FOLKLORE IN FILM: AN INTERVIEW WITH “WATER BABIES” EXECUTIVE PRODUCER WARREN WORKMAN
It is no secret that Warren Workman is a treasure to the local Utah filmmaking community. As the founder of Utah Film Festival and producer for Manly Bands, it is a real treat to see an original short produced by Warren and his family. With a phenomenal team, including director, editor, and award-winning VFX artist Joshua Garretson, “Water Babies” took home quite the list of award at ZFA this past season, including Best Short Film, Best Horror Short, Best VFX, Best Producer, and an Honorable Mention for Best Story.
ZFA: Our jurors were unanimously impressed with the backstory and mythos for this film. How did you come up with the idea? Any roots in real folklore?
Warren: Water babies are mysterious and dangerous water spirits from the folklore of California and other Western Native American tribes. Water-babies are said to inhabit springs and sometimes ponds or streams. Water babies usually take the form of beautiful human infants (although in some tribes they have fish tails, or appear as reptilian beings that merely make cries resembling human babies.) In many tribal traditions, the cry of a water baby is an omen of death. In others, responding to a water baby's crying by picking it up results in catastrophe. We took inspiration from these stories to craft our rendition that your judges so graciously awarded us.
We decided to modify the stories into our supernatural story, add in pioneer assets and modernize the leads. This was primarily due to budget restraints rather than the original story we wanted to tell.
ZFA: How long did production take as a whole?
Warren: It took roughly 2 days to film all the scenes including a reshoot day for our closing credits. What is even more impressive is that our director Josh turned the entire project around in ONE MONTH! He did everything. Filming, editing, VFX, color, sound design, music. He is a powerhouse of a filmmaker.
ZFA: What are your plans with the film? Would you ever consider expanding this short into a feature?
Warren: We definitely have plans to expand this into a feature. We would take a slightly different tone with the feature film though for the feature favoring a more comedic horror vs a heavy dramatic horror as was the short. The only thing holding us back from pushing this into a feature film is the time to write the script... and need to find a large body of water more easily controlled and warmer. Filming in the summer feels like the right call.
ZFA: The jurors remarked on how this film reminded them of old horror classics such as "It's Alive." Where did your team get inspiration for the design of the babies?
Warren: I went back and forth with our director Josh to design the Water Baby creatures. In the original version of the script we never even saw these spirits and everything was all sound design. But with Josh's talents we discussed the possibility of creating the CGI creatures. In one iteration the creatures had scales to pay homage to the original stories. But ultimately we decided to go more creepy and have a muddy baby with globs of mud pouring from its empty eye sockets. They are so cute!
ZFA: What are your plans for this film? What is next for future projects?
Warren: This film will be developed along with several other features I am working on. In the meantime I am working on a comedic feature that I hope to begin pre-production on this spring. I recently wrapped on Mistletoe Mixup 2 for Amazon Studios. I am also creating a ton of content for Manly Bands for youtube and ads.
ZFA: How can we find you and follow your work?
Warren: I am a glutton for attention so I probably overshare on my Facebook page @wworkman1 and I am working on keeping my IMDB updated
