Colin and AJ’s Christmas at the Overlook Hotel

After what we considered the abject failure of the 2017 party, we decided to get back to basics by adapting another Kubrick film. But this time rather than pick arcane Kubrick-obscura (apparently this is how 2001 categorizes to many of you), we went for his most popular film of all: The Shining.

We also decided to go full meta on this one. Our adapted story would closely track the film’s original story, replacing Jack’s obsession with writing a novel with Colin’s obsession with planning the most impressive party. AJ’s reluctance towards Colin’s mania would replace Wendy’s towards Jack’s. And Lydia, our newly hired intern, would fill the role of Danny: hopelessly trapped between mother and father.

The production of “Colin and AJ’s Christmas at the Overlook Hotel” began in March of 2018 and finished just days before the screening. It was a unique process compared to other parties because AJ spent most of the production window in Los Angeles at USC. Thus for the first time ever we did much of the party work separately.

AJ and Lydia’s scenes were recorded while AJ was still in town over the summer, but Colin managed the recording of everyone else throughout the fall while AJ was away. At first we aimed to send scenes back and forth, adding sound and video elements as we went, but for the most part everything ended up happening on Colin’s Macbook in St. Louis. AJ flew to St. Louis a few days before the party and we worked together to record all the sound effects, mix, and master the entire movie over the course of two days.