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Your new movie Dragon
- in a few words, what's it about? It’s a cautionary tale warning people not to mess with wildlife or prepare
to face the consequences… What were your
sources of inspiration when writing Dragon?
Well, Dragon was made as one of twelve segments for the
Horror-Scopes 2 anthology based on the Chinese zodiac. I was given the title of Dragon as
my brief and then sat and brainstormed ideas.
I knew that on the shoestring budget, I wasn’t going to be able to hire a
real dragon and I knew quite early on that I wanted to incorporate a
dragon egg of some sorts, and then I explored the idea of ‘chasing the
dragon’ and some ow found a way to splice my ideas together and the
Dragon script was born.
Do talk about Dragon's
approach to horror! I like short films that do tell a full story albeit quickly, and I wanted
to do something that was darker and more mysterious than in my previous
piece Gemini which was for Horror-Scopes 1.
A few words about your overall
diretorlal approach to your story at hand?
Honestly working with Kemal Yildirim [Kemal
Yildirim interview - click here] as DOP makes directing so easy
because I’m a trained actress, I went to drama school not film school so
although I’ve picked up a lot from working with directors over the past 15
years, I don’t have all the technical knowledge but when I’m explaining
what I want, Kemal knows exactly what I mean even if it probably wouldn’t
make sense to most…
On set we had a small cast and crew, mostly people I’ve worked with before
and all very professional, so it was an easy job.
What can you tell us about Dragon's
cast, and why exactly these people? I’d spent a weekend with Judy
Matheson [Judy Matheson
interview - click here] when we were both guests at The Festival of
Fantastic Films in Manchester the previous year, and we’d become friends
and she’d said I needed to write something for her so I wrote Dragon with
her in mind, hoping that she’d agree to come on board, and I’d worked with
Philip Andrew Rogers a few times and wanted to write something for him that would be
different to the roles he’d played before which the character Charlie
certainly was. You also make a
cameo appearance in Dragon
- so since you're an actress first, were you ever tempted to expand your
role or take on a bigger one? No, in fact to begin with I wasn’t planning on being in Dragon at all. I’d
played one of the principal characters in Gemini and wanted to focus
solely on the directing with Dragon but then I couldn’t resist writing
myself in to the script so that I’d get to share some screentime with
Judy. Do talk about the shoot as such, and the on-set atmosphere!
I always like my sets to be relaxed and for people, whether cast or crew,
to enjoy working on my productions which I hope they did on this one.
You’d
have to ask them though… The
$64-question of course, where can Dragon be seen?
We’ve actually also shot and premiered Horror-Scopes 3, which is based on
the dark zodiac, and my piece was Hunger, which is apparently the dark side
of Libra. I believe deals are still being workied out regarding release of the full
Horror-Scopes anthology trilogy, but I released
Gemini on my YouTube channel
a month ago and said that when it hit 1000 views that I’d unleash Dragon,
which it did, and I now have and the same goes, when Dragon reaches 1000
views, I will release Hunger.
Anything you can tell us about audience and critical reception
of Dragon yet?
I’ve had good feedback so far, Kemal’s cinematography and Will
Metheringham’s score really created the atmosphere alongside Simon
Turners set design and the cast really went above and beyond to bring
the script to life – especially Philip who turned up to the forest
scenes looking like Penfold, I hadn’t asked him to come in clean
shaven, it was all his own character choice but it was just perfect!
Any future projects you'd like to share? I have some ideas brewing…
Your/your movie's website, social media, whatever else?
https://youtu.be/SxdNaT1yqRY?si=nwFzGsr_D80BSgze
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter; @missdaniscreams
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Anything else you're dying to mention and I have merely
forgotten to ask?
I launched The Scream Princess Podcast in January this year, it covers all
things horror-related and goes out every Wednesday at 9am GMT. I have the
video version on YouTube, but the audio versions also go out on Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1LqsAMp-aCHAOjLoN1dy3qPTYEbwCFT5
https://open.spotify.com/show/0ZFH4ZWUa9EXnRLgvKGTbr?si=c1679e65f5184561
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-scream-princess-podcast/id1788230992
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/f24d1195-d75c-457c-b275-225a3e9fb329/the-scream-princess-podcast Thanks for the interview!
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