A Stein do what now?!?

Maybe you wonder "why a frog?"

The short answer is I'd never seen a bipedal frog running around in a guy's backyard raising hell with garden implements.

The story of Der Steinfrosch concerns the day of a rural landscaper who after a grueling morning of shrub-intensive customer service discovers a strange parcel in his own backyard garden. What at first seems to be an unusual statue shrouds a terrifying Nazi force. A fierce confrontation ensues followed by a creative repurpose for the evil amphibian.

Der Steinfrosch is a short monster film. Action, creative camera work and editing,interesting characters, some jokes, gruesome frog attacks (not so much gruesome)...

While I'm on the subject of gruesome I gotta submit there's a time and a place for it. I love a good cinematic dinosaur attack or chestburster sequence but the torture porn can stay home. At one time this film held the promise of some sweet dismemberment and nightmarish abdominal-content flinging but I decided I could just try some creative work-arounds to hold my audience's interest. Please don't confuse my decision for any type of prudish view on cinema violence. I thought the last RAMBO flick was awesome and Peter Jackson's DEAD ALIVE was a @*#$& masterpiece. Next film I make might have some blood. It might not be red.

So no big actors. I decide to write for people I know that aren't actors. I know they can't act but they can be themselves. All I had to do was put their characters in bizarre situations knowing ahead of time how they would react. This approach has worked really well. I only have two characters that are human and the sole antagonist is a rubber puppet. Should I not say RUBBER PUPPET? I feel like George Castanza the time he got caught fooling around with the cleaning lady on his desk at work...'should I NOT have done that?' Seriously, I wonder if people during the production of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK they called Yoda a 'rubber puppet'? Lifelike animatronic? Crudely robotic creature mechanism? If I had Frank Oz playing the character, RUBBER PUPPET would probably get the NO button.


When I was little I was afraid of some puppets. I think a well played puppet can look pretty dang creepy simply BECAUSE it's a puppet. I had made some wire and latex creatures before for some stop motion projects but the STEINFROSCH was literally a new type of animal. An 'animatronic' and non-actors. The secret weapons of every successful film.

Next post we'll talk about the characterfolk actor-types playing in the story. We'll have a link to some video as well.

Keep that froggy feeling.