Feature Category: Article

Claes Bang is a Danish actor and musician best know for playing the lead role of Christian in the Palme d’Or winning The Square (2017) and as the titular Count in the recent BBC/Netflix series Dracula. Claes took some time to talk with STARBURST about his latest film, The Bay of Silence, being a piano, playing a piano and, of course, being Count Dracula.

STARBURST: Your new film The Bay of Silence has a curious atmosphere, would you agree?

Claes Bang: Well, I hope it has an unsettling atmosphere where you’re not really sure what’s going on. That’s what I had when I first read it. And it’s important for us to establish it early on. The guy that I’m playing has a feeling that nothing is what it seems to be. I hope we’ve succeeded as that’s what drew me to it. When I read it, I thought ‘What the fuck is going on?’ My wife is totally bonkers, and she’s left and taken the kids. That is why I said yes to it.

Your character comes across rather innocent?

I tried to go for a ‘good-guy’, someone to count on. And then he has to deal with all these things and his moral compass is challenged. He ends up making some odd decisions, you know, like burying your child on a beach and so on. So, I wanted to try and embody that, but also thinking what ‘would you actually do in the situations he finds himself in?’. I like it when characters make strange and bold choices because if they always do what’s expected it can be quite boring. It’s interesting to change the dynamic.

That’s right. You never know where it’s going and even at the end, without spoilers, you’re still not sure it’s over.

Exactly. I like that. At the end it could be all be dreamt up or has he really gone through it.

You’re an executive producer on the film also. When did you get involved initially?

Caroline Goodall who wrote the script and produced it approached me in 2017, I think, but the thing about being an executive producer was Olga [Kurylenko] and I getting involved in developing it. I was intrigued from the start, just as puzzled and mystified as my character.

Do you see yourself behind the camera more?

Actually, no. I don’t see myself in a producing or directing role. I’ve never had that ambition. I find that I’m very happy and lucky to be doing what I’m doing in front of the camera.

We’ve heard you describe yourself as a piano.

Yeah, that’s my ideal. I want to be the best piano or whatever instrument they need so they can do anything they want with me. I don’t see myself as an interpreter of anything, rather something the music flows through. And the director decides how it goes. It might sound like a strange metaphor, but it makes sense to me. That’s my take on it.

Which is interesting because a lot of actors are keen to stamp their authority on a role and give their take, so with such an iconic role as Dracula, you didn’t have anything specific you wanted to add or otherwise?

With Dracula. I think the importance was in the story being told and that there was something new there. Actually, when my agent said they wanted to see me for the role I thought he was kidding. Does the world need another Dracula? There are millions out there. Then he said it was Mark [Gatiss] and Steven [Moffat] who had written it, so he got my attention. It’s great because they’ve added new things but still maintained the original’s feel. But I don’t see it as my Dracula at all. It’s our Dracula. It’s their writing that I’m embodying. I just try and fit in with what’s written. In casting me they found who they thought was right so it’s my job then to make sure their work flows through me. The one thing I did discuss with them was how funny it was, and if it was actually too funny. I think they found a balance though.

And could there be more? Dracula is fundamentally about resurrection.

I would love to do more, but that decision lies with the executives. There are so many people involved but I’ll just be waiting and hopefully one day they’ll phone me.

We wanted to ask you about your music because with everything you’ve said about being an instrument for the writers and director, your music seems entirely personal and wholly you.

Absolutely. It’s something different. When I’m an actor, I’m a performing artist but with the music I’m the one who it all comes from. That’s why I do it. After a day of being told where to be and what to do it’s lovely to come home, grab your guitar or sit at the piano, and fucking decide everything yourself. No-one tells me what chords to play. In that sense it’s an antidote. And the great thing is that with Dracula coming out around the world more people have found my music, which is very cool.

There are influences we can hear in there, and your name This Is Not America comes from a Bowie track, but are they particular artists you draw from?

I would say it’s more an era. I think you can hear that I’ve been listening far too much to New Order, Joy Division, Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode… all that. When you’re in your teens there is music you connect to and that was synth-pop and I listen to so much British music. Bowie, Roxy Music and so on, all from the ‘80s. That’s my DNA. I sit down sometimes and desperately try and sound like 2020 but within 5 minutes I sound like 1981. And anything I listen to today such as The XX or Tame Impala all have similar influences. I know I sound like my parents but everything now all sounds the same!

The Bay of Silence is out now

Following the success and popularity of the Iron Sky movies, you’d have wondered what could come next. Producer Tero Kaukomaa knows – Swissploitation! We caught up with him to find out about Mad Heidi, the film will show us that the hills are alive with the sound of screaming!

STARBURST: What was it about Johannes Hartmann’s idea for Mad Heidi that excited you?
Tero Kaukomaa: First and foremost, it was the concept of a real film first, a Swissploitation film, using famous Swiss clichés to spice the story. I have lived in Zurich for over 20 years and I love it, and I saw the potential for a great self-irony. I also fell in love in Johannes’ visual style, which is sparked by his clear vision. I think these two elements made me excited and I wanted to start making
it all real.

You worked on the Iron Sky films, how much will they influence the film?

I think the biggest influence is the attitude we have in making the film, meaning we wanted to involve our fans, for them to be part of it. We hope this collaboration will help to spread the word more widely all over about what is possible.

Producer Tero Kaukomaa

Other than Iron Sky, what sort of films influence the look and feel of the film?

Personally, I´m thinking it is like Kill Bill meets The Sound of Music, but obviously there is
more to it than that. Mad Heidi is Johannes’ vision, inspired very much by the exploitation cinema of
the 1970s, combined with the alpine setting of the Swiss Heimatfilms [Homeland films] of the 1950s and ‘60s.

Will the teaser trailer footage be in the film or is it more ‘proof of concept’ footage?

It was done as a proof of concept and is not meant for the final film. But who knows, we may find a cool way to use some of it. Time will tell.

You’ve gone a different crowdfunding route by cutting out the likes of Kickstarter,
why is that?

Actually, with Iron Sky, we started crowdfunding before Kickstarter even existed! We did
use IndieGoGo several times, and also some equity platforms. But maybe even more
importantly, we engaged the fans in so many ways like never before. Only recently, Jurassic Park actually copied our idea in their publicity campaign “Get killed by a Dinosaur”.

For Mad Heidi, we want to centre all fan engagement in one place – madheidi.com – from the
early development, financing, production, all the way to the release and beyond. We think having the platform is very important, and it is where the film will available globally and simultaneously for the fans. From day one. And I hope its success will result in cinematic Mad Heidi Fan premiere events around the world.

What is the budget that you’re looking to raise?

We need minimum of CHF 1 million to start the production, and then we will continue fundraising
with a total goal of CHF 2 to 2.6 million. The amount will vary depending on some production decisions to be made once we are underway. Also, I want to add that we treat the budget a bit different than a normal European film does, where you don’t include your marketing efforts in the budget because it’s going to be handled by the distributors. As we are doing distribution ourselves, we allocate around 25 % of the production budget to marketing. In practical terms, this means fan-powered activities. There are a lot of costs there, but it is all worth it if you compare it with normal advertising spending.

Do you have a timescale to finish the film?

We aim to shoot the film in summer 2021, and to be able to release Mad Heidi during 2022.
We will lockdown the exact date once we have started shooting, but it is most likely to be more in the autumn 2022.

There will be a launch of the unique investment opportunity for Mad Heidi at the Zurich Film Festival on September 29th. You can register your interest by heading to https://invest.madheidi.com/ – investors will get a share of the net revenue of the film and be part of the world’s first Swissploitation movie!

Find out more about how you can help Mad Heidi get made by heading to the website.

Images: click for full size.

Along with her sister Chloe, musician Asy Saavedra forms the American synthpop duo, Chaos Chaos, and has been making music since her early teens. In recent years, Saavedra has become known for the inclusion of Chaos Chaos’ music in many of Justin Roiland’s projects, such as Rick and Morty. Her most recent project with Roiland is the score for his video game, Trover Saves the Universe. The game is a madcap romp through ‘a world of chaos, exploding bodies, and salty language’, but Saavedra’s score is alternately dreamy, epic, and joyously danceable. The musician has made reference to melding Ennio Morricone scores and K-pop, but the score for Trover also finds itself winding through the ethereal bops of artists like Grimes, as well.

You can get a glimpse of what this music looks and sounds like in the exclusive premiere of Hanging Out in the Sky, off the game’s soundtrack, which we are excited to share with you all, in addition to an interview with Asy Saavedra about how she came to work on the game and her creative process.

STARBURST: How did you originally come to do the music for Trover Saves the Universe? Was it because you’ve worked with Justin Roiland before – going all the way back to having Do You Feel It? on Rick and Morty?

Asy Saavedra: Yeah, it’s kind of a weird story and a weird situation that we ended up collaborating on so much stuff because it’s completely not an obvious like partnership in any way from the outside. He approached our band, Chaos Chaos, when we released our EP, Committed to the Crime, and he is a huge fan. I think it was right before Rick and Morty took off or something, but we didn’t even know who he was or anything about the show. I think one of us responded to him and were just like, “Oh, thank you so much for saying such nice stuff about the music.”

He wanted to use the music in the show and then we did that and then the show like flew us out to play a premiere party and we kind of met them that way, and then just started talking more. He just asked us to do more things because he really liked our music and it worked with the show in a funny, ironic way, because our music was more emotional and deep or whatever. It worked because the show would be really funny and then have these really deep moments in it and it was kind of an awesome thing, so I think that’s sort of why it ended up working out in the show.

Then, when Justin would do some other personal projects, he started asking me to do some work. I had done like a bit of his VR game stuff in the past and then he asked me to do Trover, which was really, really awesome because that was definitely something that was out of my comfort zone – just doing that whole project. I was super excited that he asked me and I think, at that point, he’d worked with me enough to know that he wanted me to do the music and he was gonna allow me to just kind of go all-out with the creating of the sound and stuff.

He definitely had a lot of trust in the sound, which was cool, because he let me off the leash for just creating, which was awesome.

We read the piece you wrote for Talkhouse, How to Score a Video Game, and what I found really interesting is that you admitted that you’re not really that good at games.

Yeah, I’m fucking horrible. Video game music is actually really interesting because I just got into it.  I started studying it because I was like, “Oh, fuck: I need to research because I don’t know anything about game music,” and I was just realising that it’s its own thing and there’s this whole niche community that loves video game music. It’s just meditative and cool and I was like, “Wow, this is actually really cool, because I create stuff like this on my own that I just don’t use for anything, but it was natural to do it.”

You bring up that that word ‘meditative’. Video game music has to be listenable even as it’s repetitive. What were the difficulties in trying to figure out how to make a piece that’s going to sound good if you’re stuck on a level for an hour?

That was kind of a hard thing to do because I guess it was easy for me to create music or – it wasn’t easy, but it was more intuitive – to create music that could kind of just go on and on in the background and like have slight changes, but then there was a point when I was creating stuff and Justin was like, “Oh, yeah – you know, all of the melodies have to be able to layer and de-layer with whatever action’s happening in the game.”

It has to be this specific way of writing. so it all kind of fits into it, like a weird, Tetris way of thinking about music – and that was not how I normally think of music, so it was a bit hard at first, but it was actually fine. I just had to make sure that there were certain looping points that worked and that there could be these changes that would happen, but we’re never taking up too much space, because it has to be something that’s not going to distract the player in a bad way.

The music like has all of these different elements. There’s the single that you made the video for Hanging Out in the Sky, which is this very dreamy, vibey number but then there’s also stuff like The Man on Whom It Depends or the Battle things, which are full-on dance floor bops. Are you just sitting there, watching a game level play-through, where you get an idea and you’re just like, “This should be more dancey” or “This should sound like Swedish Blade Runner” or something like that?

I think, yeah, there were certain inspiration points I had. Everything was going to be done with synths and those kinds of instruments, for the most part, so I was listening a bit to the Blade Runner score, because it’s just super-emotional music, but it’s all synth, it sounds like it’s an orchestra or something. It’s so intense, and I felt like doing something that was just a bit over-the-top like that would be funny for Justin’s game.

I know that, with everything Justin does and the way that his characters are going to be, there’s always going to be a kind of ridiculous, really quirky element to it, so I wanted to kind of tap into that with the music and just have these really weird sounds, like these weird balloon sounds and just weird stuff. It doesn’t sound cool – it’s almost stupid-sounding, but just owning that and making it really bold was something I wanted to do. For The Man on Whom It Depends, that song was – I don’t know if it comes across at all, but I was trying to go for an Ennio Morricone vibe.

I love the fact that you name drop Ennio Morricone and Piero Piccolini, because those are both composers who made scores, which also stand on their own as listenable music. Did you also want this music to work as standalone music, not just as a score?

Definitely. I think it’s sort of impossible for me to make music that I don’t think of in that way, but I also wanted to make sure I wasn’t being too amateur about it. It was for the game, so that was the main priority but I just also wanted it to really almost be its own character or have its own persona that worked on its own, aside from the game.

You said ‘stupid but bold’, which I think can very much apply to a lot of the stuff that Justin Roiland has done but, going back to that Talkhouse interview – you put up some of the art that you consumed that helped you build the musical world for Trover. One of the things you put up there is The Moomins, which is a very great example: the music for that, as well as the show itself, is stupid but bold.

Yeah, I have a lot of respect for that kind of stuff and I think Justin definitely tapped into that. I think I’ve been tapping into that with my music, too, so it wasn’t something that felt forced. I was like, “You know, I kind of already like this type of stuff. I’m just going to try to absorb it even more and channel it into this,” and then I definitely was really inspired by a lot of visual stuff because, obviously, the game is visual. It was just more a part of the creative process, for me. I’m already a pretty visual person, but I tapped into that even more for the game. It really helped a lot

The video for Hanging Out in the Sky is fascinating in that it’s a music video for a piece from a video game, but there’s no video game footage in it. I know you wanted to show people a different kind of live performance, but were you trying to tie it into the game or make it stand apart?

I kind of knew that I couldn’t really create that game world, obviously, unless I like actually did some weird VR video thing – which actually would have been cool – but I thought it would be kind of interesting, just because I’m really a musician and composer and I was thinking that it would be interesting to show people soundtracks and that kind of stuff in a live setting.

I just felt, for this specific soundtrack, it would be cool to show it live. I just happened to be in the desert in that area and at first, I didn’t really want it to be a Joshua Tree kind of vibe. I wanted it to just feel otherworldly and weird, but I realised that there was no avoiding Joshua trees in that area. Hopefully, it has a weird vibe that’s not just a Coachella vibe or something like that.

Not at all Coachella. The crazy thing about the video is that, when it zooms out and does that wrap-around thing, it’s like very much a Little Prince thing where it’s like you’re on a very tiny planet of your own – which, I guess, is another tie-in to Rick and Morty.

I definitely liked that that vibe because I just want this to feel like its own world, so that’s good that that came across.

The score for Trover Saves the Universe is getting put out on vinyl by Mondo who are one the premier purveyors of vinyl soundtracks. Are you excited to be joining that cadre of people?

I’m definitely excited about it. I love Mondo and it’s just so cool that they do all these soundtracks and I’ve always been listening to soundtracks and to that kind of music. It’s super-inspiring to me, so it’s really humbling to be able to release something in that kind of category. I really love Mondo – everyone there is awesome and also, I’m pretty excited to do vinyl, because we haven’t done any vinyl as Chaos Chaos and I haven’t done any on my own. This is my first solo recording release thing, so I’m definitely really excited for that. I hope people buy it.

Weirdly, everything with the release sort of lined up perfectly with this horrible time that we’re in because vinyl is getting huge right now. Everyone is stuck in the virtual world and I think that’s why they’re really obsessed with old-fashioned stuff that is not virtual, you know?

The score for Trover Saves the Universe will be available on September 25th on vinyl and digitally via Mondo. You can pre-order that here.

Main image by CHARLOTTE RUTHERFORD.

To celebrate the UK release of new horror, Hunter’s Moon, we spoke to writer, director, and producer Michael Caissie about his directorial debut, what’s coming next, and his advice for new writers and filmmakers.

In Hunter’s Moon, three girls throw a party in their new country home when their parents leave town. After a group of dangerous local hoodlums show up, the women are forced to defend themselves from a predator, as well as a mysterious evil lurking in the orchard outside!

Caissie himself penned the Al Pacino thriller Hangman, and Hunter’s Moon stars Thomas Jane (The Punisher, Deep Blue Sea), Sean Patrick Flanery (TV’s Dexter, The Boondock Saints), Katrina Bowden (TV’s 30 Rock, The Bold and the Beautiful) and genre favourite Amanda Wyss (A Nightmare on Elm Street, TV’s Highlander).

STARBURST: How did the idea for Hunter’s Moon come to you?

Michael Caissie: I see it as a female empowerment movie. I was raised by my mother and grandmother and all the women I know are strong. I don’t like seeing weak women on screen, and I try to write strong female characters in all my stories.

Back when I wrote the script, I was running restaurants in Los Angeles, working ridiculous hours, with no free time to write. However, my script for Hangman was optioned so my wife and I talked about it and we took a leap of faith and I quit the day job. I decided to invest the same hours into writing that I had done for my job. I wrote script after script, blasting out first drafts in seven days, and out of that process one of the scripts was Hunter’s Moon, originally named The Orchard.

After developing it with my other producers, Christopher Sherman, Clayton Turnage and exec producer Arnold Rifkin, who is a huge mentor for me, I felt it would be a great first-time directing project. However, after a few months of hitting hurdles with financing and other issues, we decided to just go and make it our way. It would be harder, but it would be made on our terms. Fortunately, we still had financing in place.

What was the experience on set?

We started filming in Kentucky and were shooting back in 2017. The plan was to shoot what we could and cut a pitch trailer to show the production value. In that process we also ended up re-casting the sheriff role (which went to Thomas Jane) and when we totally finished filming, back in LA, the majority of the scenes had been re-shot.

It was a great, hugely educational experience but it was hard work at times. Even though it was quite a long process, the cast got to know each other really well and grew as a family unit, so it helped the film. The main family, played by Jay Mohr and Amanda Wyss as mom and dad, bonded a lot with their daughters, Katrina Bowden, Emmalee Parker and India Ennenga. That was an unforeseen benefit from having all that extra time.

Can you talk about the werewolf?

I didn’t want to push it too much within the film, and it’s a bit of a spoiler. In my mind, he’s one element in the story but not the main focus. However, the biggest inspiration for the werewolf was Jaws. I didn’t want to show much of the creature, which I know was a random thing for them since they didn’t want to show their mechanical shark. As we know today, that strategy turned out to be so iconic. So, while I’m not comparing my movie to Jaws, I really loved using that idea to show less and build tension. Our effects guru, Vincent J. Guastini, recommended a great stunt performer called Lucky who walks on stilts. So, we had him in the movie wearing the werewolf suit, all made practically with no CGI, and the werewolf stands 9 feet tall! It’s pretty cool and old school.

How do you develop new ideas, especially in horror, sci-fi, etc?

I’ve had a relationship over the years with a website called InkTip which is a platform for writers, where writers post their work and producers can connect with them. Recently, I was telling them what I was looking for, as a producer, and wanted something more skeletal which we could work on when it’s safe to do so.

One night I was up late, and it hit me, instead of trying to do just one movie, why not help shepherd multiple projects? My friend Clayton Turnage and I talked about a creative co-op where we pair five filmmakers with five up-and-coming writers on InkTip, we produce the five projects and I’ll direct one. I know a lot of filmmakers and know how much of a struggle it is in the indie world, no matter what genre you’re doing.

We’ve found some great filmmakers now, so we’ve just been working on budgets, schedules and putting together packages for financiers and distributors, with a goal of being ready to shoot once we’re able to get back to work.  One big inspiration was to make the process fun for filmmakers and the way I wish it had been for me as a writer early in my career, because I’ve got horror stories – and not in a good way! The co-op aspect means we’re each bringing our experience to the table and helping each other.

For another creative outlet, I always wanted to write a novel and I have a screenplay that lends itself to that, so I’ve been adapting that which has taken up most of my writing time. I think if you’re any kind of creative, you just need to work at your craft. That’s my biggest advice.

What’s coming next?

Before the pandemic, I was in Armenia filming a new TV show called Purgatory with Clayton Turnage. I wrote 16 episodes and was co-directing but we had to stop half-way, so we’ve turned it into two seasons of eight episodes in order to get our first eight episodes out. We’ll go back to finish season two. The first season of Purgatory is streaming now on Popstar! TV which is available online and on Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV Stick. Hopefully people will enjoy checking that out.

A script I wrote even before Hunter’s Moon also got bought and made into a movie called Sin Origen and translated into Spanish. Rigoberto Castañeda is a cool horror director from Mexico and that’s supposed to be coming out in a few months, so people can look out for that. It’s about vampires whereas Hunter’s Moon is obviously about werewolves, so it’s fun to play with those conventions.

I love horror and I’m a lifelong fan. Stephen King is one of my heroes. In Hunter’s Moon, we wanted to create something fun, and even if you guess the twist, it doesn’t really matter. I just hope people have fun with it!

Dazzler Media presents Hunter’s Moon out now on DVD & Digital Download

Writer/director AMY SEIMETZ has been making genre films as an actor and director for several years now, but her latest, SHE DIES TOMORROW, is a massive leap forward. The indie film sees a slow contagion begin to spread out from a woman named Amy (Kate Lyn Sheil), who might be suffering a relapse into alcoholism or actually becoming cognizant of the fact that she will, in fact, die the next day. As the idea takes hold in Amy’s mind, she begins voicing it aloud, and it starts spreading out among her friends. Watching the contagion take root in the minds of everyone in the film is quiet, but nothing less than paralysingly terrifying. We spoke by phone with Seimetz about her process of writing and directing this stellar film.

STARBURST: We talked to you last year ahead of the release of Pet Sematary, and one of the things that you had said, regarding directing, was that it’s very important to have a grounded and emotional experience in horror. Was the reason so many people on She Dies Tomorrow were ones with whom you’ve worked before due to wanting to have a small and honest performance from every actor?

Amy Seimetz: Yeah, the reason I work with all of them so much is because – well, they’re great, but also we have throughout the years developed a shorthand. And that’s not just with the cast but with my cinematographer Jay Keitel. He and I have known each other for 17 years so, when you have that shorthand and that base of friendship and then also, collaboration over the years, you can go much deeper, in a way. There are a lot of things that you can reach or you can execute without having to say too many words. You have this trust and this understanding with these people that really get you on an intrinsic level. It’s almost like you don’t have to really over-direct them.

There’s a level of acceptance in all of the characters in this film. What led you to go with that? Jane (played by Jane Adams) is essentially the only character who really has a super freak out about this. Everybody else seems to be very accepting of their situation.

I guess we’ve already seen the apocalypse movie where everyone’s running from it. There’s this really great story by Ray Bradbury [The Last Night of the World]. It’s just a short short story in Esquire, and it’s about this couple who both realised that they had a dream that the end of the world is coming and they don’t really do anything but make tea and go to bed. What’s weird is that I had read that when I was younger and it wasn’t until we were well into the middle of shooting that my assistant, Alex, was like, “This reminds me of this short story.”

I reread it and I was like, “I have read this before and it’s somehow stuck in my subconscious.” It’s so overwhelming, you know – that feeling that I was trying to like have them express is that there is no arguing. It’s just a fact to them. The feeling is so overwhelming that it’s just become effectively like there is no argument of the feeling. It’s just going to happen. There is no fighting it. Once it comes, it’s like, “This is just a fact. There’s no refuting it. We can’t run from it. No matter where we are, even if we run, we might run and get hit by a car. It doesn’t matter.” It’s not the how: it’s just going to happen.

Jane has the hit her own freak out because she’s just trying to connect to people that understand the feeling and she wants to be with people that understand the feeling and then, with Katie Aselton – who plays Susan – her response is to blame Jane, as opposed to completely accepting it. It’s like, “We need to we need to blame Jane. It’s Jane’s fault.” Which happens a lot, in fact.

I feel like I’ve really responded to that Ray Bradbury story but, also – again, I forgot I had read that until well into shooting and I was like, “Oh good. If it’s good enough for Ray Bradbury, then it’ll be great for a movie,” because there is the temptation, if you’re making something like this – a contagious movie or apocalypse movie – to really push it into territory that you’ve seen before. I just was interested in watching, in a darkly comedic way, what if everyone’s kind of failing at having their last day, in a way?

It’s interesting you say that because it feels like the performances are so much more honest, because it’s things that hadn’t been in film before, but it’s things that are seen in real life. When people accept that something is over, their false front drops and there’s just this honesty. The conversation between Tilly (Jennifer Kim) and Brian (Tunde Adebimpe) is just refreshingly honest, while at the same time being absolutely brutal.

Oh, god, yeah. I want to say that was completely made up, but somebody actually said that to me when my dad died and I actually – this is really fucked up – I actually really appreciated it when he said to me, “I was waiting to break up with you until your dad died.” If you haven’t gone through it, on the surface it sounds so cruel, but it actually was telling me, “I know that you felt that this relationship was bad for a while, but like I was trying to be nice and not bring it up.” It was actually kind of kind.

Exactly. They were being honest but they weren’t being unnecessarily cruel.

Right? It would be different if it was like, “You’re a nightmare. I’m glad your dad’s dead” or something but it’s not what it was. It was like, “Now, we can breathe. Now, it’s time.”

Considering the use of sound and colour in the film, it seems as though ‘psychedelic’ is getting thrown around a lot regarding the light seen by the characters as they become infected, as well as the photographs that Jane takes of the bacteria under the microscope. Where did you pull this idea of using color for communication? It seems like light and color and flashing lights does seem very Close Encounters but where did you pull it from, particularly?

There is a little bit of that way otherworldly: whether it’s being abducted by aliens and being implanted with this knowledge, being probed with light, but also just based off of people having near-death experiences and trying to express visually – and sonically, with the sound design – what would that feel like, to be flooded with every single emotion.

The performances and what the actors are doing – I never said, “It’s purely fear.” While they’re so scared, what I wanted them to perform and they did a fantastic job doing is there’s a curiosity to the feeling. There’s a sadness. There’s an elation. There’s these ecstatic, really conflicting emotions that they’re feeling, so trying to reach that ecstatic state with the flashing colours was overwhelming the senses in the best way I could for a movie, because I only have sight and sound. If I had smell-o-vision, I don’t know, but they say people smell burnt toast when they’re having a stroke?

But, yeah: just trying to reach what I interpreted from reading near-death experiences or also physiologically what happens to the body, which is your body – when you die – it’s flooded with all of your hormones right. I wanted to think about how wild that would feel: it’s your serotonin, of course, and then they have this theory that DMT gets released from your perineal glands in mass quantities when you die, so it’s like all of the hormones essentially being released.

What would that look like? What would that sound like to you? What would it feel like to you?

Speaking of sound, was the Lacrimosa movement from Mozart’s Requiem that Amy listens to – where she’s just lifting the needle up and dropping it back down again at the beginning of that record – was that written into the script?

I wrote it into the script and I wanted to keep it. I wanted it so bad that I filmed it live with her listening to it, but then I had the Mondo Boys cover it and we replaced it, but I always wanted that. I double-checked and knew that we could get it if we covered it. That was the song that I was listening to over and over and over again, thinking that I’d go through some sort of metamorphosis and realise like, “Oh, I’m not scared of death anymore, because Mozart confronted it.”

I guess you could say in some ways, this would be my Requiem, but I didn’t really approach it that way. At the same time, I think it’s a fascinating sort of endeavour to really confront your own death with composers but then also just in writing. Johnny Cash had all those cover albums that he came out with. That, to me, would be a requiem.

The other song that I thought maybe would go in there, but it’s too sentimental and not the right thing, was Claire de Lune, which I listen to be really indulgent. Obviously, because the movie is confronting death or my way of confronting death in some way, I was like, “Oh, yes: this is perfect for this movie,” and also just the relationship of wanting to be so indulgent, too. I find myself doing that. Where, when I’m feeling sad – and everyone does this – I just want to listen to really sad music or really dramatic music.

Blue Finch Film Releasing presents SHE DIES TOMORROW on Curzon Home Cinema, BFI Player, and Digital Download on August 28th. Read our review here.