You
recently directed Revenant. Tell us about the plot!
Revenant
is about a down and out writer who moves into a house known to be haunted
so he can write about his experiences in a haunted house ... but he gets more
than he can handle.
Where might it be ordered and are
there webpages where more info may be seen?
www.2manproduction.com
- and soon it will be in stores.
This played at the big Shriekfest
festival in October. How well was it received?
It
had an amazing turnout and the audience was jumping and screaming at all
the right moments. It was great!
What was it like working with Stephen Twardokus in the lead?
Stephen Twardokus |
Stephen
is one of my best friends and co-partner of 2 Man Production. He also
wrote the movie so I knew his head would be in the game from start to
finish just as much as mine. It’s because of our friendship and his hard
working attitude that I knew I wanted to do this film with him in the
first place, so needless to say he is always a pleasure to work with and
we had a lot of fun. Jon Gale was also a pleasure to work with as usual.
He was an actor in the movie playing "Skip" and our Producer.
Stephen Twardokus, Liesel Kopp |
And with Liesel Kopp?
Liesel
is not only an amazing actress she is also an amazing person. She is very
sweet and funny as hell so we had a very good time working together.
Liesel is also a talented artist and she is the one who made our poster
for the film and we can’t thank her enough for doing such an incredible
job.
You also plan to run this film at big
fests in Chicago and New York?
At
Buffalo Screams in NY, Revenant was nominated for many categories including
best feature, best director, best actor, best cinematography, best screenplay and best editing. We won for
best screenplay and best editing
awards. So we thank Buffalo Screams fest for that and we will have to see
how it is received at The Living Dead Fest in Chicago.
Anyplace else?
Living
Dead Festival in Chicago and we are gearing up for distribution.
Again, what do you think the reaction
might be?
I
think no matter where the movie plays it will get some screams and jumps
as it usually does.
Who came up with the title?
I
did with one of the other actors in the film, Cain Clifton who plays the
character “Sam”.
This was not your first film as
director, right?
No
I have done several films before this one but the most recent was The
Mutilation Man, which I directed alongside my brother Shane
Cole [Shane and Derek Cole interview on
Mutilation Man - click here].
Any interesting behind the scenes
stories to tell with this movie?
Well
the one thing that comes to mind is the fact that this movie was done in
my house and I have a family so almost every nighttime shot in the film
was done without sound because in the raw footage you can hear my wife or
kids laughing and talking in the living
room or bedrooms. We did all the sound FX later cause I didn’t want to
force them into different rooms and on top of that make it so they
couldn’t do anything while we shot scenes of Stephen walking through
halls and rooms. It was a lot of work for sound but we knew we would have
to make more notable sound FX anyways.
This is more or less a haunted house
tale and there have been, with all due respect, many such film. How might
yours be different?
It
isn’t found footage and it has more of a patient filmmaking appeal to
it. What I mean by that is, it doesn’t jump to the scares so quickly
making it a very “on the edge of your seat” type experience throughout
the movie, all the while paying tribute to more of the classic type scary
films.
If you had one thing to point out to
people to get them to see this movie above others out here, what might it
be?
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Well
I’m not all that sure what to say but if they would like a good scare
then this movie will definitely make you jump and it's an all around good
story.
What would you say is the strongest
point of the film?
It
has a much bigger ending than what you would expect from a low budget
horror film.
When directing do you prefer to take
complete charge or do you allow a lot of wiggle room for actors to add in
what they want?
I
actually like giving wiggle room to the actors because they might want to
give a reaction that in your head doesn’t seem necessary but then they
do it and on camera it's amazing. Again, Revenant was done on our own time
and own dime, so wiggle room is fun to experiment with when you have that
time.
Future projects?
We
have a few new features, shorts and trailers coming out soon. Please visit
us at www.2manproduction.com
to check out our future projects.
Thanks for the interview!
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