The "B" Movie Celebration 2009

The film was created when Irvine was a senior at Ohio University. Inspired during a 2004 Florida camping trip when he discovered several raccoons seeming to work in a coordinated effort scavenging his campsite, [8] [9] Irvine began to research "Man vs Nature" movies and raccoons in particular, learning that rabid raccoons would act in non-typical ways to attack other animals and children, and that they have stomach bacteria that could infect the brains of humans who eat them. [8] While studying abroad in London, he developed the script that became the film. [9] With the micro-budget of $5000, the film was shot in August 2005 in the Athens and Columbus areas of Ohio. [8] Most cast and crew members have Ohio connections and producer Colin Scianamblo grew up with Irvine in Bexley. [8] [11] Tom Lyons, who played the role of The Mayor and who works at the OhioHealth media center spoke of Irvine and Scianmblo, "They’re both Bexley High School kids who interned for me about five or six years ago. [8] The film also included members of the Ohio University comedy troupe "the Wrong Man group", [6] [8] and due to budget constraints, most cast were forced to play multiple roles. [6] The commercial release of the film [12] marked it as the first feature film to ever be successfully completed by Ohio University communications undergraduate students. [5] The film has been remarked upon as being the first known feature in cinema history to star an assortment of real, dead, frozen animals, rather than live, trained, stuffed, animitronic, or puppet raccoons. The most important "effect" for the film was going to be the raccoons themselves, and Irvine consulted with experts at Ohio State University as he had initially planned on having raccoons prepared by a taxidemist. He was disappointed when he learned that it could cost hundreds of dollars just to have a single animal prepared, but the expert advised him of the usefullness of using frozen animals that could then be thawed, postioned, frozen, and thawed and then frozen for repeated repositionings, so production used seven legally donated frozen raccoons in this manner to create the killer coons.