Your upcoming movie Restart - in a few words, what's it going
to be about?
Restart (a.k.a Singularity) is a sci-fi thriller, with only one
on-screen actor placed in a hacked car. It’s a very intense
claustrophobic story with interesting questions like how much can we trust
today’s technology and are we over-reliant on it? Can your car’s
software be hacked trapping you inside? Can your life be threatened by
your own car?
With Restart dealing with the
downsides of today's technological progress, what are your personal
thoughts about the subject? I think at the end of the day one has to accept responsibility
for what they create, and unfortunately being responsible is not
fashionable with humans. When we realize what’s happening it is usually
too late, look at climate change for example, we’ve sent people to the
Moon decades ago but greed and power still trumps common sense and the
collective good. (Other) sources of
inspiration when writing Restart? Restart follows in the footsteps of such masterpieces as
Buried
(with Ryan Reynolds) or Gravity (with Sandra Bullock). Also, being budget
conscious, we tried to use Robert Rodriguez’s method in using what we
have instead of trying to fake what we don’t. With Restart
being a science fiction movie, is that at all a genre dear to you, and
some of your genre favourites?
Me and my contributing writer (Sandor Szalma) have tried our
writing abilities in genres like comedy, biopic, documentaries as well as
sci-fi. We have made our debut within the sci-fi genre as co-authors of
the movie Cycle (directed by Zoltan Sostai, Sci-Fi London Film
Festival,
2012) -
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2251275
I personally couldn’t pick just one genre that I like, a memorable
performance or a gripping story is more important to me than the genre of
a film.
As I understand it, large
parts of Restart will be set in a car - so with these limited
locations, how do you plan to keep things interesting on a visual level?
Strictly speaking there will be more than one location but for
sure the movie will rely heavily on the actor’s performance and her
delivery of the character’s different emotional states. As for the
visuals, it’s gonna be set mainly inside a garage where there won’t be
too much light for too long and fortunately you can have lots of things
hidden in the darkness only to reveal them at opportune moments.
What
can you tell us about the intended overall look and feel of your movie? Together with the director of cinematography, Gregory Kozma, we’ve
decided that in order to visually convey the feeling of entrapment we plan
to use tight framing and flat space in the garage and car with a limited
cool color palette and low key lighting. The few outside scenes would be
rendered in a deep space composition with more colours but of course as
the story progresses - without spoiling anything - the visuals would
follow the mood in both exterior and interior scenes. Anything
you can tell us about your projected key cast yet, and why exactly these
people? We have a few candidates lined up for the main (on-screen) role and
then we have a few voice-over actors as well. The main character
will be very important, for obvious reasons, and we’re in talks with a
Hungarian actress who has won several awards and is internationally recognized (eg. ‘Shooting Star’ at
Berlin International Film Festival) to play Lara, the movie’s heroine. As far as I know, you're currently running/are
about to run a fundraiser for Restart - so do talk about your
campaign! Restart’s IndieGoGo campaign will launch in February 2019 but
we’ve already started a Facebook page where we have 300+ followers -
https://www.facebook.com/RestartFilm. This number is set to increase
after the campaign goes live and we ramp up international promotion by ads
and being even more proactive in spreading the word. We also have promotional videos and photos, eg. movie poster mock ups,
up on our Facebook page and we have a home made teaser trailer as well at
https://vimeo.com/256568041. Of course it’s not representative of how
Restart is gonna look like, far from it, but it highlights our enthusiasm
for the project.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/restart--9/coming_soon
Once the budget's in place, what's the
schedule, and any idea when and where the film might be released, however
tentatively? We hope to be shooting during the summer but of course this
depends on the crew’s (especially the actor’s) availability. We have
all the cast and crew and location ready to go so once we work out the
schedule we intend to shoot in the summer and then post production in
autumn, so Restart could be released at the end of 2019 or the
beginning of 2020. Any future projects beyond Restart? There is a documentary in development about boxing champions since we
also work on scripts that have historical themes. Also, The Interpreter has just entered post-production phase, this is a short
film shot in Ireland about the investigation of a mysterious murder
written by me and my co-author and directed by Gregory Kozma, our would-be
DOP - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9671258 What
got you into filmmaking in the first place, and did you receive any formal
training on the subject? I studied screenwriting at Analog Artist Film Academy
(Budapest)
and after that I’ve been self-taught in genre-filmwriting. My
colleagues Greg and Sandor have also graduated from film schools. What can you tell us about your
filmwork prior to Restart?
I've written several feature film scripts with my co-author, some of
these ended up with certain producers and never heard from them again.
During my university years I've also made short films with Greg Kozma
behind the camera who currently lives in Ireland and studies and works
there as editor and camerman. He was the DP and editor on Connection, a short film that won Best Short at
Naas Film Festival, 2013. The three of us believe that by now we've accumulated
enough experience that we could start making our first feature length
film, the incredibly exciting Restart. Do talk about the
Hungarian filmscene a bit, and how easy or difficult is it to launch a
project like yours? For independent filmmakers there are very few opportunities to make a
decent feature film. I say decent because of course it all depends on the
standard you aim for. We all know about the ‘project management
triangle’, so we have to be able to use ‘time’ as efficiently as
possible since we won’t have a big budget yet we have a high standard. Filmmakers who inspire you? James Cameron, M. Night Shyamalan, Christopher Nolan and Robert
Rodriguez. Your
favourite movies? Inception, Avatar, Signs. ... and of course, films you really
deplore?
|
Feeling lucky? Want to search any of my partnershops yourself for more, better results? (commissions earned) |
The links below will take you just there!!!
|
|
|
There are none really, every movie has its audience, if I don’t like
a movie I just don’t watch it. I don’t take offense.
Your/your movie's website, Facebook, IndieGoGo,
whatever else? Teaser trailer:
https://vimeo.com/256568041
IndieGoGo:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/restart--9/coming_soon
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/RestartFilm
IMDb:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7600430
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5419893
Thanks for the
interview!
|