Ghosts of long-dead soldiers, mysterious forest creatures and UFOs descending on the Southwestern deserts are some of the usual suspects found in horror films, but for two Lancaster-based documentary filmmakers those subjects are more than just stock characters for scary movies.
For Tyler Transue and Chris Ruppert — two 37-year-old Hempfield High School alumni who, decades after graduating, connected over a shared love of movie-making — focusing on the paranormal is a way of exploring the unknown and sharing different points of view.
Since starting their digital video production company Doc Side Media in August 2021, Transue and Ruppert have released four paranormal-themed documentaries including “The Ghosts of Gettysburg,” “Secrets of the Sasquatch” and their most recent film “In Plain Sight: The Intelligence Community and UFOs” and are in production on a fifth.
“In Plain Sight: The Intelligence Community and UFOs” — an 81-minute documentary featuring interviews with former military and CIA intelligence officers and other experts about what they know and can disclose on the subject of UFOs — was released earlier this month and is available to download and stream on Apple TV, Prime Video and other platforms.
Keeping an open mind
Transue and Ruppert aren’t out to prove, or even necessarily believe in, the existence of extraterrestrials or other paranormal phenomena. That’s not really the point, they say.
“We’re not filmmakers who are pushing our specific ideas. We’re trying to let these people speak for themselves,” Ruppert says. “I’m a very skeptical person. I think it’s pretty easy to spot when you feel like somebody’s not being honest, but all of these people (interviewed for the films), from my perspective, appear to be 100% honest and believe what they’re saying. We’re just trying to give them the respect of getting their stories out and hopefully in an interesting and compelling way.”
The key, the filmmakers agree, to making a good paranormal documentary is to keep an open mind. And, for Ruppert, maintaining an open attitude to other viewpoints came through a practice that’s often associated with the paranormal: hypnosis.
“My therapist asked me if I wanted to do hypnosis and I was like ‘I’ve seen movies, this is ridiculous,’ ” Ruppert says. “Eventually she convinced me to do it and it turned out to be more like a guided meditation. It was highly effective. That was one of the turning points for me to try to keep more of an open mind.
“We have all these preconceived notions we bring to things, but I don’t know everything and haven’t experienced everything that everybody else,” Ruppert says. “I think it would do everyone better if they kept an open mind. I’m not saying believe everything but at least hear people out. That’s the mindset I’ve had going through all these documentaries.”
Tyler Transue, one half of the Doc Side Media team, on location.
Black knights to spooky nights
Despite having grown up down the street from each other and occasionally played in the same backyard football games, as well as attending Hempfield High School together, the Class of 2003 graduates didn’t really know each other in school, they say.
“Chris and I both are independent filmmakers,” Transue says. “Neither of us, as far as I know, were in AV Club in high school.”
Nearly 20 years after graduating, the two connected through social media over a shared enthusiasm for movie-making.
About six years ago, Transue says, on a whim he picked up his son’s toy dinosaur and shot a trailer for a fictitious film called “The Dino Slayer” and posted it to social media. That little trailer led to a fascination with all things film and soon Transue was investing in cameras, drones and other movie-making equipment.
“I fell in love with filmmaking,” Transue says. “It’s kind of that 10,000 hours rule. I just kept applying myself and doing it more and more and gradually got better.”
Ruppert has put in his hours too. He says he has been making movies with his friends since he was a student at Hempfield and recently wrapped up principal photography on an independent sci-fi horror feature film he wrote and directed separate from Doc Side Media
In August 2021, Ruppert reached out to Transue and pitched the idea of making paranormal documentaries because the subject is always popular and the films would be interesting to make.
“I was like, ‘I’d absolutely I’d love to,’ ” Transue says. “That was the initial push to get Doc Side Media going.”
Dynamic duo
In a little more than a year, the prolific production team of Transue and Ruppert has already created a significant body of work with Doc Side Media. The two use their respective skill sets to maximize their output. Ruppert, a freelance videographer and graphic designer, handles the editing and promotional design and Transue, a former industrial sales rep, handles much of the interviewing on on-location shooting.
For documentaries, interviews are a necessity. Finding and securing authoritative and interesting sources willing to speak on camera is always a challenge, but that’s where Transue puts his salesman skills to work.
“I’m just a curious person and I’ve always been outgoing,” Transue says. “It’s a numbers game; if you ask enough people, somebody will say yes. So there’s really no harm in reaching out to people and trying.”
When Transue heard about a UFO-related press conference being conducted at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., by a woman named Angelia Schultz, also known as Anjali, he decided to attend it and record it with Anjali’s permission. That material, along with other interviews including one with Clifford Mahooty, a Zuni elder who had previously appeared on the series “Ancient Aliens,” led to what became “Conscious Contact: Full Disclosure” (2022).
For Doc Side Media’s most recent film “In Plain Sight: The Intelligence Community and UFOs,” Transue once again went into hustle mode and flew out to Albuquerque, New Mexico, on a Friday night; then drove through the night to Roswell, New Mexico, and shot B-roll footage with a drone camera; and back to Albuquerque to conduct and an early afternoon interview with a former Air Force counterintelligence officer on Saturday; and returned to Lancaster right after the interview.
The duo’s UFO content is coming at a time when governments around the world and organizations such as NASA are forming committees to explore UFO-related phenomena.
“We hope that we can destigmatize these types of topics so that more people might be comfortable sharing them,” Transue says.
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