Owen: You started as a child musician -
a violin prodigy - how (if at all) did the
discipline and flow of an instrument help you as
a director of films?
Stefan: I
think the discipline taught me to stay
focused on whatever job was in front of me.
Dogged determination, some would call
it. I think musically a lot of the time when
making movies, and I also take a very active role
in the musical scores of the movies. Telling
a story, how to set something up and then
(hopefully) deliver it, is very much like
music. It's largely about rhythm.
Owen: You
do so many aspects on your films write, director,
produce, edit, act, sound ---- which is the least
and the most difficult for you to do?
Stefan: I think
that all of the aspects are difficult.
Writing is the most difficult, no question. It's
the point in time when there's nothing there. No
one is there either. It's a brutal time. I
wouldn't call it the easiest, but for me the
most joyful part of the process is the editing
and sound design. On set, working with
actors, etc. - that's a good time too, but it is
so early in the process that it can be a very
frustrating and nerve wracking time. Maybe that
changes when the budgets are larger.
Owen: So
back on 1998 - THE LAST BROADCAST was
the World's first theatrical digital release of a
feature film via satellite. What exactly
were the details involved in that as well as the
overall repercussions?
Stefan: Geez,
there were a lot of financial details and
business details which get kinda dull. They're
actually the most important, and even to this day
are the main things slowing down digital cinema.
Technically, we retrofitted the theaters with
digital projectors from a company called Digital
Projection Inc. They make projectors capable
of resolution and brightness that is unreal. Very
high-end stuff. Also, the theaters were fitted
with a computer server and satellite dish. Then,
from Mountain View Ca, a subsidiary company of
Loral Space called Cyberstar beamed
the movie to a satellite, where it was then
picked up by the various theaters. The movie was
then downloaded to the theaters where it
was saved onto hard drives in the servers.
Then it was played back from there. It would be
pretty easy to do it nowadays, and you could do
it with any broadband Internet connection. In
1998. it was a different story. It was a proof of
concept and each company had things they wanted
to address. Security issues, picture quality
issues, etc. Obviously for us, entertainment
issues were our biggest interest.
In terms of the repercussions:
people were intrigued. All the studios called, as
well as a lot of indie filmmakers. People were
curious as to how this could fit their agenda.
There were also several parties that were annoyed
that two guys from some rural place in
Pennsylvania had beat them to the
punch. Lucasfilm wasn't too thrilled and
worded a lot of their "Phantom
Menace digital release" press
material in such a way that people would
think it was first. Miramax and Disney did
the same several years later with their
"digital firsts". Fortunately for
us, digital cinema geeks everywhere
have reminded them
otherwise. I think the positive
thing that happened was that people with power
got off their butts. They realized that if they
didn't do it, someone else would (and was) going
to do it. It got the digital cinema machine
rolling. Still, it's been a slow
process. Unfortunately, show business
is full of sheep. It's rare for someone to want
to actually lead, though everyone wants to appear
to be a leader. Exhibitors of course have a
huge investment and the distributors know that
they're going to have to foot the bill - which is
why they are, understandably, dragging their
feet. However, people
like "indie-producers reps" are
just cowards. These guys are generally idiots who
have printed up some business cards and have very
little imagination - though they believe
otherwise. Now quite a few of them
have jumped into digital cinema - espousing
it as the next coming, even though they were
nowhere to be seen when it was not
so obvious.
Owen:
WIRED magazine named you as one of their 25
people helping to reinvent entertainment --- do
you have any ideas as to how you plan to carry
out that mission further?
Stefan: For a while I was pushing the development of
entertainment for small handheld stuff. I got
interested in that when I got an Ipaq
type device in 2000. Now though,
there's plenty of ways to do it, whether it's a
cell phone, small clamshell player or the
new video ipod.
I think this interest in
small screen movies is the best thing to happen
for the short form movie - but I don't think it's
going to be the way of the long form. It'll
be a pretty limited audience. Video casting will
not work the same way that pod-casting, etc.
works. It requires too many senses. It's too
encompassing. In other words: you can't go
jogging and watch a video.
I am most interested by how the
interface of downloading movies to
people can work successfully. I'm trying to
figure out how to basically give away movies and
still make money. I know there's gotta be a way
somehow. I also think that audience
involvement 'through' the moviemaking
process has an interesting future. I
think it could possible for audiences to be
involved in a movie from the conception to the
actual exhibition. Imagine an interactive fan
magazine... where fan input could actually result
in a change in the movie as it is being
developed. It could actually make for much better
movies. You know, why test screen movies when
they're finished? It's too late then. Do it from
day one. Of course there are a lot of details I'm
leaving out, or haven't figured out yet.
Owen: I am also a
huge fan of your movie 'The Ghosts of
Edendale'. How did that idea come
about?
Stefan: Thanks
for the compliment. Again it seems I've made a
movie that has a polar audience. Some people
really like it, and some people really hate it.
"Ghosts of Edendale"
is a movie that came out of living the fears
and excitement of moving to "the city
of dreams". I thought it was kind of
interesting to see how Hollywood can make a god
out of someone or, more often, completely destroy
them. I thought that had the potential for
psychological horror. I also was really intrigued
by the early days of Hollywood. Being able to see
the people that lived in the place you live,
going through their actions over and over again
is a pretty "ghost like" thing. I
riffed on that idea.
There is a horrible,
powerless terror in this town, as people you know
"make it", and others don't. You wonder
why? I mean, sometimes it's obvious, but there is
also a certain intangible force at work. Most
would call it luck - good or bad. Whatever you
call it, it causes a lot of night sweats for a
lot of people. I wanted to also touch on that.
Owen:
That movie has some amazing special effects in it
as well, which was the most difficult to achieve
for the camera?
Stefan: The
most difficult thing to do was nail the
motion tracking. Since nothing was done with a
motion control rig (where the camera moves are
memorized by the camera mount), we had to do it
by eye. When two elements are supposed to
be the same shot, they have to move exactly the
same way. It's the kind of thing that if you
miss by even the slightest amount, the effect
goes to hell. Also, the ghost party at the end of
the movie, while not difficult to do, was
very tedious.
Owen: I notice too that many of your films combine
fiction and non-fiction --- would you call that a
coincidence or a very conscious choice in what
makes horror grounded?
Stefan: They
always say to write about what you know - I
guess I take it to an extreme. Seriously,
for horror to work, it has to be something people
can relate to. Being chased, fear of things you
can't see - are all things we all know about. It
might be why "Ghosts of Edendale"
has a specific audience. It's not a horror that
everyone, especially kids, might relate
to. People who haven't gone through
that feeling of being "thrown away", a
breakup or getting fired from a job you really
liked for example - might not relate to the
horror beyond the simple ghost story part.
Owen: So
what's next on the slate for you - I have heard
you are doing a non-genre film entitled 'Diamond
Road'.
Stefan: Yeah, I'm
excited to be doing an action adventure movie.
I'm really hoping for it to be like the old
school adventures. I think Michael Bay has been
really bad for the genre, and I'm hoping this
works for people who dig "Raiders of
the Lost Ark" more than "The
Island". It has a lot of elements
that I really like - old airplanes, old guitars,
hot women, a search for treasure, etc.
Then it's back to horror
business as usual with 'Children of the
Lake' --- if you need any victims or
anything let me know - I'm a little beyond the
kid stage.
Always looking for a
good victim.
Im always accused of being
one.
Seriously, I don't know what is
next after Diamond Road. I think
I'd like to direct some outside work, something
written by someone else. Could be any genre
(except for period drama)
Owen: What scares
you in real life?
Stefan:
Bills. They never stop coming.
I also think a random home
invasion is a really scary notion. There's also a
crawl space under my new house with a strange,
closed off room with a staircase that leads
nowhere. That's kinda freaky. |