Hello, my name is Samuel Ashkenazy, the founder of Scare Works. Since I was a child, I was a writer. I completed my first novel in second grade. As time went on, I became more and more fascinated with movies and their creation. By middle school I was interning at a local commercial production company. I stood in for actors, acted as script supervisor, production assistant, set designer, and a myriad of other roles before their doors closed in January of 2020. 

In my first year of college at Suffolk County Community College I formed a team of the most talented students I could find and self-produced my first short film “Fear.” Despite a warm reception, I was unable to send “Fear” to festivals due to family financial difficulties. Those same obstacles forced me to step away from college and re-group. 

The pandemic reignited my love for storytelling. I wrote an entire season for a “Halloween” spin-off television show and a feature length screenplay named “Passion Fruit.” Despite months of effort, unable to get “Halloween: Sanitarium” in the right hands, “Passion Fruit” became the driving force of my life. 

Once out in competition, “Passion Fruit” won at the Airflix Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Awards, New York International Film Awards, Multi-Dimension Independent Film Festival, and was a finalist at Cineplay. Reconnecting with Alessandro Imperiale from “Fear,” we worked to create a prequel short film to “Passion Fruit” entitled “Nick's Story” which we could show potential producers what the feature length script would offer. We premiered “Nick's Story” to a full crowd at the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington on June 1st, we attracted the attention of multiple producers in the area only to be quickly foiled by the Hollywood strikes. 

During the strikes, some of the comments aimed at Hollywood writers scared me. They were mean spirited and angry, I wanted to change the tone. My attempt at doing that was to create “The Works,” a podcast to highlight independent artists working incredibly hard to make their work seen. In conjunction with my position at The Long Islander Newspaper, I have hosted interviews with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Abel, film historian Foster Hirsch, and “The Sopranos'' star Vincent Pastore. 

In December of 2023, I finalized the paperwork making Scare Works an official company. The winter has been long and full of hard work preparing a slate of content for our growing fan base. 2024 is going to be an exciting year for Scare Works. We are currently in pre-production on our first official short. Sign up for our newsletter and continue to check back on our social media for updates on ways to get involved.