The Women Who Built Ravenmocker's Monster — Then Became It

Principal photography has wrapped on "Ravenmocker," Screamify's 20-episode Micro Horror(tm) series, and the production has moved into post. No release date has been set. But the behind-the-scenes footage Screamify shared from set tells its own story first — one where the line between the women who built the monster and the women who played it barely exists.

"Ravenmocker" is shot vertically, roughly two minutes an episode, every one of them ending on a cliffhanger. The story splits its time between 1971, when a carload of teenagers breaks down on a rural Tennessee backroad and wanders into the hunting ground of the Ravenmocker — the heart-stealing witch of Cherokee folklore — and the 1860s, where a Civil War love story that ended in blood is what bound her to the land in the first place. It's written by John White and directed by Gabe McCauley, produced by Soul Feather Studios, the two-time National Daytime Emmy-winning Nashville company behind PBS's "Reconnecting Roots" (two 2024 Daytime Emmys, including Outstanding Writing Team), with Joel McAfee producing. Laryssa Goodlad executive produces for Screamify and Oh Gosh Yeah Entertainment, LLC; Screamify Originals developed it.

None of that credits list tells you what it actually looked like on the ground, though. What it looked like was Jazlyn Adams, who does special-effects makeup on the show and also plays one of the Raven Mockers, building the exact prop her own castmates would later have to eat on camera. "I sculpted it, molded it, cast it in silicone," she said of the show's practical heart. "The end goal is to core it out so it'll beat. And bleed." Then she put the makeup on herself, stepped in front of the camera, and became one of the creatures that needs it: "I'm one of the Raven Mockers. I have to eat the heart to stay alive."

Lauren Braddock plays the Raven Mocker herself, the witch the whole show is built around. Asked about the transformation, she offered exactly one line, delivered like she already knew it was the punchline: "I don't always look like this, folks."

And then there's Darby Cappillino, who plays Grace and a young Antoinette across the show's two timelines, and who spent the production's final night performing "Lorena" — an 1857 Civil War-era ballad — on camera, after three straight days of screaming for the camera. "I've been screaming the past three days, so my voice is a little raspy. Hopefully I can get all the notes," she said. Of wrapping, she added: "It's the last day of filming, so I'm already emotional. It might take all night. But it's like we're having a big old sleepover."

Director Gabe McCauley was sweating through the same conditions right alongside the cast — literally, in three pounds of Civil War wool in what he clocked as 95-degree heat. Director of photography Chris Haggerty put a name to the pressure everyone on set was working under: "The ask of crews is to still bring quality, but in half the time and half the budget. That's the reality the industry is in right now." Under those conditions, a show doesn't get finished by anyone standing on ceremony about job titles. It gets finished by the effects artist eating her own creation, and the actor singing a 160-year-old song on a wrecked voice because it's the last night and everyone's staying anyway.