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EDMONTON — To his filmmaking buddies he was known as Twitch.

When a friend recalled that nickname while on the witness stand last week, Mark Twitchell couldn't help but smile.

But to Crown prosecutors Twitch is simply the accused -- a man trapped at the intersection of fantasy and reality who gruesomely dismembered an innocent man to further a secret fantasy of becoming a serial killer.

The first-degree murder trial in Court of Queen's Bench, entering its third week Monday, has been a sensational mix of the mundane and the macabre, beginning and ending with Twitchell.

Court has heard the 31-year-old had big dreams of telling powerful stories on towering silver screens to legions of adoring fans.

He was born in Edmonton on July 4, 1979. He went to film school and admitted in a police interview that movies were his life.

"I love it, love filmmaking," he told Det. Mike Tabler. "From the first day that I stepped on a set in August of '06 was when I knew.

"I was just like, 'There's no going back."'

Twitchell also loved comics.

He had Spiderman stickers on his laptop. He won Halloween prizes for his Transformers Bumblebee costume.

When he was arrested he had been busy making an Iron Man costume in his parents' basement.

He loved "Star Wars."

His vanity licence plate was DRK JEDI. He had a "Star Wars" tattoo on his right bicep. His email address was Kit Fisto, a Jedi warrior. Days before talking to police he was busy selling a Darth Vader codpiece online.

His first major film project was a loving tribute to "Star Wars" shot on green screens with friends at a local college. It was called "Star Wars: Secrets of the Rebellion."

The shooting was hectic, balancing the schedules of actors and crew.

Home life, too, was busy.

By 2008, he was married for the second time, to a woman named Jess. They had an eight-month-old daughter, a house in the suburbs and a mortgage. She was on maternity leave. He had been forced to file for bankruptcy once and was battling to get his credit rating re-established.

While making "Star Wars" he had had a string of dead-end sales jobs, one at a paper company, another selling alarms and security systems.

But through those jobs he met fellow cinephiles and became the alpha dog for an entourage who bought into his big-screen dream. They helped him pro bono on "Star Wars," building sets and fixing props.

When Twitchell began formulating his next project in 2008 -- a buddy comedy about film extras called "Day Players" -- they were along for the ride.

This was going to be the big time, Twitchell promised. A $3.5-million budget. Alec Baldwin, Jeff Goldlbum and Justin Timberlake were being lined up for cameos.

One friend threw his whole life savings into the project. Another put a job offer on hold, hoping that he'd be hired to work on it full time.

But by then, court has heard, dark clouds were looming for Twitch.

Court has heard evidence he'd quit his latest sales job without telling his wife and had started an affair. The financing still wasn't there for "Day Players."

It was then, prosecutors say, in the summer and fall of 2008, that Twitchell decided he and his buddies should make a short slasher movie he had written.

It was called "House of Cards," and was shot over three days in late September, some of it in a detached garage Twitchell had rented in a quiet southside neighbourhood.

The script, entered as an exhibit, is short on dramatic conflict and long on sadistic soliloquies.

In it, the man known only as "Killer" lures a philandering husband to a remote location on the promise of an online date.

Killer, wearing a hockey mask, ties the victim to a chair, demands his Internet pass codes, knifes him to death and dismembers the remains.

The Crown says a week after "House of Cards" was shot, Twitchell lured a stranger to the garage to do him harm in the same fashion.

That man, prosecutors say, fought back and escaped, but didn't go to police.

A week later, they say, Johnny Altinger was lured to the garage and killed, and that Twitchell recounted it all in gory detail in a diary he termed "my progression into becoming a serial killer." The defence is expected to argue the diary is a work of fiction.

The Crown has entered into evidence Twitchell's books and DVDs about Dexter Morgan, a fictional TV character who works as a Miami police blood spatter expert but moonlights as a vigilante serial killer.

Court has seen that when Twitchell was found in possession of Altinger's car days after the disappearance, Det. William Clark brought him in for questioning.

Twitchell denied knowing Altinger.

On a video of the interrogation played in court last week, Clark pushes Twitchell to fess up, to unburden himself.

Twitchell replies he's seen this kind of good cop, bad cop routine before.

"You watch too much TV," chides Clark.

"This is real-life stuff. You gotta get away from the movies."