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Your new movie Haunts -
in a few words, what is it about?
It's
about how men process and/or deny their attitudes towards and abuse of women,
also how people's paths in lives can be dictated by things they've done and
not dealt with.
What were your sources of inspiration when writing
Haunts? Haunts
is a bit of a response to the #MeToo movement and its backlash - I felt
that after an initial period of virtue signalling, a lot of men went right
back to behaving really badly towards women, even just with underlying
language. Weinstein had already got me thinking about how sometimes the
worst predators and sociopaths hide in plain sight, so I wanted to explore
how corrupt seemingly respectable people can be, and also how people with
drug problems are often trying to escape things that have happened to them
or with them in the past. What
can you tell us about Haunts'
approach to horror? My first few shorts were more explicitly 'horror' with
special effects, blood, moody lighting etc. With everything that's being
exposed in the world today, I wanted to do a stark drama in broad daylight
about how the most normal looking - even admirable - people can sometimes
be the most dangerous. I also didn't have money or time to do visual
horror for this project, and wanted to challenge myself to tackle more
dialogue (only 1 of my first 3 shorts had dialogue)!
You just have to talk about the very
impressive locations in Haunts
for a bit, and what was it like filming there?
We shot in a single day in my
hometown Dunoon, which is an hour down the coast from Glasgow - it's great
because it is easy to film without being hassled, and many locations
haven't been used before. I am familiar with all these areas from growing
up there. However we had a car rally going on the same day in the same
area, so there was constant engine revving noise and people all over the
trails! It should have been quite relaxed but ended up very stressful, as
always. What can
you tell us about your overall directorial approach to your story at hand?
This is the most collaborative project I've produced so far - my
cameraman Sean doesn't have much time to work on smaller projects, but he
realized he was going to have a free day coming up in the next month so we
basically sat down and tried to thrash out an idea that could be topical
and achievable with less than a month's prep and only a day to shoot. We
rehearsed with the actors to make their relationship more natural, and I
trusted them to roll with their characters, which they did really well!
Sean also directed them a lot because we were so pushed for time, and he had
a good idea of what was working with the camera movement and angles he
wanted to get. Do
talk about Haunts' cast,
and why exactly these people?
Stephen Kerr was meant to be the
second hoodlum in my first short Nightlife, but the lead hoodlum actor
cancelled on the day and Stephen stepped up - he impressed me so much and
has such an intense presence that I wrote my 2nd short Son with him in
mind, in order to delve more deeply into that character. Nightlife was
his first acting role too, he's a natural! When it screened locally, I
noticed another short called Noose, which was similarly gritty and dark
although with a much more comedic edge, and I had to introduce myself to
its star/writer/director, Bobby Bulloch. We both felt a little at odds with
the filmmaking community, coming from a working class background and
struggling to relate to many of the topics we found people were tackling.
We bonded over cinema and planned to work together, which led to my
90-second short Black Friday. Having had great experiences working with
both actors, I really wanted to see what would happen putting them
together as they are both intense and charismatic in different ways - I
think they bounce off each other really well! Bobby expanded Noose into
a crazy feature film, and Stephen has now been in lots of great projects,
shorts and features!
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A few words about the
shoot as such, and the on-set atmosphere?
We shot in
mid-June, having had to move the shoot forward a week at the last minute
due to camera department scheduling issues. There was a slightly smaller
crew than previously due to the simpler set-up - no steadicam or SFX! -
and we had all worked together before so felt comfortable and confident.
Everyone left from Glasgow at around 6AM - getting to Dunoon involved an
hour drive, then a ferry, then a drive to location. The night before we
were due to shoot, I realized that neither Bobby nor Stephen had a car
anymore - I had relied on them getting to set themselves! So I had to buy
a 2nd-hand car there and then, it all worked out nicely though and we got
started on schedule and in good spirits, since the weather was great and I
bought everyone breakfast rolls (lol). However, as soon as we got to the
reservoir - it's called The Bishop's Glen - problems presented themselves
- the car rally was a lot closer and louder than we expected, lots of takes
seemed unusable due to the background noise, and there were crowds of
people walking around all over the place. We were going for long
dialogue-heavy shots so timing was key! We were worried about sunburn but
as soon as we got into the shade the midges - Scottish mosquitoes -
descended and ate everyone alive, which was worse! The whole crew were
soldiers and didn't complain (as much as me anyway), but as the day went
on we got increasingly behind schedule so the light for the last few
scenes wasn't quite what we had hoped for and we had to rush the last big
dialogue scene sadly before it got too dark. Filming chronologically for
once really helped though - we did this on Black Friday mostly for
convenience, here it meant we could build the intensity naturally. By the
end nerves were definitely frayed which led among other things to Bobby
being more physical in places than we anticipated, but it worked on camera,
haha, and we all had a beer on the 9 o'clock ferry home!
The
$64-question of course, where can Haunts
be seen? We had a small festival and local screening run last year; with
everyone now being stuck indoors I thought I might as well make it public
- my preferred platform is Vimeo (slightly better quality image)
vimeo.com/313914646, but
YouTube might be handier, it's in a playlist with my other shorts at
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnMLi7zAsJF1y_rnLjNDXsNcpcDiaXPIe Anything you can tell us about audience and
critical reception of Haunts?
It's
hard to gauge but this is the most straightforward and least ambiguous of
my shorts so far, so I think people have been able to relate to it more,
and the scenery has helped win it attention and praise. People have been
impressed by Bobby and Stephen's acting and Sean's camerawork, so all
things considered I'm happy as it was all put together within a month! It
feels like a natural progression from my other shorts, people seem to find
it a little more mature.
Any
future projects you'd like to share? I have a few shorts I would like to
shoot before tackling a feature, the next project is going to be about
caring for a family member with dementia - this is something I am doing
just now for my mother, so I want to depict how frustrating and difficult
it can be for both people involved, while incorporating some horror
tropes. What got you into
filmmaking in the first place, and did you receive any formal training on
the subject? Teaching English in high school had me teaching
films as texts, which along with special features on DVDs developed some
understanding for the process of film-making, then going to film festivals
- Frightfest in particular - encouraged me to give it a go, having seen
other patrons build up to making their own successful projects (I met Can
Evrenol at my first Frightfest in 2009, then a few years later he was
there showing 'Baskin' - I also got my first proper experience with fellow
Frightfester Liam Regan on the set of his first film 'My Bloody Banjo' in
2014). I never had any formal training and would like to learn more about
using cameras but I also think it's good to think outside the box and let
the technical team be fully in charge of their departments - too many
cooks spoil the broth, and I'm a terrible cook! What can you tell us about your filmwork
prior to Haunts?
I submitted a 30-second ident to Frightfest for their anti-phone advert
competition in 2014 which was accepted and played to a good response
between films, then working on Liam Regan's film was a great crash-course in
on-set life. I ended up production manager on that film, which meant
getting lots of experience in different departments. For my first short Nightlife
I definitely tried to cram too much in - we shot for 5 days,
using lots of different locations and complicated effects - it ended up 18
minutes long, which is too much for most festivals let alone audiences! I
was still happy with the end result, it
was a tribute to films like Martin, so the griminess was mostly
deliberate! Son was an attempt to get more serious and dramatic, I
was still mostly using non-actor friends but having Stephen in the lead
really boosted the project, and this was the first time I worked with
Sean, who I have alot in common with in terms of taste and the gritty but
polished style we look for. Black Friday was just meant to be a bit of
fun - it was conceived 2 weeks before shooting, shot in a day and edited
overnight! I was really happy with how it turned out though, which
encouraged me to try more off-the-cuff and collaborative projects, which
led to Haunts.
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One
can't but notice most of your films are of the horror variety - pure
coincidence, or is that a genre at all dear to you, and why (not)? My
father had me watching inappropriately intense horror from the time I was
a toddler so it's all I know! I love how the genre can tackle real-life
horror in a cathartic way - everything I write about is either taken from
my own or a friend/family member's life experience and built from there.
For example, my father died in 2015 and I was badly mugged and beaten in
2016 - it's natural to want to process these experiences. I want to make
films that combine the realism and social commentary of Ken Loach and
modern films like Snowtown with the sort of subtext, atmosphere and
interesting characters that George Romero specializes in. How
would you describe yourself as a director? Hopefully
empathetic, considerate and fun! Filmmakers
who inspire you? George Romero, Tobe Hooper, Ken Loach, Kim Ki-Duk,
Harmony Korine, John Waters. Your favourite movies? These are the ones I have probably watched the most:
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the original is my fave film of all time!),
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Polyester, You Can Count On
Me, The
Straight Story, Alien,
The Thing, Creepshow,
Gummo, Snowtown, Martyrs ... too many. ...
and of course, films you really deplore? Hmm, I don't like overly
pretentious arthouse cinema - stuff like Lars Von Trier, Nicolas Winding
Refn, some of their films are OK or have scenes I can enjoy, but overall I
find them deeply annoying. I also struggle to get into Dario Argento - I
like individual scenes but his films bore and annoy me, they are too
inconsistent. I much prefer Mario Bava [Mario
Bava bio - click here], Lucio Fulci [Lucio
Fulci bio - click here], even Deodato [Ruggero
Deodato bio - click here] etc have
more interesting things going on than just style.
Your/your
movie's website, Facebook, whatever else?
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I have just been using the page
for Nightlife to share my other work - I will get something better in
place for my next short:
https://www.facebook.com/Nightlife2016horrorshort/ Anything else
you're dying to mention and I have merely forgotten to ask?
I
am also a DJ and hope to be able to produce my own soundtracks and tunes
eventually - you can check my mixes here
https://soundcloud.com/dave-nullvoid Thanks
for the interview!
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