Feature Category: Interviews

After speaking to Simon Pegg and Nick Frost Starburst had the distinct pleasure of acclaimed writer/director Edgar Wright’s company. Here he spills his guts on everything from The World’s End, the perils of filming outdoors in the UK and dismembering tiny plastic men…

Starburst: The World’s End feels like the most ambitious and bravest of the three. Did you always want to go out on such a literal bang with the trilogy?

Edgar: I think so. In all the three films we touch upon the idea of perpetual adolescence and the joys and the dangers of that and we wanted to do a film that was much more about that.

I liked the dynamic between Nick and Simon in the film, can you talk a little about how you wrote that relationship?

Shaun of the Dead is about a guy turning thirty and we felt like we had to be honest about the age of the actors. Simon and Nick are both husband’s and father’s and the thing I find in a lot of the American man-child comedies people pretend to be stoner flatmates forever and that’s not true, those guys are married, so I think what we thought was a good thing to do was to take five people, four of them who are grown up and then one guy stuck in his teenage years and wants to drag them all back. So me and Simon thought of Gary as the ghost of sixth form past. He sort of appears like a wraith in the movie. But that was important to us. It’s one of the reasons we never did the third Spaced. I think it would be extremely false to pretend to be 26 forever.

I think Shaun and Ed are different from Danny and Nicholas Angel and then different again in this. And I think particularly in this one. Nick Frost can be very serious and stern when he’s on the phone with the council and sometimes when I see him in a bad mood I think I want to see that Nick in a movie. He can be extremely severe and terrifying when he’s in a bad mood. But also the thing with the Gary character both me and Simon wanted to have this redemption for that that guy. I think everyone has someone like that in their lives. And there are elements of me and Simon in Gary so we do have sympathy for him.  We liked the idea that he’s going to attempt to bring them back down to his level. I think everybody has been through that experience, whether you’ve gone to a wedding or a school reunion, or gone back to your home town where it’s extremely bittersweet. Sometimes when you reconnect with friends and you have running jokes that you had when you were a teenager but you can’t quite remember them anymore or it doesn’t mean anything anymore, it’s not funny anymore. So there are a lot of elements of that frank, raw nerve comedy that we wanted to get into because we’d been through it. But we also wanted to take someone who seemed so far from redemption and make him your galactic saviour.

The fight scenes are terrific, can you talk about them?

I think Simon saw Scott Pilgrim and saw all the twenty year olds, and thought “I want to do that” and I was like Ok! Let’s do it. What we wanted to make them feel like were quite intense brawls. The thing I’m really proud of is that the actors are really doing it. If you watch closely the camera never cuts away. That first fight the camera is on them the whole time and that’s because Brad Allen, who is the stunt co-ordinator, who worked with Jackie Chan’s team, came up with these fights. I wanted to do some action scenes that I hope feel different; there are no knives and no guns. It feels like a bar brawl which has become surreal and out of control.

It feels like more of a straightforward story than a reference fest, is that what you wanted to do?

We didn’t want to do movie references because I think we did that a lot in Spaced. Hot Fuzz is more of a meta film because they actually directly talk about the movies. In this one it felt like the sci-fi theme was exactly what we wanted to say about the homogeny of chain pubs and how the British high street has changed and how your home town has been infected by London. All of those things, the central theme of you can never go home again, perfectly fit in with the quiet invasion. The things that really inspired it, not specific films, but things like John Wyndham and obviously things like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Stepford Wives and John Christopher as well. There’s a lot of British sci-fi authors that through TV and film had a huge kind of effect on pretty much everything we watched growing up. Things like Doctor Who and Chocky. There’s a particular strain of British sci-fi that I felt was darker and would tackle global events through a very narrow focus. This is a small town but it has consequences over the whole planet. And a lot of the Quatermass films, I liked that aspect of it.

With the action, sci-fi and comedy in between what was the most challenging aspect for you?

Just shooting outside in Britain! Just the British weather, it’s always the British weather! It’s why you don’t get many films shot on location in the UK because it’s fucking freezing.  To do the big fighting scenes and special effects on location is really tough. There’s not a lot of green screen in the movie. We really are at all of those places. It was all really good but it makes for an intense shoot.

What were you looking for in your locations? Were you the first to shoot in Letchworth?

I think some other smaller things have been in Letchworth. Maybe it’s the first film shot in Welwyn Garden City. There used to be a studio in Welwyn Garden City. But the reason we went to Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City was because they both were the original garden cities and they both had architecture from the ’10s and ’20s and to me that gave it that British sci-fi vibe. Walking around there I was thinking “I’m getting a distinct John Wyndham vibe from this place” and that was great. And they’re relatively intact as well. The irony is that both Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City are both Quaker towns, they were designed to be dry, and they didn’t have enough bars so we had to fabricate some of the bars ourselves. I think people were a bit bemused.

Have you ever been on epic bar crawls in the past?

I have. I’m the idiot! When I was nineteen I tried to do it in my home town which is in Somerset, the same town where we shot Hot Fuzz. It had fifteen pubs and I tried to do it with my friends and I got through six of them and it got wild. It was like a very silly idea with a stupid outcome. It gnawed at me and I even wrote a film about it when I was 21. I wrote a film called Crawl, which was about teenagers on a pub crawl, and I never did anything with it. After Hot Fuzz I started thinking about it and maybe that’s just the first three minutes of the movie, maybe the movie is about the older guys trying to go back.

Music felt very integral to the rhythm of the film, Nick was a raver, Simon was a Goth, what were you?

I would like to think of myself as an indie kid but I don’t know if I was ever that cool. But I think around about the time when I was sixteen was when I started buying the NME. So up until that point it had been exclusively what was on the radio on top 40. I would listen to the top 40 and every now and then an indie song would break into it and it would seem quite dangerous in a way. I remember specifically Bruno Brooks saying “in at number 36 it’s Primal Scream with Loaded” and you go “what is this?” Obviously it stuck with me. What we tried to do with that soundtrack is that there were some of these hedonistic party anthems that have never gone away. Primal Scream’s Loaded was all over Glastonbury this weekend, you hear I’m Free by the Soup Dragons in shops and Step On has never gone away and we thought it would be great if Gary’s character would hear these things in the ether and think the party’s still happening. He’s taken the lyrics from I’m Free and used it as his design for life basically. With the Stone Roses reunions, you suddenly realise oh my god that’s twenty years ago? And that’s reflected in the age of the audience.

What do you hope people will take from the film?

I think if you have a Gary King in your life the movie is saying you should see if he’s ok.  Call him! In the film there’s a rift between Simon and Nick’s characters. When you’ve fallen out with somebody, when you get back together sometimes it’s up to you to forgive them. It’s a very powerful thing. I had someone I had a major falling out with and it was kind of his fault but I felt like I should be the bigger man and think forget it. When you reconnect after years, it’s an extremely good feeling, so I would hope that the movie would be therapeutic and show you how to punch an alien invader’s head off.

Do you have a favourite scene in the film?

I like watching the fight scenes because I’m always very proud of what the actors manage to achieve. I think their choreography is great. What was nice about this film unlike Shaun where they’re zombies is that we actually designed the baddies, the blanks. Me and my brother basically designed them together and it was based on the idea of when we had action figures as kids we would take the heads off and the arms off and take a look at the sockets – the idea of dismembered action figures. Even the idea of it being blue inside was… It wasn’t going to be blood. I felt like there had been some committee meeting where it had been decided that all alien blood is green so I thought we’d go blue. So the reason it’s blue is because I wanted to make the actors feel like they were little kids. When I was at school I used to end every day with fountain pen ink all over my hands and by the time I’d walked home I’d wiped it all over my face. My image of school is that I’ve got inky hands and inky face. After the first fight I wanted to make the whole cast look like that so they would look like little kids again. I really like watching all those sequences. I like watching the last fifteen minutes as we only finished that a couple of weeks ago and I am very pleased with what we managed to production design wise. I like watching the end. It chokes me up as well.

What can you tell us about Ant-Man?

The honest answer is I can’t even wrap my head around it. It’s basically next but in the meantime thank you!

THE WORLD’S END is released in UK cinemas on 19th July.

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With The World’s End rapidly approaching (to cinemas at least), Starburst caught up with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost to discuss the movie, Pub-fu and trying not to laugh at Paddy Considine…

Starburst: Simon, you play Gary King in the film, a Sisters of Mercy fan. Can you tell me about your Goth phase?

Simon: I was very much a Goth from around 16-21. The big names for me at the time, Sisters of Mercy were obviously my favourite band, Bauhaus, The Cure, The March Violets, that kind of deal. A lot of hairspray, tight trousers, winkle pickers. That was the only thing about Gary I wouldn’t have worn, I wouldn’t have worn the docs. I would have worn very pointy, buckled boots and tighter jeans.

And Nick what was your phase?

Nick: I was a raver. And it stays. It’s never left me. Now my fashion is different obviously. But the music, I still listen to that a lot.

There’s a lot of nostalgia going on there.

Nick : Is it nostalgia if you’re still in to it?

No but that’s what was clever about it, that it questioned it.

Simon: Yeah. It was kind of nostalgic to go back and dress like that. I relished it. I never dyed my hair black when I was young for some reason I thought it might upset my mum. I don’t know why I didn’t do it. So to do it felt like I was putting something to bed that had been preying on my mind for twenty years.

Music choices must have been important then? Did you both have a lot of say in it?

Simon: Me and Edgar had a 200 song playlist that we were listening to during the writing process and certain songs rose above the others. Loaded was something that was integral to the story and the script and stuff like the Happy Mondays, Soup Dragons, The Stone Roses were things we were listening to. And stuff like Kylie – we wanted to bring the pop end in and St. Etienne, the more clubby stuff. The Beautiful South and The Sundays, we’re both big fans of The Sundays. All those tracks. We wanted the music to exist in a five year gap between 1987-1992. Specifically most of it between 88-91 so with the exception of Alabama Song by The Doors, it’s all in that period. It’s a mix tape, it’s Gary’s mix tape, that’s what it is.

Did you look at any specific films?

Simon: We watched It’s Always Fair Weather, the Gene Kelly musical, The Big Chill and Fandango but otherwise no. We decided not to do what we did with Hot Fuzz which was to watch a lot of films because we didn’t feel like we needed to learn any kind of language of cinema. We weren’t going to make any comments about science fiction or make any references to other films. Any references you may pick up on are unintentional or subconscious. There are no overt references in this film. Even films you could possibly apply it to being similar to like Invasion of the Body Snatchers or Stepford Wives…

Or Village of the Damned?

Simon: Well, we thought let’s try and come from a social science fiction angle and look at John Wyndham and The Midwich Cuckoos, Day of the Triffids etc. If there’s any influence there it’s probably a literary one but it’s certainly not a riff on anything. It’s a science fiction film but it’s not a comment on science fiction films.

Let’s talk about the action, what was it like to do the fight scenes and training?

Nick: It was fantastic! We got to work with Brad Allen who worked with Jackie Chan so you have the potential chance to impress someone who is impressed with Jackie Chain. We did about four weeks of rehearsal. We’d go in every day and we’d fight and hit bags and pads just to get us loose and limber. It was fantastic, I got to fight ten men at once!

Simon: Also we had an editor on set, Paul, he was there to edit the video assist, which is when you do a take it’s also go it on video so you can play it back and see what you shot as you can’t watch the film straight away as it has to be developed. Paul would edit the video assist together so we could see exactly how the fight was developing in case we needed a cut away or something. The fights in the film are very specifically filmed in one continuous shot apparently.

Nick: Also, the one thing I found while doing the “Pub Fu” with the stools is that if you’re having a fight normally with fists on camera you can cheat a lot, such as where you put the camera and how you sell the punch but with these things you couldn’t do it. There was too much gap and you’d pick it up so I kind of had to hit those men a lot for two days, eight or nine hours a day, and some are old grizzled Hungarian stuntmen but there were little ones too.

Simon: They’re all sado-masochists

Nick: I think they get paid by the nosebleed.

How about getting through all that liquid?

Simon: We told props very early on in the process we need a non-alcoholic fluid which we can drink a lot of that looks like lager but isn’t. So they concocted this brew of water and burnt sugar and cream soda which looks like lager and that which we drunk pints and gallons and gallons of but felt perfectly hydrated, our skin was good.  But the shots were real!

Eddie Marsan is a bit of a newcomer to your gang and it’s brilliant to see him playing a comic role. He got a good reaction last night. What was it like having him in the gang?

Nick: It was fantastic. We had the best time on Snow White so at an early point in this I said “you should look at Eddie, he’s fantastic”.

Simon: Eddie is a master at playing bad guys. I mean he really is. He refers to himself as “rent a c-word Eddie Marsan” We loved the idea of him playing a simple, pathetic, lovable character and very  early on after discussions Edgar and I were thinking Eddie was going to be Peter. Eddie was the only choice we ever had for Peter. He plays the role so beautifully. There’s a bit in the film when he’s listening to one of the characters droning on about something and he falls asleep because he’s so drunk. It’s pure Stan Laurel – he sort of wakes up and thinks ‘where am I?’ He’s brilliant.

Was it nice having the ensemble cast with you for all the filming?

Nick: Yeah, we laughed a lot you know, and just hung out. A lot of the time we just sit there and watch Paddy. Because Paddy left to his own devices will just dance around and say things inappropriately, and you just sit and you watch him.

Simon: Paddy’s got a terrible habit of talking right up until the point of action… so when action is called you’re left there just trying to digest what Paddy just said, trying not to laugh. And Martin Freeman is a dark horse. He likes to crack you up, he likes to make you laugh but he pretends he’s not doing it.

Nick: It also felt very supportive. We all have our moments in the film when we are angry or upset. It is proper acting; it’s not just goofing around and comedy. You do that thing after cut, where you’re thinking don’t cry and Eddie would come up and and then Martin would come up. That happened all the time and that makes you feel so comfortable.

Simon: Apart from the ball cupping…

Nick: The ball cupping is weird, I don’t know why Edgar started that… It’s a nice thing. To have a cast like we had, it felt special.

And Rosamund held her own as well.

Simon: Rosamund Pike, oh my god, what a star!

Nick: We were very protective over her

Simon: We used to give her penguin cuddles. When it was cold outside Rosamund would stand in the middle of all five of us and she’d turn round in circles and we’d sing a song!

Nick: hums the tune to The Magic Roundabout. We’d turn round and she’d turn round like a counter clock thing. That’s how they keep warm in the South Pole.

You mentioned It’s Always Fair Weather, and that’s one of the films that spring to mind whilst watching it. It’s very jolly, with song and dance numbers, but underneath it’s satirical and tense.

Simon: Yeah, those sequences are our dance numbers and they are very choreographed. Brad invented this Pub Fu thing and it’s not like a real pub fight as it’s more stylised. But it felt like in some respects that’s what the film was like. There’s a musical number in The Mermaid, he stops for a dance, and that film very much was an influence. Just that seething tension that exists…

Can you talk a little about the underlying issues in the film? You celebrate British culture but you also talk about the homogenization of it.

Simon: We just had this idea of this force that is trying to shape Earth into something it’s not in order to conform to a galactic idea of what the norm is. We saw parallels there with the high street pubs being taken over by chains and with coffee shops being taken over by Starbucks. This idea  that it may make it better in some respects, it may make it more standardized and more comfortable even and make the prices similar but at the same time it’s taking away a certain individuality and whether that’s right to subdue that. In a way that’s a theme we’ve always had, whether it was the zombies or the NWA, but now on a galactic level it’s the network. We just had this idea about whether it’s right to force something to become better or that something should really become better by itself. And that’s the big argument in the end. If it’s forced it’s control, it’s not education or nurture, it’s aggressive.

Can you talk about any past, epic pub crawls you might have been on?

Nick: We’re not pub crawl kind of people to be honest, I think we’ve had one with Edgar years ago that lasted about three pints and we had to take him home. We had a pub crawl at your stag.

Simon: That was the last one we did

Nick: I think the sort of pub crawl I’d do now would be in a beautiful walled Spanish city and we’d stop and have some sherry and chorizo and move on.

Simon: I’d do a café crawl now. A nice bit of cake in each one and a cup of tea.

THE WORLD’S END is released in UK cinemas on 19th July.

Share your comments below or on Twitter @STARBURST_MAG

Find your local Starburst Magazine stockist HERE, or buy direct from us HERE. Our issues are also available as fully interactive iPad editions, loaded with multimedia, and can be downloaded via Apple HERE.

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With the excellent sci-fi indie hitting DVD and VOD in the States June 18th, we caught up with lead Will Keenan to discuss the film, his career, and more… 

Starburst: How did you get your start in the movie business and what influenced you to become an actor?

Will Keenan: My first starring role was Tromeo & Juliet after attending NYU. I’d actually just finished up a semester of Shakespearean acting. I knew the film might be my only chance to perform Shakespearean language in a feature (and so far, I was right). When I thought of pursuing an acting and entertainment career as a high school student, I auditioned for NYU during their “early decision” process. I told myself, if I can get an early decision to NYU, then I’ll take this seriously as a career. I got the call and my fate was sealed. Earlier in my life as a child, I found creative solace in becoming characters. Maybe it was a form of escape. And as I devoted more time to it, then studied at NYU, I really began to embrace and enjoy the psychology behind the craft of acting. What acting has ultimately taught me is that every feeling I have is a choice I make. We always have a choice as to how to react to anyone or any situation, as long as we have command over ourselves and not the other way around. As the Bhagavad Gita says, “The mind acts like an enemy for those who don’t control it.” And if we can control it, we can become anyone or do anything.

Certainly, you have a wide spectrum of roles on your resume. By far, playing Casey Kauffman in Troma’s Terror Firmer is one of the most memorable. Let’s talk about how you got the role, your adventures on the set and working with fan favorite, director Lloyd Kauffman.

Here’s what happened. It was a year or so after the release of Tromeo and I got the call from Lloyd about his new film. He wanted me to play the male lead, a character that was basically the biggest Tromite (Troma fan) there is. The other lead characters were the girl, and the lead villain (a girl pretending to be a boy during the day and killing people at night revealing her female form). I had just taken a women’s studies class at NYU that had a whole section about hermaphrodites, the “middle sex,” very interesting stuff. In other parts of the world when a hermaphrodite is born (traits of both sexes), they are not “corrected” as they are in the U.S. Traditionally in the U.S., the parents of a hermaphrodite are asked at the birth whether they want a boy or a girl. So I really thought it would be interesting as an actor to play a character that was born a hermaphrodite with more male traits but was “corrected” to be a girl. Something like that gave the lead villain character great motivation in the story. So, I cast Trent Haaga in his first feature as the Tromite role, and the cinema’s first hermaphrodite serial killer was born. As well, the first hermaphrodite PSA was realized at the end of the film with cameos by Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

One of my other favorite TF memories (or as Lloyd would say, “mammaries”) was Lemmy Kilmeister trying to strangle me. Someday I’ll tell the whole story. TF was grueling. Besides playing the lead villain, I was also a producer and casting director who rehearsed all the actors and staged most of the scenes in rehearsal the month before shooting. I also coordinated many other things with other departments on the film. I did as much as I could on TF because I wanted to get as much experience behind the camera as I could, and it was quite a film with which to do that. I was also able to cast a lot of NYC’s downtown darlings at the time, including Theo of the Lunachicks, Nick Zedd, Mario Diaz, World Famous BOB, Moe B. Dick and many others. The film became a timely snapshot of the whole downtown NYC cult scene at the turn of the millennium.

You played Buster Keaton in one of the best films on the Black Dahlia murder mystery directed by Ramzi Abed, The Devil’s Muse. Tell us about that.

The second film I starred in (Love God ’96) is credited as the first-fully digital feature film, and it was also the first time I did a major stunt in a movie. Producer Anthony Bregman, (a man of vision and a brave soul) allowed me to climb a New York City light post in the middle of downtown rush-hour traffic. My contention was it all made perfect sense because in the scene my character was having a psychotic episode of his compulsive reading syndrome, so he climbs the pole to read and destroy the traffic sign. After the stunt, Bregman said I was like Buster Keaton. I’d heard the name but wasn’t familiar with Keaton’s work. And once I started doing stunts in films, I couldn’t stop. I started doing them in all sorts of indie movies whether the scene called for them or not. I even co-directed for the first time a feature where I did a stunt in almost every scene (OMC 2000). At a few points some scripts were developed for a Keaton biopic, but it never took off. Probably for the best, I might have died doing all the stunts. So, when Ramzi Abed called me about doing a lil’ cameo as Buster Keaton in his film, I was happy to. Ramzi’s actually the reason I star in Johnny X. He suggested director Paul Bunnell meet me.

The Ghastly Love of Johnny X, directed by Paul Bunnell, a hit at all the film festivals, is a creative, fun film homage to the ‘50s sci fi movies and beach movies that American International Pictures made. You sing, you dance, you play the cool anti-hero; let’s talk about your role, the movie and the talented actors you worked with especially with Creed Braton who plays the mysterious, Mickey O’Flynn.

After doing a number of comedic characters and lots of stunts in films, Paul was the first director to offer me the “strong, silent type” leading role, and the film happens to be, by my guess, the very last black and white widescreen feature-length musical ever made. It was also the first time I sang songs in a film. I like to challenge myself, do things for the first time, I’m attracted to pioneering efforts and breaking new ground. My career now bookends an entire chapter in film history, as star of the first fully digital feature film (Love God ‘96), and star of the very last widescreen black and white widescreen musical. Audiences really seem to enjoy Johnny X, and it’s no surprise. I think the same sentiment that The Artist evoked in people, transporting people to another time in cinematic history, is inherent in Johnny X. Creed and I had a good time working together. He’s a very good actor, a generous actor, and hysterically funny.

You filmed at the famous Bronson Cave where a lot of ‘50s sci-fi/horror movies were made. Where else did you shoot?

The famed Occidental Studios in LA, the oldest working soundstage, from the silent era. It really felt special to film there. Standing on the shoulders of some cinema history giants. A lot of people shoot at the legendary “Bat Cave” (from the Batman TV show), but I don’t know how many were able to drag race through the cave in hotrods like we did.

The musical numbers are a lot of fun. How long did you rehearse?

Just long enough, I’d say.

This was Kevin McCarthy’s last film. What was it like to work with such a legendary actor?

I was excited to work with him, and he did not disappoint. A real pro and gentleman. When we filmed our scenes together, I just sat near him and soaked it in. He had the legend vibe going on. It was very special.

What do you have on the horizon?

You can see Chop now on Netflix, DVD and other outlets. I think it’s my best performance ever. I dare ya to check it out and then demand director Trent Haaga release my funniest stuff which he “left on the edit room floor.” I have a number of projects coming up, and I’ve been working a lot lately with arguably the hottest web video network in the world, Maker Studios. Combining the best practices of web video (and what works on YouTube) with quality filmmaking is something I’m very interested in. We have a partnership with Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal’s Tribeca Films to do just that with a new online channel launching soon called, “The Picture Show.” As a producer, I’ve also worked with some Bollywood filmmakers and stars and working internationally is something I’ll continue to do as well.

THE GHASTLY LOVE OF JOHNNY X hits DVD and VOD in the US June 18th.

Look down the credits at any major British film over the past fifteen years or so and likely in the make-up effects department you will see the name Paul Hyett. He has worked on almost all of the British genre films that have put British cinema back on top recently. Including things like The Woman in Black, The Descent, Doomsday, Heartless, Attack the Block and the Red Riding Trilogy. Basically throw a stone and he has worked on it.

With The Seasoning House, Hyett makes his directorial debut. Premiering at last summer’s London Frightfest, the film is a brutal and uncompromising dark fairy tale that deals with very real atrocities that occurred in The Balkans in the mid-‘90s. Boasting a remarkable performance from young Rosie Day, the film is very different from your typical British genre picture and is a refreshing change from endless zombie films or movies about hooded violent teenagers. The film is just powerful and gut-churning enough to leave a lasting impression and one of the strongest directorial debuts of recent times. You should be able to see the results for yourself when the film comes out this June.

We got the chance to sit down and discuss the film with the director recently and it made for an interesting and illuminating conversation.

WARNING: Minor spoilers for The Seasoning House follow.

Starburst: How did it feel being the opening film of last summer’s Frightfest?

Paul Hyett: We got the phone call and I was just so happy, just to be selected as the opening film was beyond what I was expecting and was absolutely brilliant. It was such an honour and a festival that I have been to so many times. To be the opening film was amazing, myself, the producer and the cast and crew, we were all so happy.

Has the cut of the film changed at all between then and what we will see on release?

No not really not the edit, it was pretty much 99% there, there was just a bit of sound tweaking but pretty much what you saw there is the film as it stands now.

Your background is in special make-up effects, how did you find the transition between that and directing your first film?

You know something, because I have spent all my time on set for the last 18 years, I am so used to being on set that I was used to running my department of 10 to 15 people and working out what was required for the shot, storyboards and have always worked very closely with actors. So to be honest with you it was kind of like just being on set but I had more to do, I worked with costume and make-up and prosthetics but I was working with them again but telling them what I wanted rather than the other way round. It wasn’t a huge shock to the system it was an easy transition. Nothing happened that I didn’t expect to happen, sometimes directors go on set and they haven’t done a film before or they haven’t worked on a film for years so it’s a whole new experience for them. For me it wasn’t, I had worked everything out and I had planned it and worked with my actors and gone through everything with my heads of department so it was similar to what I had done before except on a bigger scale. Instead of just bringing the make-up effects vision to the scene you bring the vision to everything in the scene.

As the lead, actress Rosie Day is amazing in this film, how did you find her?

Basically we had open casting with all the agencies and we looked at about 130 actresses and Rosie came along in the last ten, so I was quite worried as by that point we had looked at 120 girls and suddenly it’s like ‘My god we only have ten left and we haven’t found my angel yet’ so she walked in and I thought ‘Oh my god she looks perfect’ because a lot of it aside from the acting she has to do, was showing the emotionally vulnerable side and the fight for survival side, she also had to have the physicality to be able to crawl out of holes and walls so that cut a lot of the actresses out because they did not have the right physicality. When she came in I thought she was perfect and we gave her the audition and a couple of scenes to do and she really got it and understood what I meant by being vulnerable but showing strength, being emotionally shattered and an empty shell but with a little bit of hope she shows once she connects in the friendship with Anya. All those scenes and all the different emotions and progressions of character she was great at. We asked to see her again and she came back and was great again. To be honest after the first audition I knew we had her and then we gave her the job and we worked a lot on the character. It’s one of those things where being deaf and mute and fighting meant that she didn’t say a word in this movie but there was a lot of communication with Viktor the pimp, Anya and all these different characters and she had to talk without using a voice, through expressions and body language. If she overdid the facial expressions it would look comical and if she underdid it she would just look blank so we put a hell of a lot of work in. For five weeks or six days it would be very punishing on her because of the physicality of the character. Outside when we were in our big North Face jackets and she would be in not much clothing at all. Then she had to learn sign language and how to react in this environment, there were so many facets to her character and we didn’t have a huge amount of prep time and we shot quite quickly, there wasn’t really any margin to take our time and so for an actress who was 17 at the time to take the entire film on her shoulders and get it so right was a huge risk to put on someone so young when I look back on it. She had been acting since she was 4 years old in television but this was her first feature film, she brought an experience of all the stuff of being on set and hitting your marks and that stuff. This was more about let’s work out this character to fine details of how she looks and survives and what’s going on in her head. To be able to talk to a 17 year old girl like that and really go through everything, it was just amazing to have her.

The camerawork in the film, especially at the start, was very dreamlike and puts you in the main character’s mind-set and then later on becomes very sharp suddenly when the location changes. What did you use to shoot the film on and was this part of a greater plan?

We shot on the Alexa digital camera which is a wonderful digital camera. Depending on where we are in the film I wanted the film to be in her mind with the muted colours and the slow dreamy camerawork to show her isolation from what was going on around her as well as an opiate world in which she is injecting all these girls and they are going into drug induced states. I wanted to give the impression of a dark fairy tale where all these men were walking around ignoring her like ghosts and almost otherworldly as she is in this world with no connection to anything and has disembodied herself from her surroundings. She is surviving in this world by shutting off her feelings and can inject these girls by shutting off her feelings. Everything about the camerawork in the first half of the film especially in the house was to show her disconnect from reality with the weird dreamlike haze of the drugs. It’s mostly from the stabbing of Ivan that really rips her into reality. As soon as she stabs him, that is it, she is in the real world and I really wanted to get that across. Suddenly by having feelings for Anya and stabbing the guy she is ripped into this reality and that was when I wanted this sharp, handheld camera in the second half because there is no way for her to go back into the dream world and I didn’t want the camera to shy away from that. It was all those kind of thoughts of ‘what is her perception at this point in the film?’ and the camera kind of has to tell the story from her perspective. With the production design, camerawork and sets I wanted this to be very realistic but then combine with the camerawork to create something very interesting. I wanted the camerawork and lighting to draw you in seductively.

The film mainly has one location which feels very real, where did you film the house and the exteriors in the second half?

It was a previous children’s hospital in Uxbridge (West London) on an air base and it had lovely colours and we went in there and over four weeks turned it into a horrible nihilistic location. We had to change it back to how it was but we did build some sets. Anya’s bedroom we had to reproduce because of the huge fight scene and we couldn’t shoot that in a little bedroom so we rebuilt that on a bigger scale. Then that room was re-dressed to be the cottage room with the pigs. We built all of the interior sets that take place between the walls.

In terms of horror British cinema seems to imitate one success for a very long time until another success comes along but The Seasoning House is completely different, was this a conscious decision and what made you want to make this particular film?

Well the thing is for my first shoot I didn’t want to go the route that everyone is expecting me to go so I didn’t want to make a horror film with loads of creatures and loads of prosthetics. I have been in that world for 18 years and I didn’t want to make something typically British and a lot of people have said ‘It’s not like a British horror film at all’ there are no zombies or creatures just an interesting story with interesting characters in this world. You can have all the werewolves, aliens and all that stuff but what is most interesting to me is the monsters inside human beings. I’m a huge film fan and watch stuff like Million Dollar Baby as well as all of the horror films. I love stuff that does cross genres and I like it when brave filmmakers cross genres and people don’t really expect it. Our film has a couple of genres in it and has raw drama but horror elements typical to horror films. I wanted to make something different that wouldn’t make people say this is another this or another that. I think filmmakers should strive to do something different and I think with horror films you don’t typically get the characters who are not dumb kids but I thought I would like to set my film in an interesting place with some social realism going on but be an entertaining film set in a nihilistic world and these elements make it stand out from generic horror.

Did you struggle at all with striking a balance between the real life horrors that took place and making a film that didn’t feel exploitative but was still entertaining?

Yeah, we were always very conscious about that and it’s a very fine line. The producer and I were always very concerned in pre-production. We really made a conscious decision not to be too exploitative and not too political or point the finger and be respectful towards people who have endured these atrocities that go on in the world. We were always very conscious of all those elements and not being exploitative.

You have worked on a number of the most popular British genre films of the last ten years including: The Woman in Black, The Descent, Attack the Block and Heartless. Which experience for you stands out as the best and why?

Well I think The Descent will always be a special movie to me because not only is it great, like a modern classic, but working with Neil Marshall was a film that really gave me my springboard and a real push for my career. It was great fun making it and we were pushing the boundaries. Silicone prosthetic make up hadn’t really been done on such a big scale as we had 50 or 60 creatures wearing silicone prosthetics so for me the mix of working with Neil and it being a great movie and pushing the boundaries of prosthetics was one of those really enjoyable experiences to be honest with you.

In these days of web series and on demand entertainment, has it become easier or more difficult to get financing for low budget genre films?

I think it has become interesting from looking at stuff developing and evolving over the years and budgets have gotten lower and lower. I remember six or 7 years ago when £1.5 million was a decent budget but now the new £1.5 million budget is £600,000. Sometimes they get it right, with The Descent they spent £3.5 million and at the time everyone was like ‘wow that’s a good amount of money for a horror film’ they had the exact right amount though and it went on to do £80 million worldwide. With The Woman in Black they spent £10 million and it’s made ten times that. So really it’s about people who are brave enough. To be honest with you with VOD and DVD everything is worked out on sales estimates and they work out that for them to turn a decent profit they need to make the film at a certain amount. It’s interesting how budgets have gotten lower and lower. DVD is starting to get wiped out and VOD I don’t think pays the people who make the film as much, I’m not quite sure about the details but I have a feeling that the budgets are going down and getting lower.

What advice would you give anyone in the UK who wants to work in film and is full of ideas?

Make stuff as cheap as you can first. All the equipment now is so much cheaper than it used to be. Digital cameras etc. The number one thing is have you got a good script and then number two is just trying to make stuff. Whether it’s short films or a low budget feature film. Obviously you need to get some kind of grounding first, I was lucky in that I had a career for 18 years with prosthetics so I worked on over 80 films so that’s how I learnt. People getting into the industry really have to work for next to nothing, understand being on set and understand how the process works. If they want to direct they have to start making these short films for online which is a great way to show off what you’re making with short film competitions etc. Nothing is going to come to you overnight, you really have to work for it. I think that talking about it and doing it are two different things. At some point if you have a good script and can show you can do it then it becomes a lot of different little steps to get to where you want to get to. Some people are lucky and they have a good script and suddenly get a million pound deal but those things are few and far between now. Best thing to do is just make stuff – trailers and short films.

What do you have coming up next?

I’ve got a couple of things I am attached to. We will be announcing pretty soon what my next one is; you won’t have to wait long. It will definitely be in genre, could be a straight horror or a slight crossing of genres but will be in genre.

THE SEASONING HOUSE is released in UK cinemas June 21st, and on DVD/Blu-ray July 29th.

Starburst: Could you tell us a little about how the film came about?

Alexis Denisof: We had always had the fun of reading Shakespeare’s plays at Joss’s house – it’s something that started back around season three of Buffy when he found himself surrounded by enough actors, writers and friends who loved Shakespeare. So he could host these casual readings of the plays which we get together around once a month to do. That went for many years and he had often said casually “it’d be so cool if I could film one of these somehow,” but I don’t think we ever had a clue it would come to this.

We all saw the original tweet and were surprised by the fact that you’d made the film – how quickly did everything move from idea to actually announcing it online?

Amy Acker: I think Nathan kind of took care of it for us (laughs).

AD: He was our spokesman in social media.

AA: I think Joss’s main task during the filming was to not let Nathan spread it through Twitter.

AD: I think Joss agreed that it was time so they announced it, setting up the website not long afterwards, just to let people know that this thing had happened. And then he had to go to work editing it, because at that point it was just a bunch of takes ‘in the can’ as they say.

When you were making the film, did you realise that it would receive this much buzz?

AA: Luckily we really didn’t. This has all been incredibly surprising and exciting because I think we would have had just as much fun making it without cameras rolling. It was just a joy to all get together and to play these parts, but no one expected any of this. At the beginning Joss said that he’d had success with iTunes and a few days into it, he said “maybe a festival would be fun.” You could see Joss getting more and more excited about what was happening so the fact that other people are enjoying it too has been really exciting for all of us.

Are either of you Shakespeare buffs?

AD: Both of us, I’d say. I actually studied acting in London at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art because I liked Shakespeare and the classics. I knew I’d get a chance to do more of it and those were the actors who I really admired. So I also had the good fortune, when I finished my studies, of joining the Royal Shakespeare Company – my first professional theatre experience was a production of Hamlet where I choreographed the duel. To be standing in the wings several times a week and watch them perform was as good as any education you could have in Shakespeare. So this is a wonderful return to something I love.

AA: I don’t know if buff is the right word but I definitely love the play and my first job out of school was Much Ado. I was Hero back then.

Fans of Joss and yourselves are well aware of the back garden readings that you’ve been doing over the years, what made Much Ado the one to put out there rather than others?

AD: There were a few elements but there was a practical consideration that it all takes place in one location, and Joss happens to live in a perfect location for it. He has said, thankfully subsequent to shooting it, that he had always had it in mind to shoot this play with Amy and I in these roles. I’m glad we didn’t know that, because it would have probably terrified both of us, but all of that conspired along with his wife telling him, “let’s not go on vacation, why don’t you do that project you’ve always dreamed about.”

So he went off, he read it, and he realised that he had something very important he wanted to say about it. From them on, it was just a case of gathering the troops and getting it done. It fell together very naturally, because of course everybody wanted to be a part of it – who wouldn’t? We already had a rapport, as many of us had worked together or at least knew each other, so we could get going rapidly up to the speed required to get it done in twelve days.

You mentioned that you’d worked with many of the cast before, was there anyone you hadn’t worked with and were glad to get the chance to?

AD: There were a few new faces. It’s another great group as brought to you by Joss Whedon. Jillian …

AA: …and Riki .

AD: They came in different ways and via different connections. Some of them Joss didn’t even know and he just called them out of the blue, and some of them he had worked with before and thought would be a good fit. And he was absolutely right.

Was there any particular scene you enjoyed filming?

AD: We both love the “if I were a man” scene for different reasons. Amy’s performance in that scene is just extraordinary, I loved being in the room when she was doing that. That would probably go down as my favourite scene to be in and watch now, for the rest of my life. But the whole shooting of it was fun – I can’t say there was a scene I didn’t enjoy.

AA: Every scene that I got to do with Alexis was my favourite but that was really a fun, and hard, scene. I think that it’s one of those that, at the last moment, I don’t think we knew how it was going to end. It felt really right.

AD: If you get to the end of a really knotty scene then you never really know how you’re going to get to the last beats but, if you arrive at them and you know that you’re in the right place then it means everything that came beforehand is absolutely right. And Amy just brought us right to the end of that scene.

AA: …It was both of us.

AD: No, well, it was a team effort but I have to say that there is a special chemistry between Joss and Amy and myself. We always kind of bring something new and exciting out of each other – we have trust and also great joy when we work together. It’s my favourite combination.

A lot of people are excited to see this film because of Fred and Wesley.

AA: We really didn’t realise until a while after. Because we’re friends in real life and have spent all of this time together between Angel and now it took us a minute to be like “oh, yeah, there’s a happy ending there.”

Providing there was a miracle and some big plot twists, would you ever want to revisit the characters?

AA: I think it would take a miracle.

AD: I think you would have to pull them out of Angel, in a way. It would be interesting, but I think you’d have to find a new place for them in a way; a new construct in which those two characters could work out the things that they need to work out. I don’t think you could just resurrect Angel as a concept and a show and make that really work again. It’s been a long time.

AA: It’s a problem when the lead character isn’t supposed to get older.

AD: That’s one issue. People think they want a show back but really Angel is out there in so many shapes and forms now. At the time when we were making it, it was a funny little left-field show that people had to go find and now I see its descendants everywhere. So I don’t think there’s necessarily the need for the show, Angel, but I think Wesley and Fred/Illyria are special and if you can find a universe for them to inhabit then I would definitely go there.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING is in UK Cinemas June 14th.

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Since forming the KNB EFX Group in 1988, Howard Berger and Greg Nicotero are becoming virtually the go-to guys for film and TV productions looking for the very best in special make-up effects, character prosthetics, animatronics and creature design. The Group has some 800 credits to its name including movies such as Minority Report, Kill Bill, Django Unchained, The Mist and Predators and currently TV hits Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. Most recently Howard Berger’s make-up designs have been seen in his old friend Sam Raimi’s Wizard of Oz ‘prequel’ Oz the Great and Powerful and as the movie arrives on DVD/Blu-ray Starburst caught up with Howard Berger to find out just how he set about revisualising one of cinema’s most famous and beloved movies for its 21st century make-over.

Starburst: What originally drew you into the world of filmmaking, specifically the area of make-up effects? Was there one pivotal influential moment where you decided ‘that’s the job for me?’

Howard Berger: Absolutely. I saw Planet of the Apes when I was a kid when it came out and I said ‘that’s what I want to do when I grow up’; I wanted to know how they did the make-up and then it really got ‘solidified’ when I saw Star Wars and then I was 100% ‘I want to make these sorts of films and I want to be involved in this sort of world’. I was a huge classic Universal monster fan – Creature from the Black Lagoon is my all-time favourite monster; I just love that world and I’ve been very blessed that I get to work on films that I get to use my talent on films that people love and enjoy – just like Oz the Great and Powerful.

Your CV reads like an A-Z of the most popular contemporary science-fiction and fantasy TV shows and movies of the last two decades or so – some of which have been family-orientated movies like the first Narnia and now Oz. Do you enjoy working on projects which have a broader appeal than the more intense horror and SF movies you’ve done?

I prefer that audience nowadays actually. I feel like I’ve done my days doing all the horror stuff and the blood and guts and all that; I’d prefer never to do that again personally. The co-owner of KNB is Greg Nicotero and he handles The Walking Dead, that’s his baby, he’s the king of the zombies and he loves blood and guts and that’s why our company works and is so diverse – he loves that world and I love this world. My first foray into the family films and fantasy stuff was in the first Narnia and I had such a great time and it was such a wonderful experience it really made me realise that I like that world a lot plus it was the first time I worked on a film where my children, who at that point were young, were able to actually see the movie which was a rarity – they’d never seen anything I’d worked on – and they also got to come to the set and be a part of that whole world which wouldn’t be possible when I was working on a Freddy Krueger movie! You don’t want your kids coming to the set amidst all that nonsense! I certainly love character make-ups and on Oz I had a fantastic opportunity to do many character make-ups; the big make-up I got to do and which I really loved was the big job on Mila Kunis as the Wicked Witch of the West. It was a difficult make-up to design and execute every day but it was also unbelievably rewarding and fulfilling.

Did you feel hampered or liberated by the fact that, due to Warner Brothers’ owning the rights to certain elements of the iconic 1939 Wizard of Oz (such as Dorothy’s ruby slippers and even the green colour of the Witch’s skin) you couldn’t make those visual connections to the original movie?

I thought it was very liberating. I was glad because I didn’t want to have to duplicate what had already been done and also I think that opens you up to a lot of criticism from your peers. But the entire team on Oz wanted the film to maintain its respect for the original material – the Baum books which we were utilising as our source material but also with the original film from the 1930s in the back of our minds. We don’t want to diminish, destroy or disrespect what everybody is used to and knows as the world of Oz but what was great was that Sam (Raimi) was able to paint a new picture of what Oz looked like and still maintain and respect the original source materials. It was a matter of him assembling a great team, ourselves at KNB along with Robert Stromberg who was the production designer, Scott Stokdyk who was the visual effects supervisor and Gary Jones who handled all the costume designs and creation and he brought together this team which had the same sort of respect he did and wanted to create a new Oz with the same flavours that we all grew up with instead of, as filmmakers, going ‘I didn’t like the original one, I want to reinvent the wheel’. I don’t think that’s ever the way to go and Sam certainly took the right path and continued to create an Oz we all know and are familiar with and made it even more wondrous and fantastic.

Was Sam Raimi particularly ‘hands on’ in terms of make-up designs or did he just let the experts get on with it?

Sam’s hands are in everything! Sam’s hands are covered in everybody’s pie! He’s very specific and that’s what I love about him; I’ve worked with Sam since 1986 (The Evil Dead II) and he has always been very specific, he knows exactly what he wants – and sometimes it takes a little bit to get there. It’s not like he says when he first meets you ‘this is exactly what I want’; he’ll give you a kind of flavour and you develop it and test yourself. He appreciates the importance of pre-production which is very much needed in filmmaking and so we did a lot of different versions and tests in trying to find the right looks for all the characters, be it the Witch or the Winkies, the Tinkers or the Munchkins until we found the right look and it took a long time to find the look for everything, nothing was ever ‘Yeah, that’s it!’ right out of the gate, it was a lot of revisiting and refiguring things. The Witch went through numerous changes; even while we were shooting I was altering and tweaking things sculpturally and having new pieces made in LA because we were shooting in Michigan. The Witch tweaks a little bit in the course of the film; I see it but I don’t think anyone else does!

When the film’s actually shooting are you a constant presence on set?

I’m there every single day, I never leave the set. I applied Mila’s make-up and about four other make-ups every day and then I ran an entire crew of 75 make-up and hair people and then I’d go to set and be there all day long. If Mila’s on set I never left her side. I tried my best to maintain that make-up throughout the 14 or 16 hour shoot day – Sam likes to shoot for many, many hours – and we’d start our day at 3.30am when Mila would come in and we’d do her make-up which would take about an hour-and-a-half and then I’d move on to the next make-up and the next. We had a big rotation so everyone did a Munchkin, everyone did a Winkie or a Tinker every morning and then we’d go to set and shoot and shoot and shoot. Sam has a tendency to shoot his master shots and then do a bunch of stunt stuff and then after about fourteen hours get into close-ups which is horrible for a make-up artist so there were times when I had to go up to Sam and say ‘hey we don’t have to shoot Mila’s close-up today, maybe we can do it tomorrow because the make-up’s not looking as good as it did fourteen hours ago‘. Sometimes Sam would do it but sometimes I’d just have to suffer the consequences! But it’s always fun and it always works out even though Sam nitpicks everything and he makes you do the best work you possibly can, you don’t rest on your laurels and say ‘that’ll be fine’, he looks at every little thing. He even looks behind the ears, that’s something I had to tell my whole crew ‘make sure you make-up behind the ears because Sam will go and look around the actor and go and look behind his ears and if they’re not made-up he’ll go ‘Hey, Howard, can you make the back of the ears up?’ He does it all the time!

Away from Oz, we have to give a bit of a shout-out to the shamefully underrated The Mist which KNB worked on in 2007. We love it!

Greg handled that one for us. There was a lot of design work which went on and Greg and Frank Darabont, another really talented director who’s extremely nit-picky, spent a lot of time figuring out what these characters and creatures would look like and we had a great team and I think at the end of the day people really like that movie. I’m really glad you guys love it!

What are you working on at the moment?

Right now I’m in New York shooting The Amazing Spider–Man 2 and it’s looking great. I’ve got another month here; we’ve been shooting since January so it’s been a long six months and I’ve got a bit longer to go but it’s going wonderfully. Then at the end of the year I’ve got a movie coming out called Lone Survivor, a war movie with Mark Wahlberg which I think will be great. It’s all good and hopefully there’ll be more Oz movies and hopefully I’ll get called in and get to go back and visit the wonderful world of Oz again. I can’t wait!

OZ THE GREAT AND POWERFUL is released on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK on 1st July 2013

 

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Anna Popplewell is well known for her role as Susan Pevensie in The Chronicles of Narnia, and stars in the new Halo feature Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn. We caught up with her to talk about her recent projects.

Starburst: Tell us a little bit about the movie.
Anna Popplewell: Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn started life as five episodes that aired on YouTube and they’ve been edited together to make a feature. It’s about a squad of cadets who are training to fight insurrectionists and halfway through our story, the heroes realise they’re fighting an unknown enemy.

And what character do you play?

I play a cadet called Chyler Silva who’s a very competent and determined cadet at the academy. She’s very sure of her life’s trajectory and her reasons for fighting and when the unknown threat of aliens turns up she’s completely thrown and she has to re-evaluate her belief system.

What did you do to prepare for the role?

It was two-fold for me. I didn’t know a lot about Halo except it was a very successful videogame, so I read a couple of the books; Contact Harvest and Reach and played the game. I tried to immerse myself into the Halo Universe so I could get a sense of the mythology and the scope of the world.

The other part was when the cast arrived in Vancouver where we were shooting there was a week of military boot camp that was pretty gruelling and I think the entire cast was really up for it and we threw ourselves into it. It was exhausting and challenging in a way that none of us were quite expecting.

What drew you to Halo?

When I was auditioning they were being extremely secretive about the material. So they released a treatment and a scene that gave the sense of a well realised and thought out sci-fi world.  So I was really intrigued, and of course when people are secretive about that sort of thing it makes you think there’s something important to hide so I was drawn in. When I found out what it was, I was staggered by how much depth there was to it. The more I read about it, the more I became fascinated by the stories.  We had people from Microsoft on set making sure that the accuracy was everything they wanted it to be. The whole world is just so intricate and contains both incredible detail and epic, sweeping stories. It was a thrill to be part of such a massive universe and it’s a really lovely team that worked on it. They’ve done a really amazing job.

Anything interesting happen on set?

We started by filming this incredible M12 LRV Warthog chase on a series of night shoots which was both brilliant and uncomfortable and I think those days of shooting stand out for me because we have this to scale, fully working Warthog. That was amazing to me, and it really shows the level of attention to detail they’ve put into it. It filled me with confidence in the production values and it was amazing fun to shoot, going at high speeds in a specially created vehicle.

What other fictional worlds inspire you?

The ones I grew up on, like Alice in Wonderland. The works of Lewis Carrol in general, really.

You’ve done Narnia and Halo now. What attracts you to that sort of thing?

I love sci-fi and fantasy but I don’t think that’s the reason I took on the projects I’ve been involved in. With those projects their genres give them a wonderful quality of escapism and an incredible capacity to imagine worlds that are other than our own. At the same time both of them are good stories to tell because they ground themselves in human character and emotion. I’ve never had to not play a human, I don’t know what that would feel like. I think they are very valuable stories to tell. A new environment with very human stories.

Do you have a dream project in mind?

They are so many people I’d like to work with and so many worlds I’d like to play in so I always find it a bit difficult to narrow it down to just one.

Can you tell us a little bit about forthcoming historical fantasy, Reign?
We’re going to shoot it from July in Toronto. We’ve shot the pilot and I had a great time doing it. It’s about Mary Queen of Scots and her time in France. It is very, very beautiful with lots of plots twisting and turning and a great selection of characters and I think it’s going to be very gripping and entertaining. It’s got some great fantastical twists, it’s not totally historically accurate, the emphasis is a more creative retelling of that period.

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

The Secret History, Donna Tart.

Simpsons or Futurama?

Simpsons.

Mario or Sonic?

Mario.

Narnia or Middle Earth?

Narnia.

Truth or Beauty?

Truth.

HALO 4: FORWARD UNTO DAWN is out on Blu-ray and DVD now.

With his last book (Punk Rock Jesus) writer/artist Sean Murphy took on religion and the media with magnificent ferocity. This time, though, Murphy has teamed with his American Vampire: Survival of the Fittest collaborator Scott Snyder to tackle the mysteries and monsters of the deep in The Wake, a new horror/sci-fi comic from Vertigo.

In our exclusive interview with Murphy, we talk about the shape of those monsters, The Wake’s massive scope, working with Snyder again, and how he defines success.

Starburst: Can you tell us what The Wake is all about, and also, what inspired the visual sense of the book?

Sean Murphy: Lee Archer is a marine biologist who’s about to make the biggest, darkest discovery of her career on a journey that fathoms beneath the ocean waves – and one that will alter humanity’s understanding of its origins since the beginning of recorded time. It’s a story that spans not only the entirety of human history, but about the evolution of life as we know it on this world.

My goal for the visuals was to be as clear as possible with the storytelling. Punk Rock Jesus was filled with scribbles and jam-packed with detail. With The Wake, I wanted to pull the detail back a bit and allow Matt Hollingsworth (the colourist) to be able to embellish the storytelling with his groundbreaking colour.

Horror, sci-fi, and an ocean setting seems to indicate that we should, maybe, expect a wide array of beasties. Are we going to see a standard collection of existing sea creatures or did you get a chance to create some unique monsters? And if so, where did you draw your inspiration from for them?

The creatures in The Wake are completely original, but based off existing traits of known ocean species. At times, the facial design is that of a piranha. During other parts, it glows with the translucence of other deep sea predators. In the end, it’s like nothing people have ever seen in comics.

Can you tell us a little bit about working with Matt Hollingsworth, what he brings to the book and how his colour choices affected your art work? Same question with regard to doing the cover work with Jordie Bellaire?

For the colour, Matt has been working from Japanese woodblock prints. Instead of using flat colors, you’ll notice that there’s a rice-paper texture to the book. This allows the sky to not only be blue, but blue with orange flecks within it. It’s amazing what he’s doing – the entire thing looks hand painted with watercolours. It’s the best I’ve ever been coloured.

Jordie is another amazing talent, and a good friend. We were a bit behind schedule, so we brought her in to work on the covers for solicitations. I’m lucky to have two great people handling colouring chores on the book.

How important was your previous experience with Scott on American Vampire: Survival of the Fittest to the collaborative process here?

It’s always nice working with people whom you’re familiar with. I would have done The Wake even if it was my first time working with Scott, but it’s much better that we have a history because it means we’re more efficient.

You’ve mentioned that this was a nice break after what, we would imagine, was a bit of plate spinning while writing and illustrating Punk Rock Jesus, but are you itching to get back to something where you are driving the story more on your own again?

I enjoy working alone as much as I enjoy working with a team, to be honest.

If this lives past these first 10 issues, is it something that could be a monthly book, or is it something where you and Scott would have to wait for your schedules to align again so you could knock out another mini?

If The Wake is anything like American Vampire, then it might mean spin-offs, guest artists and writers, and ongoing storylines. Let’s see how this goes first, then Scott and I may have some decisions to make.

How do you gauge success with a labor of love like Punk Rock Jesus and also this project? Is it all a matter of feeling self-satisfied with the work, is it peer approval, critical acclaim, sales?

Those are all great ways to gauge success. In order, I’d put them like this: self-satisfaction, critical acclaim, sales, and then peer approval. The last measure of a project’s success is that it should lead to a project of equal, or greater, satisfaction rather than dipping in some way.

Punk Rock Jesus picked apart so many sacred cows and popular institutions – reality TV, the media, religion, etc. – have you received any positive feedback from people who live in those worlds?

I have a lot of religious readers, I’m happy to say. Most of them are Christian, but I’ve had a few Muslim readers in the Middle East reach out to me with kind emails. I’ve also heard the book is a hit with some US soldiers in Afghanistan.

We noticed a nice Punk Rock Jesus Easter egg in issue #1, can we expect a few more subtle references to your past work and Scott’s past work throughout the series?

Yes, I promised Scott that I’d put in refs to American Vampire as well.

Lastly, this is the first big Vertigo launch in the post-Karen Berger era. You’ve said previously that you hope this book “shows people that Vertigo is still strong”, but is there a bit of extra pressure on you guys to make that happen?

Yes. But the figures coming in for The Wake are very encouraging. I don’t think many people are worried anymore.

THE WAKE #1 is in comic book stores now.

Believe it or not, the first instance of a web series occurred in the mid-‘90s with the invention of ‘webisodes’ for something called Internet the Animated Series and then Rat Chicken. Although small potatoes this did lead to a development deal with MTV for the production company Bullseye Art. As technology has moved on and broadband and fibre optics have made using the internet more pleasurable, the concept of viewing a series on your laptop rather than your TV has become a viable commodity. So from 2003 until 2006 the first germs of what we know as the web series came through in shows such as Red VS Blue. YouTube became a thing and the mainstream started to take notice even producing webisodes for popular TV programmes like Battlestar Galactica and The Office. Popularity and notoriety have continued for this new medium with shows like Dr Horrible’s Sing Along Blog, The Legend of Neil and The Guild. They even have their own awards ceremonies now called things like the Streamy Awards. Which brings us nicely to The Bloody Mary Show, the kind of product of such imagination and wit that it’s simply too good for television and simply could not exist there in its current uncompromised form.

The Bloody Mary Show has won multiple awards and is the creation of writer and producer Darren Chadwick-Hussein. The show premiered in the summer of 2012 and can be found on the show’s own website as well as on YouTube and Blip. The show is an unholy mash up of love for the horror genre, urban legend and soap opera and takes place mainly in Hemingway’s pub. We follow ‘Bloody Mary’, the Candyman like figure of urban legend popular with teenagers who like scaring themselves. This version is played by actress Hollie Taylor who along with her friends Viscera (Elizabeth Webster), Abdabs (Thomas Coombes) and Malevolent (Jenny Fitzpatrick) deals with the comings and goings between the supernatural world and the real world. Of course there are villains of a sort with characters you love to hate being represented by Samantha (Erica Emm) and Amicus (Richie Hart). Here Mary is less interested in scaring the bejesus out of people and more helping people which brings her to Chris (Craig Daniel Adams) a troubled young man with whom Mary gets romantically involved leading to all manner of complications.

What makes The Bloody Mary Show so compelling a piece of entertainment is its absolute refusal to be pigeon holed. Imagine the waiting room scene towards the end of Beetlejuice mixed with the pub bound soap opera of Coronation Street with the comedy and celebration of something like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and you are only just coming close to describing this. There are seven episodes so far and together they total about 55 minutes or so. The series works as a soap opera because each episode ends on a suitable note meaning that you are desperate to see what happens next. It’s a credit to the show that I unintentionally ended up watching all of the series in one sitting because at the end of each episode I was desperate to see what happened next. This is always a sign that, in an episodic drama, it’s definitely doing its job. There is also such a warmth and love to the characters which definitely helps. Each character has their own moment to shine with the various complications in their lives and you care because the performers behind the masks or make up are giving it their all. Hollie Taylor as Mary is one of those actresses who is naturally very pretty, appealing and has the likeability and warmth factor that has made the likes of Natalie Portman so popular. So when she faces trouble and strife you are right there with her as an audience. Thomas Coombes might be familiar to many from EastEnders but here he is under a simple but effective prosthetic as Abdabs, a grim reaper like figure. Coombes’ performance is totally there despite not being able to see his facial expressions and he makes Abdabs arguably the most likeable character, even getting his own romantic arc. Elizabeth Webster might be familiar to eagle eyed genre fans from the recent Cockneys vs. Zombies and here plays the reliable friend par excellence.

What surprised me most about the show when I went through it was how much production value it actually had. I had some kind of internal prejudice beforehand where I thought that all web shows were cheap handheld exercises in found footage nonsense. The Bloody Mary Show looks fantastic and is so above and beyond what I would have aimed for if putting together my own web series. The special effects are also super impressive and towards the finale, the make-up and creature work gives anything in Doctor Who a run for its money.

The impetus for the show first came to the writer/producer during an instance of sleep paralysis. This lead to the creation of a screenplay for a short followed by a re-write process which meant that the web series became the best medium with which to tell the story. The Bloody Mary Show has won several awards including awards at the Indie Soap Awards and the Los Angeles Web Fest. Darren Chadwick-Hussein is currently knee deep in the writing process for series two which promises to cross the boundaries of sex, violence and involve more characters of urban legend only hinted at in the first series.

The mastermind behind this show, Darren Chadwick-Hussein had the kind of childhood that could only lead to a career in writing such vivid fantasy. Being pulled out of school at a young age to go with his mother to see Poltergeist or whatever horror film was playing and then growing up to discover the delights of Russ Meyer, John Waters and of course The Rocky Horror Picture Show. This love of genre is evident in the casting of David McGillivray as Herzog the landlord of Hemingway’s. McGillivray is the writer of old school horror films House of Whipcord, Frightmare, Schizo and Satan’s Slave and still works as a writer. An interest in alternative narratives lead to Chadwick-Hussein discovering the likes of The Guild online and the brand new opportunity to tell stories in this new medium was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up.

The show was filmed at The Mayflower Pub which overlooks the Thames in Rotherhithe South London. The Mayflower just happens to be the oldest pub on the River Thames and the perfect location for the subject matter. The bulk of the show was filmed upstairs in the dining area. The pub has recently also been host to the Kardashians, Hugh Laurie and Japanese erotic entertainment who all used its uniqueness to varying degrees. It’s testament to the affection and hard work that went into the production that The Mayflower comes across in the show (as Hemingway’s) as a much bigger and convincing modern bar.

We met Darren at the Mayflower where we chatted about the show, its reception and the plans for series two…

Starburst: What was the idea behind getting horror and blending it with the characteristics of a soap?

Darren Chadwick-Hussein: Continuing drama is always a thing I enjoy, what I like is the ability to create continuous stories with soapy elements, and I am not afraid to say ‘soapy’ elements.. The thing I like about horror is how they let you explore emotions even though they are extreme. Clive Barker, Stephen King did it well and the late James Herbert. Soap combined with this is a great way of exploring emotions. There was a great blog the other day on Koldcast TV about the show and it was all about how watching stuff like Monsters Inc. you see the emotional side of the monsters and this was where the soap opera side comes in. There are lots of typical soap opera elements in there with shagging and pregnancy, I thought of them as drama rather than soap but then people were really liking the soap elements and there is a site in America called We Love Soaps and they loved it and I was like Okay… and we were winning ‘best couple’ and ‘most romantic lead’ and beating out actual soaps on the site. We ended up being nominated for nine indie soap awards and we went to New York for the ceremony and met big daytime soap stars who were going into web stuff and they were all over us like a cheap suit asking to be in the show. We won an award for best web series-comedy and I was nearly crying I was so happy but we were presented the awards by these people who I had never heard of. The great thing about shows like Ugly Betty and other soaps was that you had all the characters that you love to hate and I try and get that into my characters. Very often when characters get their comeuppance it’s comedic rather than nasty.

How did you go about getting the show financed?

I didn’t know what crowd funding was, never heard of Indie Go Go or Kickstarter and happened to work in a large company, so I just emailed everyone in the company with “Hi I want to make a web series; you wouldn’t be willing to put in £10-15 would you?” I almost got sacked! My crowd funding was sending emails out and luckily people were generous. I’m probably not doing that for series two, I have been looking at sponsorship and branding and as much as I don’t want to it may go crowd funding. People forget how much hard work it is and the majority of these crowd funding things never make it because people are being unrealistic. If it’s a decent project though and you can see it then I will give money to a decent project. The Veronica Mars crowd funding thing made people think it was a piece of piss when it isn’t, it is really difficult. Identify between 15 and 100 people who will put money in on day one and if you don’t get that then you won’t reach your target.

Being the writer-producer and the show essentially being your baby, were there ever times when you were looking over the director Victoria Howell’s shoulder and disagreeing with her direction?

There were a couple of times where I stepped in but Vicky is twice the size of me and could snap me like a twig. We butted heads at times and I think that we worked really well together and I am glad that she made certain bits as extreme as they were because I had originally envisioned an audience of teenage girls and we didn’t get that audience, we actually got grown men! A very good gender split from about 20-55 who are fanatical about it. When I was writing it I had to censor myself in ways that, if you are writing for a teenage audience there are certain things that are not allowed in things like Hollyoaks like smoking! You could be murdering or whatever but you can’t have a cigarette dangling out of your mouth.

How did you go about casting the main roles and finding the performers necessary to bring the characters to life?

I worked with Hollie Taylor who plays Bloody Mary as I wrote her a graduation piece that a friend of a friend was directing and I met her and she was wonderful and it was like ‘who is this actress?’. So I originally wrote what was Winifred and we were going forward with that but with the re-writes I always had Hollie in mind, she was my lead actress. It feels great to write for someone you know but I also knew what Hollie was capable of – but she completely surprised me as well. The first person who was cast was Erica Emm who plays Samantha and she was in a film called Love Bug which played Frightfest in 2011, where she goes on a date and gets a germ and turns everyone into crazed loons, she happened to be on that date in the film with actor Tom Coombes who plays Abdabs. We went to the Frightfest screening and I met Tom and he is a real cockney character and I told him about the show and the character and he came on board. Through Tom, Elizabeth Webster came along because they were in a film together called Taylors Trophy and there was a bit where Tom gets his face shoved against the bar and Liz’s character licks the crisps off his face and it was like ‘get me this woman!’ and so through that the characters were cast. Jenny Fitzpatrick who originally played Malevolent had worked with Hollie and Craig Daniel Adams had worked with Hollie as well which was great because there was very little rehearsal time and everyone more or less knew each other. The people we used were all very much up and comers and Tom recently won an award for an off Broadway show. When we tried to advertise for actors we got the wrong people and we had to have professionals. People are worried about approaching professionals but what is the worst they are going to say? They can only say no. We didn’t get one though, we approached the actress who plays Martha Jones’ mum in Doctor Who who dropped out and then we got Judith Rosenbauer in. We had to take a break with filming because we ran out of money and the great thing was they all came back apart from one person and that was Malevolent so we had to re-cast and luckily nobody notices although we drew attention to it and made a joke of it! Jenny was unable to come back as she was in Ghost the musical. It would be great to have Jenny back but probably not as Malevolent but maybe a different character in one episode and have her face off with the actress who plays Malevolent now.

For a web series the show has a look and production value far above and beyond what I would have aimed for or imagined was possible with a web show, especially with Abdabs’ mask, how was this achieved?

Abdabs’ mask was done by Lifecast who do all the Hollywood prosthetics and we went to them and said ‘hey we have no money’ and they put some students on the job. If it was a big production then that mask would probably have cost 25k. The original one was kind of saggy and didn’t work properly. What we did was black up the actor’s face and there were two pieces, a face piece and a jaw piece, which on camera looks like bone moulded to Tom’s face. Originally the jaw was too heavy so the two pieces were attached to the cloth and this meant that the prosthetic became the easiest to do. I’m looking forward to getting Tom back into that role to see what he can do in series two because now the jaw is much more moveable. The Wraiths were also Hollywood prosthetics which cost us about a grand too which would have cost more for a bigger production. We may have been low budget but the one thing I couldn’t scrimp on was the look of it, we shot on a 7D camera ultra-cheap but got deals for the lighting and stuff like that. The industry is in flux at this moment in time and people are scared and I get excited when I hear about people doing it because they should be, but get the story right first of course.

Is it easier to get a web series financed than it would be a short or a feature?

I am going to say no, I think it’s actually harder. You can go to the BFI and say you want to make a short film and if you have the right people and know the right people then they will say yes. If you are being screened at a festival across the sea then they will have a big pot of money for you but if you’re a web series then they don’t want to know. We need about 5 or 6 more good British web shows before people are going to pay attention. There are some good ones and there are some terrible ones out there. There is nothing to be afraid of being low budget and mostly on this everyone worked for free and were fed and treated like a god and a lot of people forget that. We were at the church round the corner getting everyone dressed to come over here and I would be here at 5am and people would ask why? As the producer with people working for me I wanted them to be fed. Simon Beaufoy, the writer of The Full Monty, said the best time he ever had was when he catered his own short film and it’s nice to give back, especially on days when I could treat the cast and crew to fish and chips. We would gather down here (in the pub) afterwards for a drink.

Do you think it will get easier with places like Netflix and Amazon producing their own original content like Zombieland and House of Cards?

More people are paying attention and this is a good thing. However once the big boys start getting involved it can push out the independents somewhat if you’re not careful. There are lots of things to discover, like I Am Tim is a good one and has won awards but it’s very niche. All of the web series from Britain at the moment are for urban youth. Some shows are financed via crowd funding but there isn’t much to it and the end product is not good. At London comic con last year I was between a couple of other shows with millions of views and yet we won because we got the audience involved with Liz as Viscera in character to the Q&A and they loved it. You don’t have to have a huge amount of money if there is something people will remember at places like that. Comic con have taken notice which is a good thing and we will back this year. We don’t know where things are going but things sort themselves out. I am lucky I can do a job where I can do this as well but it would be nice to get paid for it too.

You play with folklore characters but was there any you wanted to include but couldn’t due to budgetary constraints?

Originally Herzog was supposed to look like Nosferatu but we couldn’t do that. Originally in the short film the pub was described as if Tim Burton took acid at the monster club but we couldn’t do that. In series 2 I am really looking forward to portraying a character called Krampus which is a European bad Santa character; Santa’s opposite, but he won’t kill anyone. There will be a couple of other little things like a character in Islamic mythology that exists in the toilet but not the Japanese one which is the Japanese equivalent of Blood Mary who was also going to be in there for a while but we ended up dropping that one too. We got a couple of references in there like the appearance of the character from The Ring and we planned an appearance for a character that would be introduced by emerging from a TV but the props guy couldn’t get a TV. A lot of characters I would have loved to have been able to do but couldn’t afford it but hopefully with series two. We had Wraiths in there, which I refuse to call Wraiths and call Ralphs instead because it’s spelled Wraith in French but Tom was adamant we were pronouncing it correctly and had an argument with another actor even though we just called them Ralphs because it’s a take-off of Ralph Fiennes and how he pronounces his name! Malevolent is a banshee and originally it was an Irish actress who suddenly became unavailable who would have been perfect but the actress who came in turned out to be better for the character. Abdabs was originally supposed to be very campy and effeminate but Tom couldn’t do it so we just had him play it as himself which works even better.

How did you go about getting The Bloody Mary Show out there and appealing to who the audience eventually became?

I noticed that Goth girls of a certain age do not have a sense of humour and take themselves very seriously and it’s not until years later when a sense of self-awareness comes in. There is a small group of Goth girls in North London who were forced by their parents to go see a pantomime and Craig Daniel Adams was playing Peter Pan and he is a hot guy and these girls were reading the program and got wind that he acts in The Bloody Mary Show and then they kept coming back to see the show and so there is a sub section of girls in North London who adore it and were tweeting me whilst in class, so they are out there. You approach blogs and get the word out there. I would love to have a wide audience but I have a good audience now and I’m not too proud to beg for a new audience. I was the weird Goth in high school and I was in the minority for being self-aware but there is a sub section of those people who like to laugh at themselves. You have to be very careful though to not be seen as poking fun but actually celebrating the sub-culture. People have to smile at themselves once in a while. Plus Bloody Mary’s costume is like really good cos-play! Whatever you do there will always be a market, it may not be the market you expect but it is a market.

What are your biggest influences in terms of genre?

Throughout my life I have always liked stuff that laughs at itself. I love piss takes but stuff that is done with a lot of love. I love Shaun of the Dead because it is done with so much love unlike Lesbian Vampire Killers which was shit as they were just mocking it. You can tell the difference between mocking and laughing with something. I loved The Rocky Horror Picture Show as it was a celebration of being different and I was always different. Even little adverts for things like Head and Shoulders in the ‘80s like an advert where a woman wearing a Halloween mask who opens the door to someone like ta da! And someone telling her she looks great and the line “dandruff too… nice touch” – that really inspired me. That was the genesis of The Bloody Mary Show right there, the fact that these monsters want to have fun. I was 19 when The Nightmare Before Christmas came out and I was at film school at the time and wanted to be an animator but I haven’t got the patience. The film was a huge influence along with Roald Dahl as I read The Witches as a child and loved the film. I was a child who loved to be frightened. I had a flirtation with Dungeons and Dragons and all the stats and monsters information that I read religiously. I read James Herbert for the smutty bits and then when I was older I got into Night of the Living Dead, expecting it to be shit because it was black and white but no it was terrifying! We were also one of the first families to get cable TV because they tested it in 1981 in Lancashire and so saw all these terrible films that nobody else would remember like Nightwing and Phase 4. I didn’t go to school in my last year and ended up hanging out with a crowd who had access to Russ Meyer films and the film Bad Taste which I loved. If I was that age again I don’t know which way I would go because it’s all so instantly available. It takes some of the joy away but I suppose I wouldn’t know any different if I was that age. John Waters as well was a huge influence on me. Jonathan Ross did a show about John Waters called The Incredibly Strange Film Show and opened with Hairspray and I went and sought that out and then saw everything by Waters that I could at 15 or 16. Things like getting on Manchester buses to places like a student union to a screening and I hope that joy is still there for people.

What is your career plan in terms of what you want to achieve and where you want this to go?

It changed because the original plan was for a franchise pilot for The Bloody Mary Show where the first episode could be sold off to other countries and they could each have their own version of the show. I like the web show community too much now but there again if someone offered to buy the rights I would happily sell but at the same time I am enjoying where I am going with it and it’s such a completely new market. There is a bible if the networks come knocking. When the question of funding came up one of the original things that happened was I was approached by a company that would have funded series two but demanded the rights but I was like ‘No I am not going there’, you cannot copyright Bloody Mary as it’s an urban legend but the situation she is in is copyrightable. She is such a wonderful character and I don’t know why there isn’t more written about her, there was Candyman but not Bloody Mary, who isn’t very well known in the UK. In the states though she is everywhere, but back here there is a lack of knowledge and everyone thought we were talking about Queen Mary when we were trying to raise money.

What advice would you give to anyone wanting to write and produce something low budget and carve out a niche for themselves?

Do it, the only thing that is stopping you from what you want to do is yourself. It’s a hell of a lot easier said than done. There were days when I was so blocked or scared that I couldn’t get out of bed. But get it out there and don’t be afraid. You will be rejected but you won’t know until you have tried. There is a great web series someone shot on an iPhone so you can take advantage of the equipment that you have got. Don’t write a script about 5000 elephants if you can’t get them and write to your budget. There is always a way to tell your story with what you have, it’s just figuring out a way round it. There is always a rich kid with funding and you can find crew if you want to do something and there are a lot of like-minded people out there but also a lot of bullshit so you have to be careful. Embrace your limitations and do it or you’ll regret it but it’s easy to say – but if I can do it and continue to do it then you can too.

What are the plans for series 2 and when will we get to see it?

We will go more extreme and have more comedic soap elements but also horror. We are all about docu-soaps now like Made in Chelsea etc. and so for series two we will bring in this element and there will be a sub-plot about the Succubae that will be the docu-soap subject called ‘Made in the Realm’. I’m writing for a different audience than when I started as we know our audience now and it was not the audience we expected and they are passionate about it. It is allowing me to explore elements I didn’t think I would be able to. So there will be things included like references to ‘Cenobites’ and things like that and our characters will view them the way we view Scientologists, a bit extreme. There will also be a few love scenes… of a certain nature, because of course you have an Incubus dating a Grim Reaper and the complications of that with Abdabs walking in on someone! The ramifications of what happened at the end of series one will be a big part of series two and the fact that they killed someone and what has happened to Chris? The point of Abdabs is he is a reaper and meant to collect souls but he didn’t do that so someone out there is a soul that is lost. There will also be new characters introduced from folklore and Herzog’s sister will be introduced. Series 2 is more or less written in my head but not down on paper yet. I had given myself until now to write it but I haven’t finished yet. I will raise money over the summer to try and get the show up by Halloween with one episode per week up until Christmas; I have scaled the original plan back though because I am trying to do this for less money than the first series. Hopefully by the end of the year there will be a series or if not then little bridges will be done. All the questions will be answered posed by series two including lots of The Woman in Black jokes because some of that is too good to not take the piss out of! It’s very exciting to be able to do this after discovering the direction we can go in and do the material that I didn’t think we would be able to do, the floodgates are open.

THE BLOODY MARY SHOW can be found on its official website, BloodyMaryShow.com.

Nine Worlds GeekFest is London’s first weekend-long, multi-genre, residential ‘everything geeks love’ convention, modelled on events like San Diego Comic Con. The organisers raised a large amount of interest and money earlier this year by becoming the second most funded convention in the history of crowd funding. The event promises to have a little bit of something for everyone. We caught up with one of the organisers, Erich Schultz, to find out more about this unique event.

Starburst: Tell us about Nine Worlds GeekFest.

Erich Schultz: We’re providing a space for many strands of fandom to gather, build community, cross-pollinate, and party. We have over twenty tracks now running, from Space Exploration to Knitting to Board Games to Steampunk to Geek Feminism. In addition to the content tracks, we’ve added lots of entertainment, vendors, guests, and fun. We’ve rented out the conference space and hotel rooms of two large neighbouring Heathrow conference hotels for the weekend, the Renaissance and the Radisson. Nine Worlds is run by an all volunteer team and raises money for English PEN; a charity that supports persecuted writers around the world.

Now tell us in 140 characters.

Twenty tracks of fascinating geek content. Amazing guests. Fabulous entertainment. Great People. Geek out at Nine Worlds Aug 9-11 in London.

Does London really need a residential convention?

Yes. For years our organising team had been going to huge US events like DragonCon and GenCon and SDCC, and we got to wondering why nothing like that exists in the UK. France can drum up 20,000+ sci-fi fans for Utopiales, heck, even Finland can find 15,000 fans for FinnCon. But when it comes to fan-driven residential multi-genre sci-fi cons in the UK, pickings are pretty slim. London needs a residential con because spending 72 hours together gives you a chance to make new friends, and because partying until the wee morning hours is great fun, and because thinking about the last bus ruins a good time.

What sort of things should we expect to find at Nine Worlds GeekFest?

Talks about Alien Ecologies, a Steampunk ceilidh, costumes, play-testing pre-release games, discussions on Thor, from Myth to Marvel, live-action quidditch, panels about Monsters, Mummies, and Mermaids, Nerf War, book launch parties by some of your favourite authors, lectures about Love and Death in the Potterverse, queer feminist sci-fi cabaret, mingling with the writers and creators of some of your favourite TV shows and video games, RockBand jammin’, sci-fi movie premieres, good beer, and lots of interesting and friendly geeks.

Why is it unlike other conventions?

The sci-fi events scene in the UK is divided between smaller specialised cons (focusing on a particular show, or specifically on literature), and the giant corporate expos which are primarily about selling stuff and celebrity signings. Our ambition with Nine Worlds GeekFest is to bring together thousands of fans from many different areas to create a critical mass of fun and geekery. Nothing like that exists in the UK.

What is Geek Feminism, and why does it matter?

Geek Feminism is about giving special focus to representations of women in sci-fi media and literature, and looking at issues of female inclusion in areas of geekdom. It needs attention because too often women feel unwelcome by geek culture because of the frequent sexual harassment they face in online gaming, or because of the overly sexualised scantily-clad, impossibly-posed women they’re given as heroes in comics and film, or because of the derision they’re faced with when they try to participate in conversations about science and technology.

What sort of guests do you have?

We’ve got lots of guests. Over a dozen fairly big names in UK Sci-Fi lit, like Kim Newman, Ben Aaronovitch, Charlie Stross and Catherine Banner. On the acting side, we’ve got Chris Barrie (Red Dwarf), a couple of Harry Potter actors, and a few Game of Thrones actors, and a few Doctor Who/Torchwood actors. And we’ve got people like Rhianna Pratchett (creator of the new Tomb Raider game), Kieron Gillen (Marvel Comics big author in the UK) and lots of scientists and academics.

What inspired you to do this project?

We wanted something like this to exist and eventually we decided we’d have to build it ourselves.

If you could delete one thing from reality in such a way that it never existed and never will, what would it be?

Nothing. Seriously, nothing. It’s a bad idea. Really bad. Like, bad on a Crossing The Streams level. The consequences of even minor alteration could have catastrophic repercussions that don’t bear thinking about. Am I the only person who paid attention during Back to The Future? PARADOXES, PEOPLE! I can hear that gorram butterfly beating its wings in anticipation! I, for one, refuse to be a part of risking the fabric of existence in such a cavalier manner! I will not be party to events that could cause a chain reaction that might unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe!

The Simpsons or Futurama?

Ghost in the Shell.

Matt Smith or Benedict Cumberbatch?

Jane Goldman.

Truth or Beauty?

Truth is Beauty.

For more information on the convention, which runs in London from the 9th to the 11th of August 2013, go to www.nineworlds.co.uk