by SARAH ROWLAND

Ugo N'gan'ga Gitau is a local DJ who spins at the Parking Lounge every Saturday and his partner Ben Read is a freelance choreographer. Together they are Klutz Media and Vanity Ville Massacre is their first short film. The decision to make this Fame-meets-Freddy slasher was a way of satisfying their conflicting agendas: Read was dead set on making a music video, whereas Gitau was more interested in producing a campy horror. So they compromised on a 30-minute gore flick that incorporates dance numbers in between bloody slayings.

Once that was settled, the two-man-crew cranked out an over-the-top script in a matter of weeks. Inspired and disgusted by the extreme make-over TV shows, the story revolves around four superficial bitches living in a fictional American city called Vanity Ville, where Botox is king and spirituality is a sin.

"It's utterly shocking that it's okay to go do extreme body modifications," says Gitau. "The media is pushing it so much that getting plastic surgery is just like going to the dentist. All you need is a general anaesthetic and you get cut up and pumped up with silicone here and there. Our movie is kind of like a reflective explosion of that craziness."

With virtually zero filmmaking experience between them, borrowed equipment and maxed-out credit cards, they are currently putting the final touches on the most ridiculous film they can make.

"I don't think we could pull off a serious movie," says Gitau. "So it's shot very much like a reality show spoof: very exaggerated, very choppy, very fast-paced and very much like what you see on TV. But it's still fiction - the camera is not part of the story."

Not intentionally anyway. In one particular bathroom scene, Read didn't take into consideration the mirror reflections. The result is a beeping red light in the background. Unfortunately, the actress and the location are no longer available for a re-shoot.

"It's so dumb," says Read. "We obviously don't know what we're doing 'cuz it's our first movie. But it doesn't really matter because the whole film is so ghetto. Obviously there's going to be a bunch of continuity problems."

In fact, one scene they forgot to shoot all together. "We were stressed out because it was so cold and we left out the part where one of the girls is running for her life and stops to answer her cell," says Read. "We thought it would be really funny if someone who is about to be killed was more concerned about missing a call than getting slaughtered."

Along with blotted out scenes and ruined shots, Read admits that the race to meet their self-imposed May deadline (in time to submit it to the Fantasia Festival), has resulted in some tense moments on the set.

"We've definitely been through some crazy last-minute stressful situations, but I think we're closer because of it," says Read, who has been friends with Gitau for five years. "We both love this film so much and we want it to be good, because even though we're making a bad movie, we still want it to be the best bad movie ever made."