Feature Category: Interviews

Lancashire born Jonathan Howard has acting credits that include the likes of Downton Abbey and World War Z. His most recent role is as comedy side-kick Ian Boothby in Thor: The Dark World. We caught up with him for a quick chat and to find out what it was like to work on the latest Marvel movie.

Starburst: Tell us a little bit about the character you play in Thor: The Dark World.

Jonathan Howard: I play Ian Boothby, who is an astrophysicist, and I’m Darcy’s intern. In the first month, Darcy was Jane’s intern, so really I’m Jane’s intern’s intern. He’s the eyes and the ears for the audience in a way, because every other character has experienced this other world before, and he doesn’t have a clue about it, so I’m a rabbit caught in headlights. He didn’t sign up for any of this, he’s not prepared to see any of this, so he spends the movie playing catch up as the events unfold.

Marvel stories tend to be set in America, but this one uses London as a backdrop. How did that affect your role?

I’m an adopted Londoner, I’m from Lancashire originally but I’ve lived in London for about 8 years. You see me navigating the streets of London with Jane and Darcy. Being from London, it means I bring a deeper connection to the location. When the worlds collide, it’s my city that’s being ruined.

How much of a comic book fan are you yourself?

I grew up with the Beano and Dennis the Menace. I love these comic book movies, and when they started bringing these heroes to life, even though I didn’t obsessively read about them as a kid, every boy knows who these characters are, and seeing them come to life is a real treat. I was never your average comic book fan; some of the guys in my year at drama school lapped it up, so a lot of my research into this world was done by asking some of my mates.

Thor: The Dark World is a star studded affair and you’re very much still coming up in the ranks. What was that like?

For me, it’s game changing and goes to show how quickly things can change in this industry. I was out of drama school for a year before I got offered the part. The last six months I couldn’t book a job, and then it just happened. Getting the part has been the biggest highlight of my career. Then you’re on set and you’re doing scenes with Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman and Anthony Hopkins. You get talking to them and they’re really nice, down to Earth people.

I was able to use my own nervousness and apprehension about working with these people for Ian, because as a character he’s of a nervous disposition; he’s not that clued up on life and knows a lot about science but not a lot else. It’s strange meeting someone like Christopher Eccleston, who’s one of my heroes. I first met him head to toe in his Malekith gear and he was all “All right mate, how are you doing?” and as soon as he heard my northern accent we just got on well. He’s very funny, friendly and down to Earth.

Eccleston shot to fame thanks to his work in British movies and TV, including science fiction. Is that a path that appeals to you?

I think Eccleston has managed his career really well, with a balance of doing theatre, and TV and then going over the pond to do big movies. For any actor to have that sort of range, it’s what any actor strives for.

If you were stranded on a desert island and could only have one book for company, what would that book be?

One book? Only one? I’d have to pick a big book, so War and Peace.

The Simpsons or Futurama?

The Simpsons.

Thor or Loki?
Loki.

Star Wars or Star Trek?

Star Trek.

Truth or Beauty

Truth.

THOR: THE DARK WORLD is in cinemas now. Read our review here.

Ronnie Renton is the hard working genius behind Mantic, a Nottingham based games company who are rapidly becoming a major player in the world of wargames and boardgames. Their latest product, Mars Attacks – The Miniatures Game, is based on the popular Topps franchise and reached its Kickstarter goal in under 15 minutes of launch.

Starburst: Tell us a bit about Mantic.

Ronnie Renton: We set up Mantic about five years ago with two objectives; we’re a company that supplies hobbyists, so we wanted to make sure our customers were having fun whilst enjoying ourselves as we share the same hobby, and the second thing is value for money for the games and the toy soldiers you’re buying.  There’s high quality stuff out there at very high prices, what Mantic brings is excellent stuff at excellent prices. We got in there and started making plastic toy soldiers at prices which means you can have lots of models at not much cost. With Mantic, you don’t have to remortgage your house to play war games.

Why Mars Attacks?

We’re doing Warpath and Kings of War, and they’re our massive intellectual properties that will take years to develop into a full world with a complete wargaming system and full background, with complete model armies all tooled in plastic, and with those two, we’re only just getting started.

We have games like Dreadball and Project Pandora to get people into the hobby, but we didn’t have a mass market, obvious title. So when we were doing Dreadball , the Mars Attacks people came up to us and said, “We love what you’re doing, will you come to us?” and of course we said yes. We got on very, very well. The more I found out about what they were doing with the IP, the more obvious it became what they wanted is the sort of thing we love to do. The Mars Attacks aliens are the sort of creatures that come from the very origins of sci-fi. They’ve been around since 1963 and lots of things have spawned from that. There have been moments when we’ve been doing stuff and you can see there were various other things that reference the original Mars Attacks.

It’s goodies versus baddies; US Marines versus Aliens, and we knew we could make a fun product out of that which would be more accessible to a wider market than our own IP.

Where do you start with an IP like Mars Attacks?

That was one of the challenges we faced when we took on the project. What really cemented our core was the new card set that is just about to hit, which takes the basic story and starts from the beginning. The art is fantastic, with plenty of nods back to the early card set, but in essence it is its own thing. When you then read the comics, they tie-in very interestingly.

The comics have been cleverly woven to be a heavily character based story set within the Martian invasion. So what we did was start running our storyline within that sequence of events, with the Martians invading Earth and Earth being in big trouble. We’ve taken what the cards and the comics have done, added some of our own stuff to it and created one huge, rolling storyline.

I think the crossover stuff is kind of fun, we plan to do a Judge Dredd Martian, because it’s a figure that just has to be made. Largely, our game is about heroes versus Martians, set within an ongoing story.

What should people expect gameplay to be like?

Unlike our larger games like Kings of War, where a unit is ten models, in Mars Attacks a unit is a single model on 2X2 or 4X4 board. Movement and shooting is calculated in squares, so it’s all about positioning, getting the right line of sight, getting your sniper into cover. The game will be familiar but also new. Whereas Deadzone is very hardcore and tactical, Mars Attacks is wacky, crazy and fun.  We have a card deck for it, which means you can get stomped by robots through to off-world flying saucers zapping the marines. Both sides have cards, and can block each other’s plans by playing the right card. It’s a mega-violent game in a comedy sort of way.

Do you have any non-miniatures related projects planned?

Novels are something we’ve been talking about for about 12 months now.  There’s an opportunity to expand our worlds there. In our Deadzone Kickstarter we launched an anthology all about the Nexus Psi Campaign. What was wonderful about that is that we got to work with about twelve authors, each one writing from a particular perspective including the alien races. If that gets a warm response, it’s something we’d want to get more into. It’s certainly on the radar.

Are we going to see any more Project Pandora?
Yes, and more Dwarf Kings Hold as well. We like things with tails; things that people want to keep collecting so we can bid it up on Kickstarter. I think those two games are very much the sort of boardgame we want to do.

What is your dream project?

I would make Warpath the movie. Also to make Warpath and Kings of War the best franchises the world has ever seen, on every level, be it games, movies or novels.

If you were stranded on a desert island and could only have one book for company, what would that book be?

The Lord of The Rings, because I’d have lots of time to get through it. My favourite book is The Magician by Raymond E Feist.

Warriors or Wizards?

Warriors.

The Simpsons or Futurama?

Futurama.

Starships Troopers or Space Marines?
Starships Troopers.

Truth or Beauty?
Truth.

The Mars Attacks Miniatures Game Kickstarter completes on November 10th, 2013. To find out more about Mantic and their games, click here.

Matthew Jacobs wrote the screenplay for the 1996 Doctor Who TV Movie, and in the current edition of Starburst Magazine (issue 394) we talked to Matthew about his experiences of working on the project. Our conversation also took in the writer, actor and producer’s other genre work, and his career in general…

Matthew Jacobs: I’m very much an actor’s director, because I act myself, and at the end of the day, they’re the ones on the screen. You remember the actor, you don’t remember his writers.

Starburst Magazine: You grew up in the UK…

I moved to America in 1992/93, primarily to work on Young Indiana Jones for George Lucas. And then I got various studio deals, stayed and have kind of been here, on and off, ever since. Came back to the UK to do Mothertime and obviously various UK productions, like Doctor Who.

How did you get into writing?

I fell into it later on when I went to the National Film School. Up to going to the National Film School I was an actor, director, theatre, as an undergrad. When I got to the film school there was a very encouraging writing teacher called John Bryce, who had developed the original Avengers series. I was broke, and he got me a job being a reader for Rank – so I learnt what was a good script and what was a bad script, because the good scripts I read were all scripts that had been greenlit. And the school encouraged me to be a writer. And basically I needed the money, so I started writing, and then I fell in love with it – and fell in love with relationships with directors, and started writing better and better stuff. You know, a couple of grindhouse movies as soon as I’d left there, but I always had some pretentious movie up my sleeve like Darkness From the Trees, or something like that.

Paperhouse was your breakout movie.

That’s true, absolutely. That came from a collaboration with Bernard Rose that had been born at film school.

You recently also did Boxing Day with him, as an actor.

Yes, Boxing Day came out on the 21st of December at the cinema, in about twelve cinemas, and got all its reviews then. I appeared in The Kreutzer Sonata for him as well. Bernard knew I could act, and he tends to bring on board filmmakers, for the most part, as his actors (Danny Huston, who starred in both, is a filmmaker, a director, as well as being an actor), because we’re able to take a scene and run with it – it’s ad-libbed. We know the process; it’s done through a process of trust, those kind of movies. And the last two movies I’ve directed, I’ve directed in a similar way, and wrote in a similar way.

So how did Paperhouse come about?

It’s an adaptation of Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr, and it was something that Bernard and actually his first wife had been looking at. It was a lovely concept, a lovely idea. The book is a children’s’ book; I took it with Bernard and we gave it more edge, put the father in, turned it into a more psychological horror movie. It wasn’t just this cute book, this sweet book. But without Catherine Storr’s book it would be nothing. And it came about because we already had a bit of a track record of working together, we’d done a TV movie for the BBC called Smart Money, which I’d written. I’d been working anyway for Working Title, for Tim and for Sarah Radclyffe, who was then also head of Working Title. So it was a gang; like all movies, that’s when a gang comes together and says, “We’ve got to do this.” And they’d had success with My Beautiful Laundrette, so Vestron said they wanted to make some films, and before Vestron knew how weird Paperhouse was, we’ve kind of made it – with them!

A case of getting away with it…

I think most films are, actually. And in this case it was really Roger Ebert’s support of the film, when it showed at the Toronto Film Festival, that helped – I don’t think it would have been distributed without his good review, I suspect.

And soon after that, you also adapted Lorna Doone.

Yes, oh my God, I did a sort of Ladybird Books version of Lorna Doone. With a great cast.

Do you find the process of adapting much different from writing something totally original?

I think in all screenwriting – or all writing, really – you bring yourself to the table. So when you’re excited by the source material, to do an adaptation that has any teeth itself, you have to bring yourself to the table. So to a degree it feels like original writing; you really get to know the source, and then you’ve discussed and come up with a take on it, an approach, and then you have to put it to one side and do your own thing. It’s a time-honoured tradition, it’s not theft. Shakespeare was doing it! His plays were remakes of Holinshed, and then he was probably ripping off something else… You hear a great story and then you do your own interpretation, you know. It’s very rare that somebody comes up with such a unique interpretation; for example, Being John Malkovich is a very unique take on the average body-swap movie – but it’s not a family movie, it’s a sort of sexual body-swap movie. But everybody thought, ‘Oh my God, it’s completely new!’ And it was, but I don’t think anybody really consciously went down and said, “We’re doing Big, but with sex.” I don’t think anybody consciously did that.

And then with Doctor Who and Indiana Jones, you’re writing original stories in an established universe.

Well that’s just fun. You’re being given the opportunity to play with something that you’ve always wanted to be part of. I remember walking home from school when I was at a comprehensive school in Harlow; you know, you’re walking down and you’re kicking a stone along the pavement and you’re daydreaming about, ‘I’m the one who’s going to do Doctor Who. Imagine if it was mine!’ And then when that dream comes true, it’s irresistible.

How did The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles come about?

I’d just directed a short called Vardo for the National Film Finance Corporation, which George saw and really liked – but ironically I hadn’t written it. And I’d also just done a TV film called Hallelujah Anyhow, or was finishing that, so I was really working. He was looking to have a cadre of writer-directors at that time for Young Indy, and he wanted half of them to be British, and he wanted writers who had a very good experience of history, who had knowledge of history which I do. It was primarily an educational series; that was his original dream and he managed to do that eventually with the seventy hours that is in the final set, a lot of which is documentary. So I got called in when he was in London, and we got on very well. It was very simple: they offered for me to come on board. But the original thing was that the writers were going to direct as well as write, which is why you’ve got Frank Darabont in there, Jonathan Hensleigh, myself, who are all directors as well; Jonathan Hales, who was a very good theatre director. So initially, that was how I got involved, because I was kind of qualified for the job. They started out as an ABC series, and we did two seasons for ABC; we did about thirty one-hour shows, and then they were re-tooled for The Family Channel as TV features where you take two shows and put them together.

You also worked on a Star Wars video game…

Yes, it was great. Lucas got in touch with me and asked; they wanted more of a “writerly” feel to their video games at LucasArts, and so initially I did Outlaws, which was tremendous fun. Obviously with a game, you’re working in collaboration with game designers, so they had a vision for characters. But with the Star Wars: Starfighter game, we were given the opportunity to write our own characters, which was like an honour, creating characters for the Star Wars universe. I wanted to go back to more of the Western feel that was in the original film, before it became an exploration of early twentieth century politics. It’s not linear writing, it was the early days of PlayStation 2, so we were looking at non-linear progression; it was more like theatre, because you’re involving the audience much more, so there’s an interaction both ways. I didn’t suddenly lose myself in the world of video games, but I adored doing it.  

Gail Carriger is best known for her whimsical steampunk fantasies, specifically the bestselling Parasol Protectorate novels, which have been translated into graphic format, multiple languages and possibly a TV-series. Her latest project, Crudrat, is a departure from her usual Victorian adventure novels, and is a full cast audio production that quickly achieved the funding it needed via Kickstarter. We caught up with her to find out more about this new project.

Starburst: Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Gail Carriger: I write very silly steampunk comedy of manners for adults and young adults, with the occasional foray into science fiction.

Tell us about Crudrat.

It is my little baby steps into science fiction and it’s sort of the young adult sci-fi that I wish I had been able to read when I was a young adult. It’s about a girl who’s an outcast on a space station, and in this particular far future they use children for child labour; similar to the way they used children during the Industrial Revolution in English cottons mills. She’s one of these crudrats, a cleaner on a space station. The book begins when she officially grows too big and as a result they’re considering of expelling her from the space station to die.

So she goes on an adventure to save herself and in the process gets involved with various fuzzy aliens and stuff like that.

Why the departure from comedy steampunk to Young Adult focused sci fi?

I love Young Adult literature, it’s my favourite to read, and I also love space opera, as well as hard sci-fi.  When I was a kid, it took me a really long time to learn to love science fiction. I felt like there wasn’t an entry for me as a young female reader and so I decided that I would write that book myself.  I was also writing the Parasol Protectorate books at the time and that series really took off, so this one got a little bit left behind.  I missed it and I wanted to bring it to life and rediscover it. I felt like Kickstarter and an audio book was a really good way to introduce it to people in a manner that I would have loved to have it as a kid. I was a big fan of audio books growing up.

How does your knowledge of history, especially the Victorian era, affect this work?

Quite a bit. A lot of the aspects of the alien culture in Crudrat draws on ancient civilisations. I’m interested in the regression in fashion, so even though this is the far future book, some of the clothing has Victorian influences on it. You picked up on something that I’m only just realising; this book owes a little bit to The Water Babies because of that kind of chimney sweep/outcaste/dirty child discovering themselves vibe to it.

What would you say the central themes of Crudrat are?
I would say it’s a pretty classic young adult book in that it’s a voyage of self discovery about finding your place in the universe. It’s also an exploration of the skills that someone can develop that can then be utilised in a different context, if you think outside of your own world view.

What are your influences?

Probably a lot of the classic tough girl fantasies that I read growing up. Tamara Pierce, for example. I know she’s not all that popular in the UK, but hugely formative on me, because she writes very tough, very smart young women in fantasy settings.  I wanted to write a book like that, but science fiction.

Crudrat will be a full cast audio, why does it need to be produced in this format?

I was raised without television so a lot of my childhood was spent listening to audio books. I’ve pretty much listened to books on tape my entire life. Almost everything I write is meant to be read out loud, and I always read my books out loud to myself. I have a strong kind of casual voice that lends itself to audio production. The other reason is that I love the vibrancy of full cast, rather than just one narrator. Not that a single narrator can’t be marvellous, they certainly can, but I think Crudrat lends itself to multiple voices and a musical score. Dan my producer was super excited to go ahead with it.

Where do you see yourself in the steampunk community as it grows?

I think any subculture will, as it gets bigger, naturally faction, that’s just humanity for you. My favourite parts of steampunk are the whimsical aspects and the reinvention of etiquette and politeness, with people being kind to one another. I also love the intellectual salon side of it with people sharing their knowledge and sharing their skills, teaching each other how to make these amazing and ridiculous objects and costumes.

Personally I would love to see that side of steampunk dominate, but I’m not very optimistic about it.  I’m fortunate that I only seem to encounter that side of steampunk, though that might be because I’m usually a guest of honour, so I’ve only really seen the best side of it.

If you were stranded on a desert island, and you could only bring one book with you, what would it be?
The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia A. McKillip

Futurama or The Simpsons?

Bob’s Burgers.

Tea or Coffee?
Tea.

Holmes or Watson?

Holmes.

Space Travel or Time Travel?

Time Travel.

Truth or Beauty?
Truth!

More information on Crudrat can be found on crudrat.com. Gail’s latest book, Curtsies & Conspiracies is out November 5th, 2013.

Dubreq Ltd are better known for being the manufacturers of the iconic pop-culture instrument, the Stylophone, but are heading into the exciting world of tabletop gaming. We caught up with the company director, Ben Jarvis, to talk to him about Mechabrick, a new game that promises to combine giant robot combat action with LEGO-like building blocks.

What is Mechabrick?

It’s the culmination of five months of very hard work, driven by 37 years of being a geek. Mechabrick is a combination of three things I have loved since I was a kid, combined into one ‘perfect product’ (my opinion may be a little biased). I have always loved LEGO, I’ve always loved tabletop games and, from Transformers to Zoids to Gundam, I’ve always loved big robots with guns!

Mechabrick throws all those elements together into a board game that sees 1/144 scale mechs, built from Minifigs, fighting around scenery built from plastic building bricks. The original idea was simply: “Wouldn’t it be cool to make kits to convert Minifigs into giant scale mecha?”

This then slowly morphed into “Wouldn’t it be cool to build scenes and dioramas out of bricks for those mecha?” and finally became “Wouldn’t it be awesome to arm those mecha and actually play a game where they fight around plastic brick scenery?” We didn’t want to become a clone brick producer so the idea of just making after-market kits to convert Minifigs into the mechs seemed the ideal way to make the game, likewise, we’re just encouraging the gamers to build the scenery (we will be offering instructions and suggestions) and use their imagination to ‘build the game’ as they see fit. This project is all about creativity, unlike a lot of big games companies, we believe that the end-users have at least as good an imagination as us and we are hoping they will help expand the game, add to the rules and build this into something more than we can create ourselves.

What is the appeal of doing a Giant-Robot assault game with plastic building blocks?

I’m an AFOL (Adult Fan Of LEGO). I’m also a competition miniature painter, and I used to be a gamer. For me, the idea of getting to build scenery for a game out of plastic bricks, then convert and upgrade my robots, then use them to fight a battle is the perfect combination of creativity and gaming. It crosses an already somewhat blurry line between gaming/miniatures and brick built models.

Others have made rule-sets to play games using robots built from plastic bricks but this is more than that, this is an actual physical product (and will hopefully be followed by a whole array of follow on products to expand the idea further).

How customisable are the Mecha? Will we be able to use our unique mini-figs?

The basic mecha in the first game use the torso and legs from any Minifig. Only the legs and waist are really visible once the mech is assembled so it’s just down to colour matching to create the look you want. We have however made this a product that can be used how the end-user wants to use it.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a lot of the parts from our mechs get used in converting Minifigs or making mechs that we haven’t even dreamed of yet. If we either meet some of our stretch goals or get to keep developing this product line later anyway we hope to bring out an increasing number of parts that add to that potential creativity.

What makes Mechabrick different from games like BattleTech?

From a gaming point of view, Mechabrick is designed to be a family-friendly game. I don’t want that to put off the hard-core gamers as we are adding in an ever expanding set of add-on rules, developed with the help of some very experienced tabletop games designers, to really open this up into something exciting. But at its most basic level the boxed game can be played with a 4-page rule-book and be understood by 10-year olds.

I remember being frustrated as a teenager that I couldn’t play a lot of the tabletop games with my younger brother because the 60+ page rulebooks were insurmountable for a ten year old, so I ended up writing simplified versions for us to play when we were kids. This does that from the start, strips away all the extraneous stuff to leave a very simple, almost chess-like, set of rules that govern the core game. Those basic rules however can be added to build stories and scenarios that will make this an exciting game for anyone.

From a physical point of view it’s the building brick element that obviously sets this apart from robot battle games that have gone before. The core of the strategy in the game is about fairly standardised mechs on both sides, but making careful decisions about weapons and upgrades to those mechs before the game starts, that will be where the real skill lies.

Do you have plans to do Kaiju fighting so we can improvise a LEGO-based Pacific Rim game?

Funny you should say that!

One of the first expansions for the game, if we get it funded, is to make a new enemy for the mechs to fight, some kind of mecha-zilla to attack the city from the sea. How that happens in terms of actual physical models and expanded rules we’ll have to see but, having built a demo game-board for this game that includes a harbour, it became the obvious next step!

Will the game allow us to use other models made from building bricks? Tanks, UFOs etc?

That is certainly something we are considering. The core idea of the game is about customizing your mechs to battle each other but, in the expanded rules, there is no reason we can’t introduce other vehicles into the fight. I think this may be something that happens in the form of new rules and some instructions to build such things from standard bricks rather than new physical products.

What plans do you have for Mechabricks’ future?

Well, getting the ‘Gangs of Neon City’ game funded on Kickstarter is goal number 1. Assuming that happens (which it looks likely to do at this stage), we plan to release a range of new weapons and add-ons for the mechs on a regular basis over the coming year or two. At some stage next year we also have two further games that we hope to bring to Kickstarter. One is a direct follow-on from the first Mechabrick game and is tentatively titled ‘Mechabrick – Red Legacy’. It will introduce a full new set of different mech designs and, as the name suggests, a different setting that will contrast with the shiny far-eastern cities of the first game, having a more dystopic, eastern-block feel to it.

We also have another totally different game that is also set in the Mechabrick universe, but takes the fighting to a different scale, and a very, very different location. The tentative title ‘Supermassive‘ probably hints at where that one is going.

Ultimately we are hoping to take our company in a totally new direction (a direction we are all passionate about) off the back of Mechabrick. We hope to expand and be able to focus completely on games, models, miniatures and ‘geeky stuff’ from now on. I can’t wait.

Mechabrick can be found on Kickstarter, and ends November 13th.

Writer/director Christopher MacBride talks to us about his latest movie, The Conspiracy, out now on DVD/Blu-ray…

Starburst: How influential was the documentary medium in shaping The Conspiracy?

Christopher MacBride: I love the documentary medium, and if I had the talent I would love to make documentary films, but I think it is a very specific type of talent that I don’t necessarily have. My talent lies in fiction storytelling, and at its heart that is what this film is. I looked to many different documentaries as an inspiration for the story, everything Errol Morris had ever done, and the Coles which was a big inspiration.

Essentially I was looking at documentaries as films that presented themselves as truth and hard fact, but the truth of it is that they are actually a human being’s opinion. A specific human being has formed an opinion about a subject, and then made a film that has justified that opinion. That ties directly into the story I wanted to tell, which was the idea of manipulating people’s perceptions, whether through the media, conspiracy theories or a documentary film. So documentaries were a huge inspiration in the making of The Conspiracy, and I think the documentary medium is something very subjective, and I think people often forget that it is based on one human’s point of view.

The Conspiracy played at FrightFest, it must have been a daunting prospect walking into the main screen of the Empire cinema packed full of genre fans to introduce the film and take part in the post question and answer. How do you look back on your FrightFest induction?

I have been excited to show the film at FrightFest because it has such a great reputation internationally. I am actually lucky that I have done quite a few film festivals already with the film, so I have sort of gotten the jitters out in terms of getting up in front of the audience and introducing the film. Even so I think every filmmaker gets a little nervous when they show their film. You are vulnerable when you are showing something that you have worked on for years. You are putting yourself out there, and you are standing in the theatre as they are watching it, and so you can hear people’s sniggers, or you can hear people saying, “Oh this is shit.” So it is definitely a vulnerable thing for any artist to show their work. You are always a bit jittery, but generally the bottom line for me is people seeing your work is a good thing. When I walk into the Leicester Square cinema and there are a thousand people in there about to watch my film, jitters or no jitters that is a great feeling, and when it ends and people applaud and there are endless questions afterwards, that’s great. This thing that was nothing which I invented out of my mind and made into a movie, and is now being shown to a thousand people in London is a fantastic feeling. So yeah, it is a little nerve-wracking, but it’s what I signed up for as a filmmaker.

That’s what’s interesting about art, creating something from nothing and putting it out there for an audience to experience; especially on a format that can be distributed across the world. It’s a great privilege.

I have dreamt of being a filmmaker since I was young. I still sort of pinch myself when I see something I wrote and directed on a movie screen with a full audience, or when I see a journalist has written something about my film. Even if it’s a bad review I’m still, “This is incredible. Someone’s talking about my movie.” It is amazing and I hope I never lose that amazement about it.

We live in a world right now where people are able to express themselves in so many different ways they couldn’t before. You can post a YouTube video of yourself playing with your cat, and there can be a million people that watch it, and suddenly you are YouTube famous. Then there’s all these reality TV shows, all these ways to suddenly become famous or to put yourself out there, in many ways that there never were before. For people who really care about art, and want to be artists, there is still a thrill in being able to become known based on the work that you have done; not based on the fact that you uploaded a funny video or you took a shit on a cat or something. You learned your craft, you hopefully perfected your craft to a degree, and then you are now showing your work to the world. It’s thrilling and as I meet more and more people in the film industry I see how many of them do become sort of jaded about it all, and I just hope that never happens to me. I am amazed that anyone would take the time to actually sit down and watch something that I have made. Even one person doing it is amazing to me let alone a theatre of a thousand people like tonight. It’s incredible.

You’ve spoken about the genesis of the film briefly and your intentions. How did you develop that exploratory thread?

The line between truth and fiction in the film was always a delicate balancing act. I never wanted to insult the audience’s intelligence by trying to convince them that it was real, because I think that smart people are just way too savvy for that. I just wanted to be true to my own personal experience of investigating the world of conspiracy theories. When I looked into conspiracy theories, when I spent months and months exploring that world, I lost track of what was true and what wasn’t. Truth as a concept became a grey area, and as disconcerting as that was, it became the heart of the inspiration for the film, which is how do you assemble your world based on the information that is given to you, and who is controlling that information?

So I was very conscious from the moment I started writing the script that I wanted to blur the line between fact and fiction in what was hopefully a unique way, by telling a fictional story but including as many real life elements as I could. I would include real life conspiracy theory; real-life people who I would interview that were not actors but mixed in with the actors so that you wouldn’t be able to tell what parts were real and what parts weren’t. Even the fictional aspects of the film I made up I would base on very real things, so you’re not sure what is straightforward truth, straightforward fiction, and what is fiction allegorically based on truth. Again I did that not as a gimmick but because that is true to the experience of investigating conspiracy theories. You are completely rudderless in terms of discriminating what is truth and what is a paranoid twisted version of the truth.

So you are attempting to create a dialogue with the films audience, to host a conversation on the film’s line of enquiry?

Yeah, I guess it’s hard to have a dialogue because it’s a one way street, but I definitely don’t want to ever insult an audience’s intelligence. That is important to me and I hate it when a movie does that to me. An example is the ending of The Conspiracy; it is quite a challenging ending in the last five minutes. It is an ending that fools many people and many people misinterpret it. I knew that was a risk going in. I thought to myself, ‘Smart people will get this ending. Smart people will see through what is happening here. Even though nine out of ten people who see the film will not get the ending, it is worth it to me if that one out of ten people gets it.’ So that was something I had to fight for, but I believed in that, and you have to make your art to cater to the highest common denominator, and not the lowest common denominator.

Did your choice of ending meet with any resistance?

The people that finance films are justifiably always worried about the audience, and I have often found that people who are in a position to finance films are very concerned with making sure everyone understands the film. They try and simplify things as much as they can. They are terrified about audiences being confused or losing a part of the story, and sometimes that is a smart thing to do, but I think often they underestimate the audience’s intelligence in terms of being able to follow the thread of a story. I encountered some resistance, but nothing that monumental. I was able to fairly easily convince the powers that be that we should cater to the highest common denominator in our ending, and to their credit they went along with it. We do have quite a challenging ending that most people don’t get, and that’s a credit to the people that financed the film that they went along with it. So kudos to them!

In blurring the line between fact and fiction, you touch upon the conflict that is at the heart of cinema. Everything in film in a sense derives from reality and to quote David Cronenberg, “Everything you do is autobiographical in the sense that it’s filtered through your experiences and sensibilities.”

Yeah, even a blatantly fictional film in some sense you could call it a warped documentary, because it is one human being’s perception of the world represented through stories. So you could absolutely say that. Our film blatantly plays with that idea. Just because you watch something that is a documentary, doesn’t mean you should necessarily trust it. It is still a perception and all film is attuning you to a certain perception. The music you use, the way you edit, the colour correction; everything is designed to make the audience feel specific things whether it is a fictional story or a documentary; whether it is a romantic comedy or it is a two hundred million dollar action film. These are stories that are told to people in dark rooms where they have their rapt attention and they can manipulate their psyche to their will, and so filmmakers in a way are magicians. They can really manipulate an audience’s thoughts for two hours. That’s sort of the philosophical, broad way to look at it. Specifically with our film, we wanted to play with the idea that human beings create their reality based on the information they are given, and whether that information is the news, conspiracy theory web site or documentary film, we are all constantly forming opinions based on other people’s opinions without realising that. I think that is something we should all be a little more vigilant about, of how much of our choices are born of our own free will, and how much of our choices are an illusion, and are actually born of someone else’s will.

Perhaps a fundamental law of our existence is that it is exclusively subjective with objectivity absent.

Our experience as human beings is utterly subjective; we can’t crawl out of our own brains; we can’t crawl out of our own senses. We experience our realities through our eyes, ears, nose, mouth and touch, and there’s no way to escape that. I find that fascinating, and I think film is a great metaphor for that. When you are sitting in the dark staring at this giant screen, with this loud sound, it is arguably the closest you come to experiencing the world through someone else’s subjectivity, and that’s part of the magic of film. It is also part of the danger when it comes to documentary film or the news, when it comes to people realising the power of this medium, and how they can manipulate it in a certain way, and that’s what the film is about.

Of course, in a packed Empire cinema, there would have been a multitude of interpretations, which is the very thing you are talking about.

There is nothing more fascinating than listening to the views of an audience who have just come out of the screening; they are so different from one another sometimes. As a filmmaker you can’t take people’s opinions too seriously, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way. You want everybody to enjoy your film, but you have to have a healthy understanding that this is an utterly subjective thing. No matter how much people try and reduce things to a Siskel and Ebert style thumbs up and thumbs down, the truth of the matter is that art is one hundred per cent subjective. I can go on the internet if I want to, and I can see one person point to an aspect of the film and talk about why that one aspect is the reason why it is so terrible, and then I can look at another person who points to the exact same aspect and says that’s why the film is brilliant. When you see stuff like that you just realise that you cannot take it too seriously. This is a subjective medium, and everyone’s opinion is subjective. All art has been like that since the beginning. You just have to do the best you can for your film so that it’s something you enjoy, and then don’t take it too seriously.

What distinctions would you draw between the American and UK audience’s response to the film?

I would say generally that just based on film festivals and when I have seen the film screened in movie theatres across the world, I would say North American audiences are a little more vocal, and they sort of verbalise things out loud. They’ll make the screening an experience so to speak. In England and in Europe in general, I found people are much more serious when they watch the film, perhaps because there is more of a reverence for the art of film over here, and so there was a definite higher level of intensity when I saw the film in London tonight. You had a feeling that people were quiet, absolutely glued to the screen and hanging on every moment. Even though certain jokes that maybe in North America people would start laughing and clapping at, they don’t do the same thing in London. You absolutely feel that they are hanging onto every beat of the film, which is a great feeling. Obviously as a filmmaker you feel that film is an important thing, and so you can identify with audiences in London, where you are “Yeah, damned right you should be quiet”, that is exactly what you should be doing.

How would you sell this film to people or persuade people to take the time to discover The Conspiracy?

Well, I would say that there are a lot of things going on in the world, a lot of things that most people don’t know about. The forces that are shaping the direction of our societies, of our planet are not necessarily in the public light. If you go to see The Conspiracy, on one level it is an enjoyable thriller about some people who uncover a hidden truth and get in way over their heads. It can also be a little bit of an eye opener in terms of some of the different forces that are at work in the world, and which are trying to control all of our existences.

You get a combination of entertainment and perhaps a little bit of inspiration about certain aspects of society that perhaps people haven’t heard of before. There are a lot of people that maintain power in the world, but not through being in the spotlight. There are people that maintain power by being in the shadows, and they have a vested interest in staying in the shadows. As much craziness as there may be in the conspiracy theory world, one good thing is that they are trying to shed light on organisations operating in the shadows. If you are at all interested in that type of thing, then this is definitely the movie for you.

Is it a cynical or optimistic take on conspiracy theories and theorists?

I would say that it is neither. The movie doesn’t make fun of conspiracy theorists, but at the same time it doesn’t disagree with them blindly. It presents a pretty even handed view of conspiracy theorists and of the theories that they believe in. I think it just mirrors the experience that I had, which is a naturally sceptical person sucked into the world of conspiracy theory, and what that can do to your psyche. I tried very hard to not be judgemental about the conspiracy theory world or the theories themselves. I really want people to make up their own minds. Again going back to the idea that people assume documentaries or films are the truth, I think that is a mistake, and just because I made a film about conspiracy theories doesn’t make me any kind of an expert on the topic. People should go and see this film but then make up their own minds to what they believe. I was very conscious of that throughout the process of writing the script, and I didn’t want this to be preachy or telling anyone what to think. I just want to expose people hopefully to some new ideas, but I want them to make up their own minds.

The Conspiracy is being described by some as a found footage film, a sub-genre that has become saturated. As a consequence there is a contingent of the audience ready to turn away from any films that fall under the found footage heading. As a filmmaker how conscious of walking this line were you?

The first thing I would say is I don’t see it as found footage; I see it as a faux doc. It is meant to look like a finished documentary that has been cut together, music has been put on it and it is as cinematic as a documentary can be. But it has found footage elements to it. When I started writing the film years ago, the market place was not as saturated as it is today with the sub-genre, so it was definitely somewhat disappointing to me as year after year after year this became a bigger thing. As I have always said, as long as the gimmick of fake doc or found footage, whatever you want to call it, is intrinsically tied to what the story is about, then I think you can tell a good story. If it is just a gimmick, if it is just done to save money or because it’s the rage right now, then that’s a mistake. But if you are using that device because it is linked to the very thing that the story is about, then I think there is a good story to be told.

The Conspiracy is your feature debut. Sophie Lellouche, writer-director of Paris-Manhattan remarked to us, “First movies are very different, they are dreams. They are what you expect cinema to be.” This question is twofold. What are your thoughts on Sophie’s observation, and how do you distinguish Christopher MacBride the director before and after The Conspiracy?

Definitely the first feature film you make has got to be different to every subsequent film. You have that nervousness before you start. ‘Good Lord, do I know what I am doing?’ For myself at least it took a couple of days into production before I realised, ‘Okay, maybe I know what I am doing here. Maybe I have the skillset that is required.’

You look at a lot of filmmakers; Orson Welles is the exception. Their first films are not necessarily their masterpieces, but are very, very interesting. If you look at David Lynch and Eraserhead, or Francis Ford Coppola and Dementia 13, there is always something really interesting about a filmmaker’s first film. Even Christopher Nolan who a lot of people think of Memento as his first film, it was actually The Following, which is an interesting film. I love looking at the first features of film directors who become something. There’s always something you can really discern about their tastes from that first film.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote this book where he talked about how anyone who’s going to become an expert in their field needs I think it is ten thousand hours of practice. He references Bill Gates and all these people as well as hockey players, about how if you have a certain amount of practice in a chosen craft, you’ll become an expert at it. You can do that when it comes to writing. You can practice enough that you become an expert. But directing it is almost impossible to achieve that amount of practice because directing takes money, and you just cannot direct enough to get ten thousand hours of practice under your belt unless you are an eighty year old man named Robert Altman. So you are always a little bit out on the ledge. Even though you are a film director, you could wait years in between directing films, and so if I wait one, two, three years before I direct my next film, it’ll be a long time between jobs. I’m sure when I get on my next film set that first day I’ll be a little shaky, and just hope that I’ll still have it.

Here you have chosen an interesting subject to tackle for your debut feature, so what does the future hold?

I think I’m done with found footage. I doubt I’ll ever make another found footage film or fake doc film or whatever you want to call it. I definitely want to never repeat myself, so I’m making a film with Twentieth Century Fox at the moment called Echo that is I guess you could call it a Philip K. Dickesque style thriller. I’m developing a lot of other ideas but I just want them all to be as different from one another as they can be.

Generally speaking I like things that create their own worlds. With The Conspiracy even though it is a low budget independent film, it sort of creates a mythology, and it creates its own universe really, and that’s what I want to do. With every film I want to create an individual world and then go into that world. So yeah, I just don’t want to repeat myself and keep creating worlds I guess. It’s the best way that I can put it.

THE CONSPIRACY is out now on DVD/Blu-ray.

House of Bad, the acclaimed horror hit that’s piling up the good reviews, has been snapped up for distribution by Osiris Entertainment.

The pic features an electric mix of young up-and-coming stars including Sadie Katz, currently starring in Chavez Cage of Glory, and Jobs co-star Clint Jung. Heather L. Tyler (Dexter), Cheryl Sands (Nip/Tuck) and Lisamarie Costabile (Rescue Me) are also part of the ensemble.

Written and directed by Jim Towns, House of Bad tells of three sisters on the run with a suitcase full of stolen drugs, yearning to break free from their sordid pasts. When the eldest sister Teig (Tyler) decides they’re going to hide out in their old, abandoned family house, its painful memories quickly become too real to fight off. Unable to distinguish dreams from reality, this attempt at a new lease on life turns into a race to survive.

Starburst caught up with director Towns to congratulate him on the acquisition and find out more about the little film that’s getting big buzz.

Starburst: How would you describe the film? Horror? Thriller? Drama? It looks like it could be a combination of all three.

Jim Towns: I like to call it a ‘Haunted Heist’ film. It does blend a lot of different genres. There’s obviously the supernatural horror element of the house itself being haunted by the memories of what happened there. Then there’s the more physical terror of these three girls on the run with their stolen drugs, and the idea that the sister’s drug dealer boyfriend is hunting them to get his stash back and take revenge. Plus there’s a lot of family drama going on between the three sisters- issues that have been there since they were all little and are now boiling over. All those elements end up combining to build the tension within the house to a frenzied degree, so the audience can’t be sure where the next threat is coming from – outside or inside.

You co-wrote the script. Any films or filmmakers that influenced the direction or tone of the story?

I’m a classic film nut. Old Universal films like The Wolfman and Dracula and The Black Cat… these great old horror films whose dramas tended to play out in parlour rooms and bedchambers… that kind of claustrophobic narrative – like a stage play – was the way I knew we could build the ambient horror for the film, while keeping it focused around a single location.

The hardest part of doing an indy film is finding financing, what was your experience like?

House of Bad’s financing mostly came through our producers Scott Frazelle and Dorota Skrzypek. We did a small Indiegogo campaign as well. As the scope of the film (and its budget) grew, we brought in a few other backers, and Scott and Dorota and I had to dig a little deeper to get that quality up on the screen. We were fortunate that so many industry professionals – people who do the big shows here in LA – were willing to help our small film out, I guess mainly because they saw the quality of what we were doing and began to believe it was something special as well.

When did you know you had something good? Was it that first screening?

Films don’t always go the direction you originally planned, and sometimes they go in a direction you really wish they hadn’t and that’s happened to me in the past… but heading into House of Bad I already knew we were in great shape – my DP Chad Courtney is uber-talented and a great fella to work with. Our cast was incredible and all three girls looked gorgeous no matter how bruised and bloodied we got them. The shoot itself was fast and frenzied and is now a bit of a blur, but I remember even then watching dailies and being really pleased with the look and the feel of the footage. For a smaller-budget film we had a pretty healthy amount of coverage, and it took my editor Nina Lucia and I a while to craft all that into what you see – and longer for all the sound and score and visual effects to come together. So I’ve been very proud of House of Bad since the start. I think it’s a worthy addition to a long line of similar films, and it’s been great to read so many respected critics and film sites agreeing with me.

The film is being released as a DVD premiere. Did you initially hope for a theatrical, or in this day and age, do you think DVD is just as good as getting a cinema release?

There’s definitely a prestige to having a theatrical bow, of course. It’s great to see your film’s name up on the marquee. But it also complicates and delays your video release, which in the non-studio circle, is really your bread and butter. We’ve done a few select screenings around Los Angeles, and while I’d love to show the film around anywhere that would put it up, I think DVD and VOD are a much more direct conduit to viewers in the US and especially around the globe.

House of Bad is available on DVD in the US December 3rd with a UK release TBC.

Gunnar Hansen took time out from his book tour to talk to Starburst about Chain Saw Confidential, the definitive account of the making of Texas Chain Saw Massacre told by those truly in the know…

Starburst: It’s forty years since the original TCM. What prompted you to want to give the ‘inside story’ in your new book Chain Saw Confidential?

Gunnar Hansen: I thought it was the right time. The myth of Chain Saw Massacre was growing, and much of it was simply wrong. In addition, I knew we were losing more and more of the people who made the movie, and I wanted to talk to them before it was too late.

As you mention in the introduction to the book TCM has recent serious attention from critics and academics over the years, reading various social and political meaning into the film. What do you make of this attention to the film from scholars and academics?

I think it’s great, though a bit ironic. At first, of course, critics and academics weren’t the least bit interested, except for the Canadian critic Robin Wood. Otherwise it was nothing to them. But as the popular interest in Chain Saw grew, academics started to take notice. After that, they were falling all over themselves to make sure we know that they were the first to recognise the movie’s greatness.

We have a copy of the original script with your comments in the margins, you have written in Leatherface’s ‘dialogue’ as gibberish with a translation next to it. How did you develop Leatherface’s verbal ‘language’ in the film?

There really wasn’t anything to develop. The lines were as written, and my marginal notes reflected what Tobe told me that gibberish was supposed to mean. When that didn’t work – after the first take, Tobe said there was too much intelligence in the character – we did it again, this time ignoring any potential “meanings” – that is, my marginal notes – and I just presented a bunch of gibberish, as if Leatherface understood that sounds meant something, but did not know how to form a thought and turn it into a sentence.

Chain Saw Confidential draws attention to some of the film’s unspoken heroes. Daniel Pearl’s contribution as the DOP, for example, has become more recognised over the years. What are your memories of working with him?

He was very focused on this job, so he and Tobe spent long hours discussing the framing and lighting of the shots, and working out the camera movement. I never worked with him directly, in the sense that he and I might have a conversation about a shot – that was between him and Tobe.

You have recently written a horror haiku for Kyra Schon. Is ‘horror’ something you find yourself returning to in your writing and poetry?

No, actually not. I wrote the haiku because Kyra asked me for something for her site and she was having a poetry contest at the time – though these haiku were not to be part of that competition. I really enjoyed writing them – the restrictions of the haiku form made it an unusual challenge.

Chain Saw Confidential details the financial travesty of the film’s distribution. Are the parties concerned any closer to receiving reasonable settlements for their shares in the film?

No. It’s a long-dead issue, really. All that was ever settled was that we would not receive any more money from the distributor, since they filed bankruptcy. I think we all understand that there will never be any large money payments to the shareholders.

Tell us about your book tour for Chain Saw Confidential. Any plans to come over here to the UK? It was great to see you and Marilyn Burns in ’99 for the film’s DVD and cinema re-release.

At this point, I have no direct plans to come to the UK to promote the book. I have always enjoyed my visits, though, and hope to go back before too long. I might be doing an appearance in the UK next year. If so, I will of course try to tie it in with promoting the book.

CHAIN SAW CONFIDENTIAL is out now and reviewed here.

Derek Magyar talks to us about his new film, No One Lives, out now on DVD/Blu-ray… 

Starburst: Most of your career to date has been spent in front of the camera, but in recent years you have pursued opportunities to direct.

Derek Magyar: My father’s a filmmaker and it’s been in my blood since I was a kid. It’s always been something I’ve wanted to do and my father has always supported me. The time presented itself, or rather the script presented itself and it just felt right for me to direct this film. The next thing I knew I was directing my first feature.

Flying Lessons was your directorial feature debut. In your follow-up The Secrets We Share you are directing and co-writing.

I supported the writing of The Secrets We Share, whilst someone else did the core writing. I did more of the dialogue stuff, to kind of take it to the next level.

How valuable was the experience of being in front of the camera when you finally stepped behind the camera to direct?

In terms of directing my first film, what the experience of acting gave me was exponential. It gave me the ability to know what was necessary, when it was necessary, what the camera really is, what the shot is, when to do this, when to do that. It was life changing.

Is directing something that could replace acting?

I don’t see myself becoming a full time director, but I do see myself directing throughout my career, that is God willing.

A lot of filmmakers cut their teeth on short film production. Would you be interested in exploring the craft of filmmaking through not only feature films but short films as well?

If it was the right project, sure. I’m open to anything that’s going to be special.

For horror filmmakers, is the process a journey of catharsis, a means of expelling the darkness, and putting it up on the screen? Do you put any stock into this idea?

Always I think. For me No One Lives is a character that couldn’t be further away from who I am. I tried to find one piece of the character I could tap into, and from there I just let it go and let myself unfold within the character. So I certainly let go of a lot of pent up aggression and anger from who knows where in my life.

Whilst some people say there is nothing to it, do you think film operates on a sub-conscious level and does not necessarily function on a wholly conscious level?

I don’t know how to answer that further in depth other than to say yes I do. I think it affects us on another conscious level, from the viewer to the filmmaker to the actor. There are lots of things that are sub-conscious that will come out later in life or you will never realise, but I absolutely believe in that; it’s absolutely a part of it.

No One Lives is first and foremost intended to be an entertaining yarn, but continuing this narrative of thought, there should be a reason for a film to exist. Having said that is there a reason to be heavy handed with subtext as it always finds a way to exist within a piece of filmmaking?

The film began as a way, it is still a way to entertain people, and it’s a place for people to lose themselves and not think about their problems or about life. With any movie, if you are able to go and see it, and lose yourself for two hours then congratulations, that’s a success.

That approach of escapism can discreetly push an audience towards reflection on the subtext and deeper themes and ideas.

That’s very true, and sometimes that is a good thing and sometimes it is a bad thing.

As actors you wear masks, and you have spoken about the difficulty to separate yourself from the character at the end of the day. Are there any characters in particular who you have found it difficult to separate yourself from?

No One Lives was certainly like that for me. It was definitely something that I went deep into, and it was a long shoot, and it was tough to kind of wrap and put the mask on the next day.

But at the same time that is why you act in films to put that mask on, and so you have to take negative with the positive.

It goes with it. Some people throughout the making of the film are just present in the moment and then their mask comes off right away. It’s not the way I act, not my style, and not my method of acting. So it’s a little bit harder I think for my style in terms of ripping off the mask in the beginning, but that’s the way I know that I can succeed in the work I do.

You began in theatre, and didn’t act on screen until after you graduated. In the theatre you block the character out in rehearsals. Are the consecutive nights similar to the consecutive takes in film in the exploration of the character?

Depending on who the director is I’ll try to get different things in different takes. Once I have created something in the wide shot, if I have to stick to that I stick to it, but within that there is always freedom.

You have your set beginning, middle and end, the journey you have to play and take that has to be formatted, and it is. In film you do have that ability because it is so segmented and so broken up that you are able to potentially try out different things.

You have said No One Lives will be a dilemma for the audience as it is fundamentally evil versus evil. The film turns the idea of morality on its head.

It does, and that was what was so interesting to me. It is a story that in the end is about evil versus evil, and when we are put in that situation who do we root for? What side of yourself do you find yourself gripping to. I thought that was amazing for the audience.

Does the quandary you pose the audience serve to involve or immerse them in the drama much earlier?

Yeah. From pretty early on you can tell it is a story of villainy versus villainy, and so who do you ride with? For the most part you are riding with Luke and the driver, but what can become interesting is the other characters, and your enjoyment of what they are doing. Then you see if you want to follow what they are doing and that story line and find the interest in that.

How do you perceive the place No One Lives occupies in your career?

It is an amazing film for me to be a part of. I was really lucky and it was something I wanted badly. As an actor it was challenging and very helpful in continuing my growth as an actor. Where it came in my career and in my life was perfect.

Speaking with Kevin Chapman recently he spoke about there being only one person for each part compared to other professions, and the responsibility that can stem from that. Are you conscious of that when you take on a role?

Maybe for a moment, but then you have to let that go because you cannot afford to let that be present while you are working.

Besides The Secret We Share are there any other projects you are working on?

I have a film I am working on called Stranded, a sort of psychological thriller about a girl who is running away from her life. She ends up stranded and has to hit the star button to get help, and it’s about the relationship that is spawned between her and the person trying to save her life essentially, because she’s trapped. That person turns out to be a killer. It’s interesting, and is similar to The Hitcher in a more postmodern kind of way. This is one I’m producing and starring in. I have a couple of television shows I have just done that will air. I just did NCIS and an episode of CSI, and I am about to go to Cape Town, South Africa and work on Strike Back. Keep going and keep working.

We have already discussed the differences between theatre and film, how would you contrast the different experiences of television compared to film?

Television is even more so a very well-oiled machine. There is some freedom to create but not much. You have to follow a specific set of rules and you do. If your show is on cable like Breaking Bad for example, then you have a lot of freedom. Procedurals like CSI are very set in their ways, and they work, and people like that. As I said it is a well-oiled machine that’s a, b, c, d equals e.

Have you always been a fan of the horror genre?

Yeah, I have always enjoyed horror films. I am a big fan of The Exorcist, and I like films that involve… I like horror movies where I can see it being possibly a piece of reality. Things that are super far-fetched are just popcorn for me. I’m drawn to a more psychological horror, or thriller-horror film than I am a gore film.

 

Clophill is a tiny, almost quintessentially English village hiding in the Bedfordshire countryside north of London just off the M1. In the 1960s the village – and the nearby ruins of the 14th Century St Mary’s Church – achieved a brief notoriety following reports of a sinister black mass ritual which saw tombs desecrated, remains removed and animals sacrificed. Clophill and its long-deconsecrated church have become infamous for continued reports of alleged supernatural activity ever since. In 2010 a group of filmmakers – actors and real-life documentary-makers – spent a weekend at Clophill to put together a very different kind of ‘found footage’ horror movie. The Paranormal Diaries: Clophill blurs the line between fact and fiction as a routine documentary slowly becomes something altogether more chilling – and the audience is never sure what’s fact and what’s fiction. Starburst recently spoke to the film’s co-director Kevin Gates (The Zombie Diaries) to find out the truth about the legends of Clophill…

Starburst: Have you always been a fan of horror films and has it always been your ambition to make genre movies?

Kevin Gates: I grew up watching horror films; there’s a story I often tell of when I sneaked downstairs at four years old to watch a film called The Devil’s Rain which my parents had rented. I’ve had the filmmaking bug ever since. It’s my parents’ fault really! The art college I went to ran a filmmaking course; I’ve always been a bit of a film buff so I enrolled on the course which was very practical and allowed me to use my compositional skills from my art studies to become a fairly decent cameraman and editor and I went from there. I studied experimental film at University and started working on short films after that. I worked in Soho for a bit in post-production places but spending a few years trying to climb the ladder in the hope of being noticed wasn’t really what interested me. I wanted to make horror films and the only way I could do that was to fund them myself which is what I did with The Zombie Diaries and it all started there.

Your first features, The Zombie Diaries and its sequel, were low-budget self-funded ‘found footage’ movies. Clophill is similar in style although more of a faux documentary. Is ‘found footage’ something you’re a particular advocate of or is it more a case of ‘needs must’ at the moment?

It’s an area I’ve always liked. I remember seeing The Legend of Boggy Creek and I liked Blair Witch when it came out, it’s probably in my ‘top ten’. I wanted to make a zombie film and (co-director) Mike Bartlett and I are both fans of Blair Witch and we thought of the idea of doing a sort of mash-up of the zombie film with a video diary approach. It was one of those things which was a passion project but at the same time we couldn’t have perceived that George Romero was going to do Diary of the Dead just as we were finishing and screening The Zombie Diaries! But that coincidence actually led to a number of things happening which benefited the film. Clophill was shot before we did Zombie Diaries 2; we were waiting around for funding for the sequel – the first one did really well, there was lots of interest but there were also lots of people wasting our time and we thought ‘well, we’ve got all this equipment, let’s go out and shoot something.’

So how did the idea of the Clophill project come about?

I knew about the local legend of Clophill because it’s quite close to where I live. I went up there in about 1990 as a teenager – it was one of those legends I’d heard about and it had always been in the back of my mind as a great location for a film – and nobody had really done anything about Clophill. There was a lot of coverage dating back from the ’60s but it was mostly news stories so it was something I wanted to do and the opportunity to do it came up in 2010 and we spent a weekend there shooting it. The key was I wanted to do something a bit different that wasn’t just another ‘found footage’ film but which was, for the most part, a straight up documentary. Mike and I funded it ourselves which was very different from Zombie Diaries 2 which was made subsequently which was funded by the US and UK distributors. We had lots of issues with the delivery date being accelerated and we were being rushed so with Clophill we had as much time as we wanted to put the film together.

How much of the film was actually scripted in advance?

When we set out for the weekend to film at Clophill there was no script at all. What I wrote was an itinerary of what we were going to do for that weekend which involved arranging interviews with certain people at certain locations and going off and doing them. The Luton Paranormal Society came down on one of the nights and in the itinerary we had things like the ouija board experiment or the séance which we were going to do at some point just to see what happened. The ‘ten minutes alone’ sequence which became a key point of the film just came up over the weekend because of all these people telling us there was this activity in a certain corner of the graveyard so we thought ‘let’s spend some time over there and see what happens’. So we had all this footage from the weekend which I really liked but what I wanted to do was take it a bit further and have fictitious parts which were scripted that would fit in and around the ‘story’ but nothing that was too far removed from the reality of the stuff that had really taken place there. All the other stuff that we shot was done elsewhere which you probably can’t tell from the film but some of the ruins and the woods we shot at different locations. We were conscious that we got all the footage we needed that weekend, a lot of other stuff was shot elsewhere and worked in because we shot so many cutaways that weekend that we had a wealth of material to work with.

How much of the fiction were your cast aware of prior to filming?

None at all really! The only people who were in on ‘the secret’ were myself and Mike. Craig Stovin, one of our ‘actors’, had an idea we were up to something but he didn’t know the details but none of the others knew a thing. Rob, the sound recordist is a very cynical guy so it was great to play a trick on him because right up to the end he believed it was a straight documentary. We managed to trick our friends which was great but then obviously we worked in the other elements and they were happy to come back and just play themselves so it was a lot of fun.

When you did let them in on the secret did you explain what was in store or just tell them to look out for something unusual and react appropriately?

In day two, for example, where they find the bird’s head covered in worms, I set it all up myself down in the path where we filmed in the wood and I said ‘okay, something’s down there that you’re going to have to react to’ but they didn’t really know what I’d planned. All the stuff we did towards the end of the film with the coven of witches in the woods, again I kept Craig back from that as we set it up and said ‘okay, just react to what you see here.’ There was a bit more direction there because obviously I said ‘you’re going to have to run off’ but I was trying to keep it a secret as much as possible up until the point where we shot it and I think it worked all the better because of that. There’s a scene where they’re exploring the ruins and they come across an animal horn and some teeth; the horn was placed there the day before, that was fake. But the teeth were not anything that we put there and there were some other bones around too. What stuff like that was doing there I don’t know!

That ‘ten minutes alone’ sequence – where each of your ‘investigators’ stands isolated in the most remote and notorious part of the graveyard with just a torch and a camera for company – is probably the highlight of the movie because it’s subtle and effective and doesn’t go ‘over the top’. Were you ever tempted to ramp the scares up a notch?

I was tempted but I was trying not to because it would have been very easy to have lots of jump moments, lots of scares and try and do a sort of Paranormal Activity thing but I was conscious that I’d done so much research on Clophill that I wanted to respect the ‘legend’ and not take it too far. Also the point is ‘what is real and what isn’t?’ so it’s important not to go too far. We actually added a few bits to the ‘ten minutes alone’ segment; if you look closely you’ll notice that when I did my ‘ten minutes alone’ the shots change slightly because we filmed it the next day and we rejigged a few things. And obviously the figure that appears behind Craig was put in afterwards but actually the way he moves to reveal that figure was pure luck, he wasn’t directed to sort of stand within the frame and then step to the side. But all the ‘ten minutes alone’ reactions are all completely genuine up until the point where the face is seen in the bushes.

How did the Clophill locals react to you making a horror film in their village? Were you worried they might think you were exploiting the village’s reputation?

There is a bit of a stigma to the village which all stems from stuff in the ’60s and the ’70s where there was this big incident and it was a seven-day wonder in the press and people flocked to Clophill but most of the people we spoke to were quite happy to talk about it. There are lots of rumours about stuff happening but these days it’s pretty harmless. There were some people who didn’t want to talk about it but it’s the same with any film, people don’t want to talk about something that’s local to them but everyone we spoke to in the film, especially the older people, were happy to talk about it. Some of them even came to the premiere and they really liked the film which was very pleasing because we weren’t sure what they were going to make of it. We told them what the film was going to be about but what they said wasn’t distorted in any way, they were just saying things as they were and as they’d happened.

Clophill will enjoy a limited theatrical release but is aimed squarely at the straight-to-DVD market. Do you think that’s a market which has much longevity in the current climate?

When Zombie Diaries 2 came out it was only released on DVD in the UK and the same with Clophill because there isn’t the money in Blu- ray or the interest in independent films to justify the cost of producing Blu- ray discs. The market for these sorts of films is, unfortunately, from supermarkets where people pick up these things while they’re doing their shopping. It’s worrying in a way and funding is more difficult but the film industry hasn’t really caught up with the way that people are watching films. The model that we’ve released our last couple of films on is kind of a dying model of the physical release with a limited theatrical but I think in this country the whole ‘pay-per-view’ and ‘pay TV’ stuff hasn’t really taken off the way it has in the US. I think it’s going to have to really. It’s a concern but I think if you’ve got a good film and you’ve got something that’s a bit different then you’re going to get interest in it and you’re going to get some sort of release. It’s a challenge and I guess from my point of view the films I’ve made have all been released and they’ve done pretty well commercially – they’ve certainly made the distributors a lot of money!

Are you pleased with the response to the film so far?

It’s been great, we’ve had some fantastic reviews. Obviously Starburst’s review was fantastic and we had good write-ups from Dread Central, Quiet Earth, Rue Morgue. I think with these kinds of films regardless of how they’re different they’re always going to be a sort of ‘Marmite’ movie, there’ll always be people who’ll hate them, that’s often the response now to found footage films. We’ve had a few reviews which have been more on the negative side but quite a lot of positive reviews and it’s always interesting to read different viewpoints but I’m very pleased with the response so far.

And we hear rumours of a sequel entitled Mothman…

It’s on the cards and I’ve found another legend that I’m really interested in. The key though is to avoid repetition of the same forumula; that’s not really what I want to do but it’s really about trying to find a fresh approach with something that’s a bit different to this legend so whether that has elements of found footage or whether it’s something a bit different is something I’m working on at the moment. But the key is not to repeat the same formula again.

And the future? Fancy a romcom or is it horror all the way for you?

Funnily enough one of my favourite directors is Woody Allen but I think I’m a way off doing a romantic comedy at the moment! Horror and sci-fi are the two genres I’ve always been a big fan of so I think I’ll certainly stay within the horror genre for the time being. I’m writing a script for an occult horror film at the moment which is a sort of throwback to Witchfinder General which won’t be a found footage film, it’ll be more straight-forward but Mothman is there and will happen if we get the approach right and feel passionate about it – and of course it depends on how well Clophill goes.

THE PARANORMAL DIARIES: CLOPHILL is available on DVD in the UK on 14th October 2013.