Producing

The Outer Darkness

Produced, Edited and Directed by: Anthony Melton & Ben Franklin

The Outer Darkness is a chilling pilot for an anthology series from the creators at Bloody Cuts. Set in the eerie town of Lynnsmouth, it follows Father Jonathan Crowe as he gathers a small group each Friday night to share disturbing tales of strange occurrences and terrifying encounters. Blending psychological dread with supernatural unease, this first chapter invites you into a world where faith is tested, fear takes many forms, and the darkest stories are only just beginning.

Dare

Produced by: Produced, Edited and Directed by: Anthony Melton & Ben Franklin

Dare began as the benchmark film for the Bloody Cuts Horror Challenge (2013)—a sub–three-minute haunted-house nightmare made on a sub-$1000 budget, and later reclassified as an official Bloody Cuts episode as the team pushed toward 13 “short slices of terror.” On the outskirts of Lynnsmouth, three teens trespass onto a crumbling lakeside property and bully Amy into the ultimate test: reach the attic and count to 100—one second for every year since the owners died. If she makes it, the legend promises she’ll see a ghost… but Amy never believed in ghosts.

Don't Go Down to Wildor

Produced, Edited and Directed by: Anthony Melton & Ben Franklin

Don’t Go Down to Wildor follows Chuck as he sets out to find his missing brother at an old abandoned house on Wildor Lane. Instead of answers, he discovers an impossible doorway that opens into a nightmarish alternate reality—where the darkness doesn’t just hide secrets, it devours them. Tense, eerie, and steeped in dread, this Bloody Cuts short delivers a punch of atmospheric horror that’s gone beyond the web, also appearing as part of the Bite Size Halloween collection on Hulu.

The Nest

Produced, Edited and Directed by: Anthony Melton & Ben Franklin

The Nest is a terrifying found-footage horror short from Bloody Cuts, following Lilly as she sneaks a look into her brother’s secret relationship… only to uncover something far darker than infidelity. Originally released in a vertical format for Snapchat’s mobile audience, the episode was crafted by Ben Franklin and Anthony Melton and later expanded into a Director’s Cut with new visuals and sound design. Blending immersive POV scares with unnerving creature effects, The Nest delivers a claustrophobic descent into dread unlike any other.

Vanilla Pod - Deaf Lugs

Directed, Produced and Edited by: Anthony Melton

My idea was simple: make it feel like a VHS tape you’d find at the back of a drawer. The band were up for it. Raw, lo-fi, DIY energy with blown-out visuals, tape grit and rough-cut chaos—capturing that “press record and see what happens” spirit.

Vanilla Pod

Formed in King’s Lynn in the mid-1990s, Vanilla Pod are a long-running UK punk band known for their fast, melodic, no-nonsense sound and relentless live energy. Blending classic skate-punk speed with sharp British grit, they built a reputation the old-fashioned way — constant touring, DIY releases, and a fiercely loyal following.

Over the years they’ve shared stages across the UK and Europe, delivering hook-driven anthems packed with humour, heart and volume. Decades in, Vanilla Pod remain exactly what they’ve always been: loud, independent and proudly punk.

Listen to Vanilla Pod on Spotify

The Outer Darkness

Directed, Produced and Edited by: Anthony Melton

A darkly sublime collaboration between Chris T-T and Gill Sandell, The Outer Darkness is a haunting piece written especially for the pilot of the same name.

As editor, my approach was to honour the atmosphere of the track — restrained, intimate and quietly unsettling. The cut leans into mood and negative space, allowing the arrangement to breathe while drawing out the emotional undercurrent at the heart of the song. Every transition is shaped to serve the tension between light and shadow that defines both the music and the story world it inhabits.

Credits

“THE OUTER DARKNESS”
Music and lyrics by Chris T-T
Arrangement by Gill Sandell
© Copyright Control 2015
Performed by Gill Sandell & Chris T-T
Sound recording copyright owned by Rowan Tree Records
Used by permission. All rights reserved. All wrongs reversed.

Escape Zero

Directed, Produced and Edited by: Anthony Melton & Ben Franklin

Escape Zero was developed by Ben and I as a hands-on project for students at the National Film and Television School (NFTS), designed to challenge and showcase both their practical and digital filmmaking skills as part of their course. We brought the script to the students as a contained, effects-driven sci-fi horror scenario—following Dante and Emmanuel as an engine core failure unleashes a dangerous alien within a quarantine facility. Combining creature effects, production design, and post-production workflows, the film served as a collaborative testing ground, pushing students to bring ambitious genre storytelling to life under real production conditions.

The Machine Stopped Working

Directed, Produced and Edited by: Anthony Melton & Ben Franklin

The Machine Stopped Working is a high-energy sci-fi action short from Bloody Cuts, set in a far-flung future where a crumbling band of survivors cling to the memory of a lost civilisation. On a ravaged world, two scavengers hold onto a corroding faith and hatch a desperate plan to free everyone from this living hell—but when their beliefs are met with fierce, extraterrestrial resistance, survival becomes a brutal fight. Directed, produced and edited by Anthony Melton and Ben Franklin and written by Joel Morgan, this remastered version includes an extra 90 seconds of brand-new material and showcases practical effects, intense world-building and a pulse-quickening battle for destiny.