indextest

"love never dies"
"the chemistry between us"
"four tragedies"
"the grim order"

"transgression"
"blue"
"heir to the throne:
changing of the guard"
"heir to the throne: the heir apparent"
"[sic]"
"infected"
"visions"

"matt's episode"
"dead to the world">
"graveyard path / way of the gods"
"what the thunder said"

"matt's episode"
episode 3x01

written by sara culp
directed by sara culp
produced by beth mayo

date - November 14, 2001
length - 28:11

s y n o p s i s

As a tounge-in-cheek episode, Sara and Beth find running Darkness Falls is more difficult than they imagined.
Especially when a cast member begins acting out his own script of murder and mayhem.

c a s t

sara	sara culp
beth	beth mayo
frank black	sam cone
heather	heather walker
alex	shane landrum
reporter	jennifer skinner
andy	andy spain
young woman	kim ragin
exchange student	ruwani opatha
brandon	brandon cecil
professor hanson	derek hartman
elesha	elesha renee' barnette
girl	emily morelli
hacker	justin biggers
witness	tj carr
df members	dustin rhodes rob manuel
cops	drew herman tj carr derek hartman
party attendees	rob manuel tj carr drew herman andy spain ryan rubio jenn skinner dan hooper dustin rhodes

Written By
Sara Culp

Directed By
Sara Culp

Produced By
Beth Mayo

Assistant Producers
Sara Culp
Drew Herman

Edited By
Beth Mayo

Sound Editing By
Sara Culp
Beth Mayo

Camera By
Drew Herman
Sara Culp
Beth Mayo
James Khanlarian
Justin Biggers

Director of Photography
Sara Culp

Production Assistance
Drew Herman

Blood Effects
Sara Culp
Heather Walker

Lighting
Sam Cone

Special Thanks
Drew Herman
Andy Spain
Dustin Rhodes
Ryan Rubio
Bret Hanlon
Matt Burdorff
Ben & Jerry's
CDC and Chase Dining Hall

Filmed on Location in
Chapel Hill, NC

m u s i c

VAST - "Pretty When You Cry"
The Simpsons - "The Stonecutter's Song"
Jimmy's Chicken Shack - "This is Not Hell"
Bloodhound Gang - "I Hope You Die"
X Japan - "X"
Marcy Playground - "The Devil's Song"
The Pixies - "Where is My Mind"
Wheatus - "Teenage Dirtbag"
Everclear - "Santa Monica"
Aerosmith - "Janie's Got a Gun"
Bree Sharp - "David Duchovny"
Bush - "The Chemicals Between Us"
Jefferson Airplane - "White Rabbit"

l o c a t i o n s

341 Hinton James Dormitory
UNC-STV studio
212 Winston Dormitory
the Arboretum
Sara Culp's house
the Student Union
Greenlaw Hall
Chase Dining Hall
the woods by the Forest Theatre
306 Alderman Dormitory
213 Connor Dormitory
Connor parking lot

i n t e r e s t i n g f a c t s

- "Frank Black" is the name of the protagonist in Millenium.

- Sam is watching the year three Darkness Falls promo made by Sara.

- Heather's script, "The Brethren", is actually a RAVE script written by former producer Matt Burdorff called "RAVE Around the Clock". It was deemed too dark for RAVE and was intended as the pilot script for Darkness Falls until Matt abandoned it and wrote the real DF pilot, "Love Never Dies". Plot summaries and dialouge (such as the phone booth scene) are taken directly from the script.

- The murders in Frank's script (which he then acts out) are actual re-enactments of Darkness Falls episodes, occuring in the order they were produced (but skipping "Transgression" and "[sic]"). Frank draining the first girl's blood is in lieu of a vampire.

- The show in Frank's script, "At Twilight" was one of the names considered by Matt Burdorff for Darkness Falls.

- Beth really does go to COUP all the time - this is in no way fiction.

- The copy of the script Sam is always carrying is actually Sara's copy.

- "Heir to the Throne," DF's only hour long episode to date, actually took much longer to film than two episodes put together.

- Sam's computer always has the Darkness Falls webpage on it - including one scene with the cast bio of Sam himself.

- Sam's script in the montage scene was edited by Drew Herman, and contained such authorial insights as "Foo Fighters Rule" and "I hate spiders!" (the last one was illustrated).

- The way Alex reacts to Frank's bizarre behavior was modelled after the way Sara's roommate reacted to her DF escapades last year.

- Beth claims to be adding "Heir" continuity errors to the website, but at the time of filming Matt had already added them. Also at the time of filming, Beth didn't know how to work the Dreamweaver program correctly (which she obviously now does) and was thus using the program incorrectly in the scene.

- Many of the errors Sara lists for "Heir" were hotly disputed by M. Wilson Burdorff, who claimed that many of them were not errors but "movie magic."

- The label on the bottle of poison Sam places on his desk reads "Caution - Keep Away From Children and Monkies." And yes, Sara was made painfully aware that "monkies" is misspelled.

- Sam Cone did his own foley work - when he slit Kim's throat, he made the slashing noise himself.

- Sara is eating Ben & Jerry's Chocolate Fudge Brownie ice cream when Beth calls.

- M. Wilson Burdorff modeled much of Darkness Falls, especially elements of the intro, after Chris Carter's Millenium.

- The anime Beth is watching when she calls Sara is Gravitation, a new shounen ai series.

- Sara's response to Beth's proposal of shooting in the Lodge's basement was, verbatim, an email sent by Matt after a messier-than-usual shoot at Kai Psi.

- The masks worn at the DF party were the "awards" given to DF members at the last party of the 2000-01 school year.

- At the party, Sara is telling Heather about a shoot for an as yet unproduced episode, "Visions", during which Sara, Lance Brown, and other actors spent several hours in midsummer in a small unairconditioned closed room full of candles.

- Beth actually decided at a previous DF party that she had to kill Matt with a sword (ala Highlander) in order to assume his power as producer.

- The shot of Sara lying on her kitchen floor was modeled directly after a photograph of her taken at another DF party.

- At another DF party, which was a party/shoot for another as of yet unproduced episode, "Infected", Beth actually did unintentionally call 911 when trying to dial a 914 campus phone number. Thankfully, she convinced them it was a mistake and the police failed to show.

- Jackson End, the character mentioned in the excerpt from "The Brethren" that the DFers film, is actually a recurring character in very early RAVE episodes. The character investigated strange happenings, and was dispatched on missions by his boss, "the baroness".

- The note that Frank places on Professor Hanson is a quote from Act V, scene ii of Hamlet (leaving the Shakespeare note is modeled from the DF episode "The Four Tragedies").

- Beth and Sara actually did have a discussion about a DF/General College crossover, but mostly just to make Matt mad. Ironically, this was sort of fulfilled in that Shane Landrum, who plays Alex in this episode, also plays a character on General College.

- The scene in the woods is modeled after a time Sara actually did hear a gunshot while walking in the UNC woods.

- Sara, in trying to dig a hole for the hand, actually dug up a nest of bees. No one was stung, but Sara yelled a lot and ran around.

- Sara is supposed to be doing an impression of Matt Burdorff in the edit bay; Matt is notorious for mocking the actors he edits, wearing his "editing hat," and keeping his sunglasses on indoors.

- The actor Sara is mocking is actually herself, in footage from "Visions" for which she had dyed her hair black.

- The DV deck actually did destroy two mini DV tapes Sara placed in it - one of these was the master for "Heir to the Throne" part two (which was luckily still on the array) and this tape is the one used in the scene.

- No one really knows what the "mix-down audio" feature on the Final Cut Pro editing system does.

- The "bloodstains" on Frank's script are really Sara's handprints - a result of the shoot where she was covered with blood.

- The song "David Duchovny" is under the scene with Heather and Alex in Heather's room because Heather has several pictures of David Duchovny on her dresser. Some of these are visible in certain shots.

- The static at the end of the episode is actually several scrambled frames of Sara as Druscilla in the RAVE episode "Mr. Cadaver's House of Treats." The static noise was created by Sara "shushing" into the microphone and Dustin Rhodes crumpling a peice of paper.

c o n t i n u i t y e r r o r s

- Sam wears the same outfit every day, while everyone else changes clothing.

- There is no sound of a phone dialing when Beth calls Sara.

- It appears that Heather is Beth's roommate - however, later in the script, Heather actually lives in a completely different room.

- When making his inventory of props necessary for the murders, Sam has neither a gun or a knife, both of which he uses later.

- The night scene in the "gas station" was acually filmed during the day in Sara's garage.

- Sam kills the exchange student in the same New Beetle (Sara's Alexander Mortimer Beetle) as the one in which Drew later finds that body (which doesn't follow the episode re-enacted, "The Chemistry Between Us," in which the exchange student was killed in the Beetle and then moved to a different car).

- Sara tells Beth on the phone that she will find a phone booth - however, they are not shooting at a phone booth but the row of phones in the Student Union during the DF shoot scene.

- There really is a "glitch in the matrix" - in the addition to the repeated scene, there is a monkey drawn on Sara's arm that was not visible in the original - however, this "glitch" was not planned.

- Heather is worried because Frank wasn't at the DF meeting, but then neither was she.

- Heather should have been at COUP (like Beth) after the DF meeting, instead of looking for Frank and then having dinner with Alex.

- When the episode was written (summer 2001) DF meetings had been on Tuesdays right before COUP, but in fall 2001, Beth moved the DF meeting to Wednesday so it wouldn't conflict (and thus the whole COUP issue is no longer relevant).

- In the woods, Alex says he almost killed himself on Frank's shovel "this morning," when in fact it was several days earlier.

- The time between when Heather and Alex run into Frank and the girl and when they hear the gunshot is not nearly enough time for the girl to have dug her own grave.

- The reporter refers to the exchange student as a "he" when the actor is obviously a girl - this is due to the fact that Ryan Rubio was intended to play the student since that was his role in "The Chemistry Between Us," but he was unavailable so Ruwani Opatha played the part instead.

- The top of Drew's head (complete with headphones) is barely visible in the mirror behind Heather and Alex.

- Professor Hanson (Derek), Drew, and the witness to the hacker's murder (TJ), all come back as cops.

this section last updated 03.26.02
webmaster: beth mayo