham. For over a year, I was embedded at Maze Theory on Peaky Blinders: The King's Ransom. Credited as Additional Performance Director, but the work spanned three roles: co-writing the game alongside three other writers, narrative designing in-engine every day to bridge script and real-time gameplay, and directing a large portion of the MoCap and VO — including Paul Anderson, who plays Arthur Shelby.

These days I run Happy Sisyphus Productions. We're in production on Colors of Our Memories, an emotional VR game launching Q3 2026 on Meta Quest, and developing a new XR IP called Tales of the Forgotten — set inside an infinite library of humanity's lost creative works.

My other credits include Supermassive Games' Directive 8020 (which was just released) and many films including Sinister, Deliver Us From Evil, Surviving Confession, and the upcoming Follow the Dark.

Happy to talk about:

  • Writing and narrative design for VR, and where script and gameplay collide
  • 360-degree spatial storytelling: what works, what breaks, what I love about the medium
  • Directing screen actors for MoCap
  • Going from a studio seat to building an indie XR studio

Going live at 3 PM BST.

Proof: https://postimg.cc/ppnkcYZ7

Views are my own and don't represent Maze Theory, Caryn Mandabach Productions, Banijay, the BBC, or Meta.

u/MattTibby — 3 days ago
▲ 96 r/fangoria+3 crossposts

I’m Matthew Tibbenham. I was Scott Derrickson’s assistant on SINISTER, (and B Cam Supervisor - 150 shots), edited 4 of the 5 Super 8 kill films, and worked with Scott for almost 2 years. I was also a Narrative Designer on the newly released DIRECTIVE 8020. AMA!

Hey r/horror!

To kick off a week of AMAs about my journey from studio horror to indie filmmaking and XR, today I’m diving deep into my years working on Hollywood Horror Films.

For nearly two years, I was Scott Derrickson’s right hand. On Sinister (2012), my official credit was Director’s Assistant and B Cam Supervisor (really the Second Unit Director with around 150 shots in the film), but I also wore another few secret hats: I edited four of the five Super 8 movies (everything except the opening hanging sequence) and I was in charge of all the computer technology in the film (creating all the screen recordings in the film where Ethan Hawke’s character investigates the murders, along with a graphic designer).

After Sinister, I worked as Scott’s Assistant in LA, eventually working on another film – Sony Screen Gems’ and Jerry Bruckheimer Films’ Deliver Us From Evil, and finally, helped organize and assemble the massive, interactive 1,000+ slide presentation and sizzle reels Scott used to land Marvel’s Doctor Strange. 

More recently (2022-2024), I spent two years at Supermassive Games as a Narrative Designer (contributing to the writing and performance direction) on the newly released Directive 8020: A Dark Pictures Game. Standard post-employment confidentiality means I can't take questions on the game itself, but I'm happy to discuss my wider games, VR, and film work. (But I’m very proud of my writing and performance directing work there so please go buy it and support Supermassive’s latest game!)

Why am I doing this now?

I’m pouring everything I learned about building cinematic dread from Scott and the studio system into my own upcoming independent horror feature, Follow the Dark. I’ve been trying to get it made since I was Scott’s assistant. In 2023, we shot 90% of the film, and we are currently running a Kickstarter campaign to finish it. But that is very much in the background, and for today, let’s focus on Sinister and Big Budget Hollywood Studio Horror! 

I’m an open book on my experience on Sinister, building tension, the reality of the studio assistant grind, editing horror, and more.

Proof: https://postimg.cc/Kk57X9Vr

The "15 Years of Horror and Narrative" AMA Series

Four days, four themes. Drop questions any time; I'll be live in the windows below.

Mon 18 May — The Studio Years & Sinister r/horror · r/IAmA Live: 2–5pm BST / 9am–12pm EST, then 10pm BST–12am BST / 5–7pm EST

Tue 19 May — VR, XR & Immersive Narrative - Peaky Blinders: The King's Ransom r/virtualreality · r/PeakyBlinders Live: 3–6pm BST / 10am–1pm EST, then 10pm BST–12am BST / 5–7pm EST

Wed 20 May — The Indie Filmmaker: Making Follow the Dark r/filmmaking · r/indiefilm · r/Kickstarter Live: 2–6pm BST / 9am–1pm EST, then 10pm BST–12am BST / 5–7pm EST

Thu 21 May — [Topic TBC] Subreddits TBC Live: 2–6pm BST / 9am–1pm EST

Kickstarter live now: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/happy-sisyphus/follow-the-dark

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this AMA are entirely my own and do not represent Blumhouse, Sony, Marvel, Disney, Scott Derrickson, or Supermassive Games.

Let's talk horror. Ask Me Anything!

u/MattTibby — 4 days ago
▲ 3 r/kickstarter

Follow the Dark - A Mind-Bending Horror Film Starring James Cosmo and Arifin Putra (90% shot)

Note: Posting this again since the original post’s image doesn’t seem to be working.

The short version: Follow the Dark is a elevated horror feature starring James Cosmo (Braveheart, Game of Thrones), Arifin Putra (The Raid 2), and Hannah Al Rashid (The Night Comes for Us). We shot 90% of it in August 2023 at a Victorian fort in Kent. Post-production stalled for nearly three years due to circumstances outside our control. We launched on Kickstarter just over a week ago to finally finish it.

We’re now 51% funded with 17 days left. Halfway there, but we need the second half.

Last week FANGORIA published the exclusive teaser trailer, which I’m still not quite over: https://www.fangoria.com/follow-the-dark-horror-movie-trailer-exclusive/

Rewards range from £5 special thanks up to a Guardian creature head bust. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/happy-sisyphus/follow-the-dark

Happy to answer questions about the production, the campaign, or anything else.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ (And would also love any feedback people have on the campaign.)

u/MattTibby — 14 days ago
▲ 6 r/indiefilm

After working on Sinister and Supermassive Games' Directive 8020, I’m finally finishing my own indie horror film. Here's why you should always shoot key scenes during principal photography and other things I'd do differently.

Quick background: I got my start as the Director's Assistant and Second Unit Director on Sinister and edited 4 of the 5 Super8 films — yes, you can partially thank me for that lawnmower scene living in your nightmares rent-free — and more recently I co-wrote and performance-directed additional capture for Supermassive Games' Directive 8020: A Dark Pictures Anthology. I've spent the better part of fifteen years working in horror in various capacities. Last week I finally launched a Kickstarter to finish my own horror feature, Follow the Dark, and now that the dust has settled from that, I figured r/indiefilm was the right place to be honest about what happened. (Though in a condensed format because really I could write a book from the experience.)

The shoot

In August 2023 we shot for 16 days. James Cosmo (everyone knows the Lord Commander, right?), Arifin Putra (The Raid 2), Hannah Al-Rashid (The Night Comes for Us), a Victorian fort in Kent, England that hadn't seen a film crew in its life, a creature designed by Theo Salisbury (Dune: Part One and Part Two, 1899), all started from an idea Nathan Shane Miller had over a decade earlier that I'd been trying to make ever since I read it.

We shot ninety percent of the film. If you're a filmmaker you already know what I'm about to say.

The shoot was (and I'm being diplomatic here) eventful. A Victorian fort with listed building protections means you cannot drill, fix, or damage anything, which sounds manageable until your cinematographer and production designer are eyeing the same walls for lighting rigs and set dressing. Every lighting decision became a negotiation (and sometimes fight). Every practical had to stand rather than hang. What that forced on us creatively turned out to be a great accident of the production: stranger light positions, more disorienting geometry, but in the moment it was a problem that I wish we had solved before we arrived on set. (And when your lead producer tells you that you don't have money for pre-production, tell him to f**k off and go find the money for pre-production first, especially on a film that was as complex as Follow the Dark.)

A main visual pillar of the film was a massive mirror, that was supposed to be a 5.9 by 3.9 metre practical glass build. We built it. Or at least a compromised version of it. But even that failed on set. We pivoted to massive green screen for that element, which was exactly what I had been trying to avoid since I knew it would make shooting even more difficult and explode our VFX budget. At the time, it felt like a genuine defeat. But in the end, it wasn't. It was the right call. But it cost us time and money we didn't have.

Beyond these logistical and practical nightmares, two days before production I fired my cinematographer. Yeah, okay, maybe not the best move... But that I would actually do again. What I wouldn't do again was ignore the signs that should have noticed from the beginning. Not that he was a bad guy (he's worked on a ton of films and TV shows), but we just did not gel. It wasn't totally clear until we were on set going through the shot list that this film would never get finished with the both of us. So in the end, we parted ways and had another incredible cinematographer join the project with just a day to go before filming. It was an uphill battle for him and if we had time to prep together, we might have possibly finished this ambitious indie film on time and on budget.

Even with all those issues, we wrapped ninety percent of the film. The remaining ten percent required a separate pickup shoot, which we planned to do within a few months. That were things turned even more interesting.

What happened next

Our original production partnership fell apart. Without going into detail I don't think serves anyone, the structure we had in place to finish the film dissolved. Promises had been made, which were slowly revealed to not be kept. And we found ourselves with a nearly-complete film and no clear path to cross the line. We spent the better part of a year trying to find finishing funds through conventional routes (gap financing, new investors, etc): the usual story, I suspect, for anyone reading this. A film that's ninety percent shot is, counterintuitively, a harder sell than a film that hasn't started. Investors want to come in at the beginning or not at all. (Which I personally still find crazy! Why would you not want to come in at the end to reap the rewards of someone else's hard work?!? But anyways that's another story...)

Then our lead actor, Arifin Putra, booked a major long-running Indonesian production — a sinetron, I believe it's called, which is essentially a primetime soap opera in Indonesia, the kind of commitment that means eighteen months of unavailability, six days a week. Which is great for him and genuinely deserved, and also meant that the pickup window we'd been working toward kept moving.

So: broken promises, dissolved production partnership, no finishing funds, lead actor unavailable. For nearly three years.

The lesson I'd offer

Shoot the whole film during principal photography. I know that sounds obvious. I knew it going in. I had my reasons for why we structured the shoot the way we did once it was clear we couldn't get everything filmed in the original 15 day shoot. I didn't want to compromise on my vision and part of me is still glad I didn't. (We'll see how I feel when the film is fully complete.) But if possible, shoot all the scenes you need for your story. At least so in case something like what happened to me, happens to you, you can finish some version of your film.

(Also, if you, one of your other producers, and everyone else on the crew tell your lead producer that you need 20 days to film the movie and he says why can't you do it in 10-15 because he's done it that way before. Stick to your guns if you truly feel your film needs that extra time. I shot my first feature in 10 days, but that's because it was set in a confessional box and one other location. It was clear to everyone apart from the lead producer that our film needed at least 20-25 days, but that's what happens when you try to cut corners.)

The version of this where we pushed harder to capture everything in August 2023 (even rough, even imperfect) is the version where none of the last three years happens. In a parallel world there's a version of the film that was finished during the original shoot. Perhaps I'm already on to my next film or video game. Perhaps not. I'd love to know, but at least for now, parallel lives only exist in movies.

Where we are now

Cutting to the chase. We restructured. We waited. Arifin's schedule finally opened up. We launched on Kickstarter just over a week ago and we're currently 51% funded with 17 days left, which I'll take.

FANGORIA published the exclusive teaser last week, which I'm still pinching myself about.

The campaign funds the pickup shoot in June with the full cast and our stretch goals allow us to do that at the quality I hope we can achieve, as well as post-production, sound, and colour grade. The film gets finished. After three years, that's the whole sentence.

Teaser and campaign links in the comments. Happy to answer anything about the production, the industry side, the Supermassive work, or the specific joys of trying to shoot in a Victorian fort you're not allowed to touch.

reddit.com
u/MattTibby — 14 days ago
▲ 1 r/kickstarter

The short version: Follow the Dark is a elevated horror feature starring James Cosmo (Braveheart, Game of Thrones), Arifin Putra (The Raid 2), and Hannah Al Rashid (The Night Comes for Us). We shot 90% of it in August 2023 at a Victorian fort in Kent. Post-production stalled for nearly three years due to circumstances outside our control. We launched on Kickstarter just over a week ago to finally finish it.

We’re now 51% funded with 17 days left. Halfway there, but we need the second half.

Last week FANGORIA published the exclusive teaser trailer, which I’m still not quite over: https://www.fangoria.com/follow-the-dark-horror-movie-trailer-exclusive/

What your money does:
• £17,432 — essential pickup shoots completed, post-production can follow
• £32,687 — every scene we need to shoot, shot. The full film as written
• £63,458 — crew properly compensated for work already done and still to do
• £100,893 — everything at once, no compromises, no next mountain to climb

Rewards range from £5 special thanks up to a Guardian creature head bust. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/happy-sisyphus/follow-the-dark

Happy to answer questions about the production, the campaign, or anything else.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ (And would also love any feedback people have on the campaign.)

kickstarter.com
u/MattTibby — 14 days ago