Rich Ragsdale is a highly acclaimed Director, Composer, Editor, Writer, Cinematographer and Producer that has been making feature film, shorts, and music videos since the early 2000’s. His brother Kevin Ragsdale has been producing feature films, shorts, and documentaries also since the early 2000’s. In 2005 Kevin produced the film THE CURSE OF EL CHARRO, which was directed by Rich. The film went on to win numerous awards and was acquired by Paramount and Showtime. Upon their success as a team, it was clear that they could make great films together and in 2006 Rich and Kevin started up KNR Productions. Since then, KNR Productions has built up a vast and successful portfolio consisting of feature films, shorts, music videos, commercials/promos, and documentaries, the majority of which are listed on their website KNR-Productions.
GHOST HOUSE was directed by Rich and the story was created by Rich and Kevin. The screenplay was written by Kevin O’Sullivan and Jason Chase Tyrrell and the film stars Scout Taylor-Comptom, James Landry Hebert, and Mark Boone Junior. Production was scheduled to start in Thailand, however a setback put filming on hold. Kevin immediately reached out to Daemon Hillin and tells how the number one production company in Thailand, Benetone Films came on board to assist with GHOST HOUSE.
“I was introduced to Daemon Hillin a few years ago as the guy to see for shooting projects in Thailand.” Devin shares. “I even approached him with Ghost House in it’s infancy in late 2012 or early 2013, but at the time he was just leaving to shoot another horror movie over in Thailand. Fast forward to the second half of 2014, Rich and I had the movie set up in Bangkok and were a couple of months away from shooting the project when it stalled out and looked like it would be delayed for possibly another year. I didn’t want to lose the momentum we had on the project, so I reached out to Daemon again and within 24 hours he had us on Skype with his Benetone partners, Kulthep and RachvinNarula (also brothers). The Benetone trio kickstarted the Ghost House engine and we had Rich on a plane within a couple of weeks to start location scouting. It blew my mind. We grabbed our key talent (above and below the line), our camera package, got our shots and headed out in January of 2015. Daemon walked us through the process here in LA, while his partners set everything up half way across the globe. By February we had an impressive mobile team and the camera was rolling. I can’t wait for everybody to see the result.”
Benetone partners assisted KNR through the visa process and helped them cut through a lot of the red tape involved with bringing a foreign film to Thailand. With a tight schedule and no room for error, KNR and Benetone made it through filming and the overall experience was amazing as Kevin shares, “Making a movie in Thailand was amazing. It was a real adventure for us. When shooting a low budget horror film (or any film for that matter), the conventional wisdom is to confine production to one or two locations. We ignored that and decided to fly halfway around the world and shoot all over Thailand, not only in and around Bangkok, but also up north in the remote jungle areas as well. It was a really ambitious endeavor, and we couldn’t have pulled it off without our Thai crew. They were very skilled, hard working and dedicated to the production. My production designer surprised me every day, and my Thai A.D. was the best I have ever worked with. We had a company move nearly every day, and as a result the shoot was taxing on everyone, but the crew really made it a joy. And of course, the food was fantastic.”
GHOST HOUSE is currently in its final post production stages and is due out in 2017. Go to KNR-Productions.com and visit their Facebook pages to keep updated. Facebook/ghosthousemovie and Facebook/knrproductions.
