Actors had fun march to The Gallows
LOS ANGELES — The daughter of football legend Frank Gifford and TV personality Kathie Lee Gifford might soon be better known among teens as a headliner in the horror film The Gallows.
Cassidy Gifford is part of the ensemble in the terror trip, and preview tracking indicates the small flick’s on its way to becoming a big hit.
The Gallows focuses on four students at a small-town high school that remounts a play to honour a student who accidentally died by hanging in the same production 20 years before.
When four of the students rehearsing the play break into the school one night, they become potential victims of a vengeful killer.
Besides Gifford, newcomers Reese Mishler, Pfeifer Brown and Ryan Shoos round out the ensemble in the film co- directed and co-written by first-timers Chris Lofing and Travis Cluff.
The plot is classic genre fodder while the foundfootage technique counts as a variation on the quick-cut Blair Witch Project foundfootage style.
And Gifford’s role, as the judgmental cheerleader, turned out to be the most difficult to cast after Lofing and Cluff auditioned more than 200 actresses for the role. Three weeks before shooting, they still had not found the appropriate actress when Gifford showed up for a meeting.
“My mom needed to use the bathroom, and so of course, she came in and ended up sitting there for about five minutes,” says the 21-yearold of her protective mother, Kathie Lee.
The actress followed up the chat with an audition tape and then a callback to meet the three key players already cast, and who had become close friends.
“We kind of hit it off immediately,” Gifford says of the group.
They would need the camaraderie to get them through filming in and around Fresno, Calif., during the gruelling night shoots, which required improvised dialogue and multiple takes.
“We were grateful for all the hard work we did because it’s hard to get a scare down just right,” she says. “Five seconds off could make or break it, so we had to specific.”
Gifford also says she had to emote because she’s nothing like the role she plays — even though the directors used her first name as the character’s name.
“I hope I’m not anything like her,” Gifford says. “I describe her as the girl we all knew in high school and we didn’t necessarily like.”