SCREAMBOX’s brand new Original Series, “Tales From the Void,” is an anthology series that adapts six tales of terror from the extremely popular r/No Sleep community by series creator Francesco Loschiavo.
Anthology series “Tales From the Void” debuts this Sunday on SCREAMBOX with the first two episodes: “Into the Unknown” and “Fixed Frequency.”
Two episodes will then premiere exclusively on SCREAMBOX every Sunday between October 13 and October 27. The episodes will also be available to buy or rent via electronic sell-through platforms the following Tuesday.
“Tales from the Void” features episodes directed by Joe Lynch (Suitable Flesh), John Adams & Toby Poser (Hellbender), Maritte Lee Go (Black As Night), and series creator Francesco Loschiavo. Each episode is accompanied by a post-show interview with the original author, hosted by No Sleep Podcast creator David Cummings.
Helming episodes while showrunning an anthology series was a huge undertaking for Loschiavo, who was committed to doing these stories justice.
“I directed three episodes, and I was showrunning and helping produce at the same time,” the series creator tells Bloody Disgusting. “The way we did it is, we had a four-day prep and a four-day shoot. I didn’t really get a four-day prep because they’d be shooting another episode while we were doing my prep, so I did all of my prep three months prior. I had to be ready in advance. I was splitting my days between showrunning and getting ready with our department heads. That was definitely a big challenge, but I think our footage is amazing; all of the directors crushed it. We’re so happy with what we’ve created, and we hope that audiences connect with it.”
“Into the Unknown”
Despite such a massive undertaking, the series creator is quick to credit his team at every opportunity. In fact, he considers Joe Lynch’s premiere episode, “Into the Unknown,” the toughest to tackle story-wise. He explains, “I think we gave him the most challenging episode, in that the horror element is an entire VFX build, so the actors don’t have a lot to respond to for the entire episode, and it’s all getting added in post. He brought a lot to that story, and I think he really understood the theme we were going for. It’s multilayered. There are truth and conspiracy elements; there are gentrification elements, and there is what people are capable of when they’re afraid. It’s one of the few that’s the most layered, which is why it’s our series premiere, and it sets the tone for the whole thing. Joe did a great job of not only interpreting that script but breaking it down, and we’re huge fans of Joe Lynch, obviously.”
While each episode adapts a different story from r/No Sleep, does this anthology series have a wraparound or elements that connect the tales further?
Loschiavo answers, “We get asked this a lot. It’s interesting; there are a lot of anthologies that do, and I studied all of them to see how we could figure this out. There are features like Southbound that do it all in one location and kind of stitch together. There’s ABCs of Death, where you can just go through different letters of the alphabet. You’ve got stuff like what Black Mirror does, where it’s about technology, so that’s kind of the through line or Twilight Zone’s social commentary. I didn’t want to have a host or any sort of transition piece. To me, the connective tissue is tone, and that was really important for us, so we had a lot of conversations with distributors.”
“I think the big concern is that people don’t always stick around for an anthology,” he continues. “And my perspective was that we spent two years curating really great, really original stories, each with a different sub-genre of horror. We have a Cronenberg body horror, we have a sci-fi cosmic horror, and we have a ghost story. The list goes on. So, what we tried to do is, the consistent through line is, I think, the quality of the episodes, but also, that it’s dark subject matter; it’s a slow burn, and it’s a big twist ending, in that, they are snackable, we don’t go beyond 30 minutes. I was a big believer that you don’t need that connective tissue if the audience knows what they’re getting and has an expectation, and we deliver on that expectation every week, which is what The Twilight Zone did. And I think the pairing of how great the material is from r/No Sleep, plus what we did with the adaptation, there will be that expectation, and my goal is to deliver on it with every episode.”
“Fixed Frequency”
The first of three episodes helmed by Loschiavo, “Fixed Frequency,” also arrives this Sunday.
“‘Fixed Frequency’ is about three teenage boys going around the neighborhood pranking unsuspecting families,” Loschiavo sets up the episode. “They have figured out a way to connect their walkie-talkies to baby monitors, and they are whispering creepy things and scaring mothers all around the neighborhood. They eventually have someone who talks back to them in a very creepy voice, and then they find out there was a murder at that house last night, and they are now being stalked throughout the neighborhood. It has a lot of, I would say, Halloween-type vibes, but it’s done from a teenage boy’s kind of perspective.“
It’s a premise that sounds like a cross between Disturbia and Joy Ride, which turns out to be fairly accurate. The series creator confirms the latter as an influence, “It’s funny that you say Joy Ride because I love that film. I think it’s one of the best uses of radio or walkie-voices to be creepy; Candy Cane is definitely a reference. I looked at films like Super Dark Times to see how to make it cinematic for kids to be biking around the neighborhood. I definitely looked at Joy Ride for some of the voice reference stuff and how they can make the radio stuff creepy.
“I grew up watching all the Halloweens and Chuckys, so I pulled a lot from Halloween in terms of how we use shadow to mask the killer, our handheld scenes when we’re going to find a body part or a dead body, and even some of the movement and stuff of our deep voice killer is pulled directly from Halloween. I tried to take slashers, and then, coming of age kids biking stuff, a little bit of Stranger Things, and kind of fuse those things together.“
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