With four films and two ‘Midnight Madness’ Bermuda International Film Festival (BIFF) openings to their credit, the husband and wife team of Christian and Vicky Zabriskie have every reason to be excited about their future prospects as filmmakers. Mr. Zabriskie is a children’s librarian at the Bermuda Youth Library, and Mrs. Zabriskie is the instructor at the Bermuda Film Academy — a hands-on summer camp where young people learn the various aspects of film making.

In their spare time over the past four years the couple, armed with a camera, lights and sound equipment, have created four short films ranging in length from four to 14 minutes.

“Each film is part of a four-film series exploring the horror film genre, which is a way of maximising flexibility in entering film festivals,” Mr. Zabriskie said. “The idea is that they can be shown separately or as one piece.” Their first film, ‘Take a Bath’, was shown at last year’s BIFF, and ‘Beacons’ (see picture) premiered at the Little Theatre last weekend, both having had the honour of opening the ‘Midnight Madness’ section of the BIFF.

Mr. Zabriskie credits digital technology with making it possible for people like his wife and himself to achieve “an incredible amount of success” for a relatively small outlay, compared to trying to accomplish the same thing with film, which would run to tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In fact, Mrs. Zabriskie said that owning their own basic equipment meant they had been able to make each film for “a couple of hundred bucks”.

“Film-making has always been an art which has made it very difficult for the average person to break into because of the expenses involved,” Mr. Zabriskie said. “Digital makes it easy to make films, but it is still essential that you stay close to the story. In our case, we are working with equipment that is probably about a generation behind the real cutting-edge stuff that is out there, so we can fall back on the story that distinguishes our work from some other work in the field today.”

From the beginning, the Zabriskies have stuck with a two-cast format because that, too, makes things easier to manage in a short film.

“In our experience, since you are dealing with such a short period, to try and develop more than two characters really muddies the plot and the entire process,” Mr. Zabriskie said. “With that short amount of time, you can really do a lot with limited characters.”

Both he and his wife are proud of the fact that their films are local products. In addition to the “set” being Bermuda, the actors and crew are all local residents.

“We have been very, very fortunate in the support we have had, which is why we chose Z Clan Productions for our name. Our production group is really an extended family that works together with us,” Mr. Zabriskie said.

Mrs. Zabriskie, who holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in film production from Florida State University’s College of Motion Picture, Television and Recording Arts, is the producer/director/editor of Z Clan Productions while her husband is the script writer and cameraman.

Horror films are the couple’s favourite art form, and something which has been “a very important part” of their lives for some time, and something they to which they are both “very connected”.

With ‘Beacons’ in competition the BIFF, Mr. and Mrs. Zabriskie are eagerly waiting to see how it is judged.

Meanwhile, they are already looking to the future, and will be exploring other festivals worldwide in which to enter their work. “We have created very dramatic horror films, so we will be submitting them to both non-genre festivals and horror festivals,” Mr. Zabriskie said.