Kevin Stevens
Producer
Kevin Stevens is a Wellington producer who began by working with special makeup effects and visual effects. He ran sales companies before working with director Jason Stutter on a run of quirky Careful with that... short films. Stevens was a producer on Careful with that Crossbow and feature comedy Edwin: My Life as a Koont, which he also co-wrote. In 2015 the pair collaborated on haunted house tale The Dead Room.
My first visual effect on my first film was stabbing a screwdriver through a vampire’s forehead — how could I not fall in love with filmmaking? Twenty years later I am working behind the scenes rather than crouched under the lens with syringes and tubes filled with stage blood. But I still love making films. Kevin Stevens
The Dead Room
Filmmaking team Jason Stutter and Kevin Stevens plunge back into the paranormal with this feature, which sees three investigators arriving at a rundown farmhouse, to discover just how haunted it really is. The ghost hunters are played by screen veteran Jeffrey Thomas (Mercy Peak), Jed Brophy (The Hobbit) and Laura Petersen (Shopping). The Dead Room’s Halloween release saw a perfect storm of publicity, from a contest involving a special app which allowed contestants to photograph ghosts, to a video blogger who claimed to have tracked down the house where the movie was filmed.
Edwin: My Life as a Koont
Edwin Rouper has a habit of annoying people within seconds of meeting them. Cursed with 'Koontz-syndrome', a neurological condition in which temper and confidence dominate, he travels to Hollywood, trying to assemble a team of stars to raise awareness for the Koontz cause. Jason Stutter’s mock-documentary gleefully skirts the borderland between the koontz 'condition', and an expletive with a very similiar sound. Acting newbie Bryce Campbell scored an LA comedy award as Edwin; Raybon Kan, Jeremy Corbett and scribe Nick Ward all have cameos as sundry wackos.
Careful with that Crossbow
Diagnosis: Death
Featuring a rare star turn by stand-up comedian Raybon Kan (who also co-wrote the script), Diagnosis: Death is a genre-stretching tale of oddball nurses, haunted hospitals and bedside romance. Kan plays a cynical teacher sharing a hospital ward with a young student (Jessica Grace Smith), after both are diagnosed with cancer. Trapped in the ward during an experimental drug trial, the duo investigate a strange case of haunting. Shot specifically for DVD, Jason Stutter's second feature also features cameos by Conchords Jemaine Clement, Bret McKenzie, and Rhys Darby.
Careful with that Power Tool
Careful with that Axe
This is the first installment in director Jason Stutter’s trilogy of short cautionary tales. The ingredients are simple: playful kid, dangerous tool. The recipe for a comic screen gem? Mix them up. Here a son, left alone after watching his Dad chop wood, has a go at figuring out how a heavy axe works ... in bare feet. With the economy of a Buster Keaton set-up, Careful’s razor sharp sense of squeamish anticipation saw it become a festival success. It was apparently inspired by listening to Pink Floyd song ‘Careful with that axe, Eugene’ on a road-trip.
Fizz
“In the dark and scary depths of a subway, one young man finds fear has a new name: FIZZ.” Jemaine Clement (pre-Flight of the Conchords fame) is the young man who faces up to a sentient soda machine in this short from Jason Stutter. Made for $2000 and filmed over two wintry Wellington nights, Fizz screened at festivals including Locarno, New York, and Clermont-Ferrand. Stutter would successfully repeat the combo of dark wit and dangerous appliance in his Careful with that … series; Clement starred in Stutter’s debut feature Tongan Ninja (2002).