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An Interview with David T. Krupicz, Writer and Director of Cold Dark Mirror

by Mike Haberfelner

April 2013

Films directed by David T. Krupicz on (re)Search my Trash

 

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Your upcoming movie Cold Dark Mirror - in a few words, what is it about?

 

Cold Dark Mirror is a film about a young Witch-Hunter Lydia, and her cat Familiar Callista, who must avenge the death of their mentor at the hands of a secret group who are loyal to the malevolent Timeshadow, and prevent him from crossing over into their world.

 

At least from reading the synopsis, Cold Dark Mirror seems to be a sort of dark fairy tale - so who's the target audience here, and how far are you going in terms of creepiness, gruesomeness and the like?

 

I'm aiming to present the film as a unique take on the whole mythology of 'witches, cats, magic'. Although the film will have elements rooted in horror films, it will have a more positive slant, I'm shying away from any truly gruesome or gratuitously violent imagery, I feel there's enough other films like that out there. It'll be family friendly without being overly sugary like you might get with big studio films.

 

What were your sources of inspiration when writing Cold Dark Mirror?

 

I get a lot of inspiration from dreams, there are a lot of scenes in this film which come almost directly from dreams that I've had from time to time. I've found that to be the most fertile ground to grow ideas out of, as dreams are an unconstrained form of creativity. I've had the idea for this film brewing on the back burner for a while. I sat down and actually wrote the first draft out by hand, which was good to step away from the computer for a bit and just have pencil and paper in front of me - no distractions - I'll probably do that from now on when I'm writing my first drafts.

 

Why don't you talk about your main characters for a bit, and do you see yourself (at whatever age) in any of them?

 

The main character is Lydia, a young Witch Hunter. Together with her cat Familiar Callista, she travels between the worlds tracking lost spirits and returning them to their proper worlds. The witch hunters act as guradians in a sense, under the watchful guidance of their mentors, guided by the Alchemic Council. There are those on the Council who are aligned with a dark force, however. Lydia's mentor Acheron is suspicious of this, and is tracking a group of Maegis in cahoots with The Timeshadow; this is where the conflict of the film originates.

 

There's always a bit of the writer in each character; there isn't any one specific character I would identify with personally in the film, more that the entire film is a representation of my creativity... which is good I suppose, considering I created it... I've tried to create a more diverse range of characters this time, in terms of personalities. The voice actors did a really good job of bringing their performance to the characters, which will make the characters really jump off the page and out of the screen. Character and story are the two most important and overlooked fundamental aspects of filmmaking.

 

Cold Dark Mirror is quite a deviation from the science fiction films you are known for - how come?

 

I wanted to create a film that stood separate from my previous work, I've done a lot of sci fi in the Rocketmen vs Robots films, Archon Defender, Tales from the Afternow. Origin: A Call to Minds was a bit of a departure from sci fi, in that the sci fi elements took a backseat to the story and character arcs, but it was still set in the same mythology of Archon Defender. I wanted something that could stand on its own, and I've always been a fan of fantasy and horror genres, there are definitely influences from'Savage Sword of Conan and H.P. Lovecraft, in this film.

 

What can you tell us about the look and feel of Cold Dark Mirror, and will it vastly differ from your earlier work?

 

The main difference in this production is that I've moved my entire workflow to the free and open source program Blender, I've spent some time refining my workflow to get a visual style consistent with my previous films, there's slight differences but I've settled on a look which will fit the film. The biggest hurdle was learning how to use Blender, coming from 3D Studio Max, but once you jump in and actually learn and use it, a lot of the workflow is actually faster and easier. Plus there's a much more supportive user community and developers, I've actually talked with some of the developers giving them my ideas to improve the physics simulation in blender.

 

Between your last film Origin: A Call to Minds and Cold Dark Mirror, where do you see the progress in terms of animation, technology and the like?

 

Technology is definitely getting faster, I'm going to have to get a new computer (or two) before I jump into full production, a quad core i7 computer is roughly 8 times faster than the core 2 duo I'm working on right now. The software is there, Blender is free and open source, and it can do everything you need for production of a film, modeling, animation, compositing, editing, sound sync. Blender is constantly being updated and new features added, in fact during the time I started writing the script for Cold Dark Mirror, they added a physics/ragdoll simulation system, so I actually went back and added scenes to take advantage of this feature in some of the action sequences, features which were added while I was in the middle of writing the script.

 

The only thing Blender doesn't do yet is full on music editing, in which case there's a good digital audio workstation called Reaper which has a commerical license, but it's ridiculously cheap, like $80 or so, especially for how powerful it is.

 

At what stage of production is Cold Dark Mirror at the moment, and any idea yet when the film might be released?

 

At the moment I'm syncing the voice actor recordings with the storyboards to cut a first draft animatic and get shot timings, as well as building all the sets, characters, props, and effects that I'll need to make the film. Once that's done I'll have a good idea on the final length of the film and whether I need to go back and make any script revisions or additions. Once I jump into actual production, it's pretty much just a matter of replacing the test renders and storyboards with the actual shots.

 

Origin: A Call to Minds took me two years from script to finished film, I'm still 'sitting' on that one for an actual proper release, Archon Defender is set for an October DVD and VOD release through Ytinifni Films, that's a new updated and polished and extended version of Archon Defender with a fully remastered voice actor mix. Realisticly, Cold Dark Mirror should be finished October 2014-ish - hopefully sooner, depends on how 'particular' I get on the animation.

 

Any future projects beyond Cold Dark Mirror?

 

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The next film will be a musical mech space battle film, set as the third and final film in the Archon Defender series, I'm kind of procrastinating on this one (by making Cold Dark Mirror), seeing as I still have no idea how I'm going to pull it off.

 

Your/your movie's website, Facebook, whatever else?

 

I infrequently (and lazily) update my production blog at archondefender.blogspot.com.

 

Anything else you are dying to mention and I have merely forgotten to ask?

 

Steal a computer, download Blender, make your own film.

 

Thanks for the interview!

 

Thank you.

 

© by Mike Haberfelner


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In times of uncertainty of a possible zombie outbreak, a woman has to decide between two men - only one of them's one of the undead.

 

There's No Such Thing as Zombies
starring
Luana Ribeira, Rudy Barrow and Rami Hilmi
special appearances by
Debra Lamb and Lynn Lowry

 

directed by
Eddie Bammeke

written by
Michael Haberfelner

produced by
Michael Haberfelner, Luana Ribeira and Eddie Bammeke

 

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