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Courtesy of Big N Funky Productions Tracy Yaste (Annie) struggles while Luke Walker (Mike) looks on. Vinnie Vineyard, the co-director and cinematographer, films the scene for his third movie, Camp Smokey, for Big N Funky Productions.
Pigeon Forge, Tenn. – It’s likely a good thing the Fox Network fired Vinnie Vineyard.
“We had an opportunity to make a wrestling a show for Fox, but they fired us after six months,” he said with a laugh. “We made crazy stuff, avant garde, and let’s just say they fired us.”
Had Fox not had the foresight to remove the show from their programing, Vineyard may not have expanded his humor and craft by creating Big N Funky Productions. And multiple awards, including Top 10 Horror Movies on Amazon Prime, would not be sitting on his mantle.
At heart, Vineyard is a story collector. It was his search for legend and lore that drew him from Baltimore down to the Appalachian Mountains, where he settled in Pigeon Forge.
“There is an insane and strange and weird history in the area, and nobody is exposed to it,” he said. “If it wasn’t for Quentin Tarantino, nobody would know anything about this area but the Dolly Parton Christmas show.”
He founded his company, Big N Funky Productions, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I was involved with the crappy wrestling television show for Fox and paranormal for goofy stations, but I always wanted to do a movie,” Vineyard said. “During COVID, Hollywood was out of business and a lot of platforms were starving for content.”
And Vineyard knew just how to feed them.
“I started a six-part film series called the Smokey Mountain Chronicles. It was harder than I thought,” he said. “This is the only project in my life that I almost gave up on.”
But once his troupe, a gang of misfit toys he calls “a motley crew of knuckleheads,” joined forces, the magic of storytelling held them together.
Vineyard is naturally drawn to the horror genre for, among other reasons, the friendly budget.
“You can’t really make your own version of Star Wars cheap,” he said with a smile. But Vineyard’s ideas surrounding horror were fresh and original.
“The films focus on likable characters in a non-horror setting,” he added. “If you fall in love with the characters, you care when something bad happens.”
As the captain of his enterprise, he directs his films under a dialogue, plot and relational trident. And, yes, the antagonist is creepy and scary and sometimes even cruel, but Vineyard adds a robust sprinkling of comedy throughout each of his films.
His formula works. The Hike, the second of his six films, is a wild success on Amazon. It tells the Cherokee legend of Spearfinger, a female nemesis.
Part of the film’s triumph rests in Vineyard’s deft directorial choices, including creating a female villain who is rich with story and subtext while avoiding the hyper-sexualized tropes often found within the horror genre. The Hike’s successor, Camp Smokey, tells the story of a sole survivor after demons attacked an adolescent summer camp and is also available on Amazon.
With production for the fourth installment set to commence in spring 2023, Vineyard becomes retrospect. “The film industry is under threat,” he said. He believes the glory of filmmaking is that, “it encapsulates all art, writing, music, visual art, performance.”
However, Vineyard feels that newer forms of entertainment may overtake the slow build and mastery of filmmaking.
“Almost all art is endangered by quicker, ubiquitous forms of art,” he said, naming Tik Tok and others as examples. He fears, “America may lose the romance of going to a theatre and watching a film for an hour and half.”
As part of his effort to ensure filmmaking remains a viable craft, Vineyard encourages other Appalachian filmmakers to lean into the stories found within the Appalachian culture.
“There is a treasure trove of stories for this area; it’s full of legends, and myths,” he said. “We have one of
the best back drops in the nation. Go outside with a camera and use what God has done with his paintbrush.
“When you capture the light streaming down through the trees, it’s easy to get accolades for what’s already there.”