Feature Category: Interviews

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CHARLES BAND is a writer, producer, and director with nearly 300 film credits to his name. Most famous for the PUPPET MASTER and TRANCERS series of films, his work primarily inhabits a unique subgenre of fantasy horror that he has carved out for himself. As his FULL MOON PICTURES label launches its Amazon Channel, the legendary filmmaker took some time to chat with us about how he got started in the business, his prolific career, and what keeps him motivated.

STARBURST: With such a long and successful career what keeps you motivated to keep making films and moving forward?

Charles Band: If you do something long enough it just becomes part of you and part of your routine. I was lucky enough to be able to do it at a young age, and it was all I was interested in doing. There are rough patches, and as the business fluctuates so much, there are moments when you wonder why you’re in it at all. Then something good happens, and you make another movie and it all makes sense again. I never pretended that these movies are anything other than escapism or entertainment; I was never political and not everyone in the world loves horror or sci-fi, but the niche that do really enjoy them. I was lucky that when I started way back in the seventies, much like Roger Corman, there was still an opportunity to have your film released theatrically. There was no video or the other formats that we’re so used to today. You would wait eagerly for a movie to come to your local theatre, so as a young filmmaker, I could go along and watch my movies with an audience. Sometimes even a full house, who would be laughing, or scared, or both. There was an instant gratification. That faded away in the eighties with the direct-to-video revolution, but it’s great to still connect with an audience even if the medium changes. Now, I’m at a point where I wouldn’t know how to do anything else. We’re reinventing ourselves for the umpteenth time for the digital world, making movies every few months, pulling them out of a library and cleaning them up, and there are all the merchandise derivatives. It’s like the Full Moon brand is being introduced to a whole new, younger generation since the video store died. I guess I would have done some things differently but at the core is that I just love making these movies.

You touched on it a little, but do you think your career would have been vastly different had digital been around when you began?

For sure, because the opportunity would have been wider. I was lucky as I grew up around a father who made films, and while I wasn’t sure of what genre I would go into, by my late teens I knew it was what I wanted to do. My influences came from the Universal Monsters, the Italian filmmakers of the sixties and the comics I was reading, and I began to realise I wanted to make horror and fantasy films. I had the training, and I was pretty resourceful at a young age. I begged, borrowed and stole money in order to make my first movie. Today the price of entry is almost free. Back in the day, there were hard costs whereas today you make a movie in your garage for virtually no money. Today there is also little cinematic opportunity for B-movies. Then, if you made a movie for a reasonable price you wouldn’t lose money, and you might even make some. Today, there’s little chance of recovering even 10% of your budget. Right now, the business of making a small, clever, genre film is over. When I started, there was still the theatrical side, and then the video industry, and I was an early pioneer. The model was still make a movie and hopefully, make a little money. Today, there’s more exposure and inexpensive technology, and perhaps the talent isn’t as necessary, or the training and the experience. For me, and for Full Moon, with a library of over 300 films, the streaming world isn’t easy but we’re embracing it.

There’s a prolific festival circuit that exists in the genre market, and many fans may never have seen your films projected, so is that something you actively embrace?

Yeah, but it’s a rarified, unique and not very profitable market. When the local video store disappeared there was nothing left, and as we were still working movies we did a lot of conventions and festivals, and whatever we needed to do to reach even 1% of the audience. Some of the most telling comments at the festivals related to people thinking Full Moon were out of business, and my response was always the same: the video store where people discovered new movies were gone and even though my films were available all over the place, nothing has taken the place of the store yet. Until we got a channel on Amazon and people could see them all! Now we can direct people there and do our best to keep new movies coming and dust off the old ones, we’re finally seeing people reconnecting with films they couldn’t find for years. I’m finally optimistic that as we expand the audience will grow again.

There does seem to be a market out there as so many horror films take themselves very seriously, and there seems to be this need to make ‘hard’ sci-fi films; basically, they don’t make them like you do anymore.

My whole philosophy hasn’t changed. If it’s a horror or sci-fi film with a hard edge, and it’s well made, then I’m entertained. If there are blood and guts just for the sake of it, I’m not. I think my movies travel well. I’ve never made a slasher movie, I try to keep a fantasy element. Some people are freaked out by inanimate objects coming to life and so on, but they know it’s not real. A guy stalking around with a knife sticking it into people, that’s not entertaining. The whole torture genre was not my thing at all. My movies have an overall philosophy and I’ve done what I can to make them clever, a little humorous and entertaining. My favourite films are always off-centre a little. No-one really makes films like this anymore. We have a tiny budget so there’s only so much we can do, but these movies have stood the test of time more than so many of the horrors made in the eighties.

Many of your films have had sequels or crossovers, so when you hit on an idea do you see a lifespan for it, and maybe plan that way?

Any movie I made, if it was well received and did okay, then we would make a sequel. I just try to make the coolest movie I can within my means. With Puppet Master, I thought we might be successful, and with every new one we made I thought that would be it, but we’re now just finishing the eleventh. In truth, some of the films are not very well connected at all, and that’s inevitable with a series over twenty-five years. In general, I never dreamt them up with sequels in mind. I did always hope that in some movies I could team up some of the different characters we had in Full Moon, but through changes in the industry and so on, it wasn’t always possible. We had some team ups such as Dollman and Demonic Toys, but it wasn’t always possible.

The business side of moviemaking seems to have always been at the forefront of your mind. You seem to have had an eye for what is financially viable and what will work.

You have to – this is what I do and it’s my career. I wanted to be prolific. I have friends who make major studio films and get paid very well, but they have to wait two to three years between projects. For me, it’s hard to wait two or three days let alone years. But you have to keep on top of it, and if the money dries up then you make smaller films. I never had any formal training, and I made so many mistakes, but I was able to survive and learn. There are no partners or debt; if we can afford it, we make it and if we do well, then we can make more.

You mentioned you’d never made a slasher film, and you’ve spoken a little of your ethos, but what would you say really defines a Charles Band film?

Luckily, I can point to my body of work, and all you have to do is go to Amazon Prime, sign up, and hundreds of films are there. The nearest thing today to a video store. And we’ll keep adding things as they fit into the Full Moon mode. For me, one of the greatest horror films of all time is The Texas Chain Saw Massacre; when you think you see all these horrific things, and really you’ve seen nothing at all. The Exorcist is my favourite horror movie, but another one I love is The Sixth Sense. Luckily, no-one had tipped me off, so it really surprised me. How do I define my films? I don’t know, but if you watch enough then I guess you’ll get a sense of it.

You can find hundreds of CHARLES BAND movies and selected grindhouse treats streaming on demand at the FULL MOON Channel on Amazon Prime in the UK.

Greg McLean is not a director that likes to hold back. From his vicious feature debut Wolf Creek to his most recent film The Belko Experiment, the Aussie director’s films always pack a nasty punch. Or stabbing. Or shooting. Or most likely all of the above. The Belko Experiment is an adults-only version of The Hunger Games with a corporation full of workers trapped in a tower block and forced to kill each other, or risk being killed by explosive implants in their heads.

Greg McLean talks directing the film from the script by Guardians of the Galaxy’s James Gunn, as well as his next film starring Daniel Radcliffe, and his return to the horror franchise that made his name.

Starburst: It seems like you had some real alpha-males on set amongst the cast. Guys like Tony Goldwyn and John C. McGinley. Which of the actors would have come out on top in a real version of The Belko Experiment?

Greg McLean: I think Tony Goldwyn would have a pretty good shot. Tony is an incredibly fit guy. He may be the guy who comes out on top I think.

It’s a great ensemble with a lot of speaking parts… how was it directing such a large cast?

I come from a theatre background originally, so the idea of working with a big cast was one of the things I was attracted to. It’s a challenge but it’s a fun challenge. It’s really fun to work with that many actors in a movie. I love working with those guys. And also working with a cast like that, it was a treat to have that many amazing actors who were very well cast in their roles. To me, it was a complete hoot. It was great.

And how involved were you in casting? Were you on board at that stage?

The process was basically James Peter Safran had worked out a deal to make the movie with the studio MGM. Then they went after directors and ultimately I was the person brought on to direct the movie and then from there we pretty much design everything together. So myself and Peter and the studio worked out our wish list and we’d all put our ideas in the hat. We actually managed to get an incredible cast together. The weird thing is we kind of managed to get our first choices every time. Usually you don’t get that. We managed to pull together an amazing bunch of actors for the movie which was so thrilling for all of us.

I felt that in order for the film to work, I had to present, as a filmmaker, everyone’s point of view without judgement. I didn’t want to make a movie where I was saying these are the good guys and these are the bad guys. To me, real horror is watching people in an impossible situation. Watching this corporate construction that they’re in forcing them to become monsters. These are reasonable people. They’re all reasonable people in regular circumstances. But in this circumstance, certain personalities become monstrous. I think that’s a metaphor for politics, for society, for corporations. We see regular people forced to become monsters because of scenarios. Every day we read about people doing terrible things and think how could that person do that? I feel like the film is about exploring how people do come up with those personal justifications for doing horrible things.

Your films often find beauty in amongst real ugliness. And particularly they find beauty in nature and landscapes. Was it difficult to find the beauty in such a sterile, corporate environment?

It was a challenge. And that challenge was one of the main reasons I wanted to make this movie. To me, the idea of making a film whereby I had to talk about the character transformations and the thematic transformations just by looking at how the environment changes in an office building, that was a huge challenge. It’s much easier to do that when you have a landscape and when you have different weather going on. When you’re in an office building, it’s a bigger challenge. That was fascinating to me. I was compelled by how you would do that. But also the moral conundrums of these characters within that context was fascinating. This Lord of the Flies-like experiment in this context. I hadn’t done that before.

And so what was the decision behind shooting the film in Colombia when it’s mostly set inside the building?

The film was set in a Latin American country. By the time I came on the movie, it was already in pre-production in Colombia. So it was already set to be shot there. I think the reason we shot there was I believe there was a good rebate in Colombia. It was just an easy place to shoot it. Plus they have good crews and great casts. So there was a bunch of reasons why we shot it there. By the time I joined the movie there was a moving train to shoot in Colombia.

It’s interesting that you’re next film Jungle takes you back into nature again. What can you tell us about Jungle?

I shot Belko and then my next movie was Jungle which was a different kind of story. It’s based on a book about an Israeli backpacker who gets lost in the Amazon jungle. And it’s his survival story. There’s an amazing book written by the guy who survived the experience and then it was turned into a great screenplay. Then it came to me and we also cast Daniel Radcliffe as the main character Yossi Ghinsberg. So I went back to Colombia to shoot that movie even though it’s totally unrelated . Again, that was a very different kind of experience because that was all about being on rivers and in jungles and the big wild of that landscape. It was about going back to do an action adventure film using that environment in a different way to Belko.

You seem to be moving away slightly from Australian stories. But what is the situation with the Wolf Creek franchise now? Is there going to be a second series of the TV show? Will Wolf Creek 3 happen as a feature?

Ultimately, I just look for amazing stories that I think will be a challenge for me as a filmmaker. Also you’re interested in doing different things at different times in your life. You’re drawn to different things at different stages of your career. Right now, I’m actually directing the first episodes of the new Wolf Creek TV series season 2. And then beyond that I’ll be looking for another filmmaking challenge. So I’ll be looking for a film that stretches me into an area that I haven’t done before. Because for me it’s all about expanding as an artist and filmmaker and trying to find something that really scares me and I don’t know how to do it and then that makes it more exciting. Something that’s a great story that moves me that I want to put my 100% into.

You also executive produced Down Under which was hilarious and one of the best films we saw at the London Film Festival last year. Would you ever direct a full-on comedy yourself? If not, we know you’re a big Star Wars fan, would you consider pitching a Star Wars stand alone story inspired by the horror genre?

Yes and yes. I love comedy and comedy filmmakers. I agree Down Under is a genius film. Abe Forsyth is a fantastic writer and director. I’m nowhere near as talented as he is with that kind of comedy but I’d love to try it one day. A Star Wars horror story? I’d have to get it passed by Kathy Kennedy and I’m not sure my Star Wars inspired horror pitch would ever get past the gates of Lucasfilm. But I’d love to give it a shot. I’m such a Star Wars nerd, I would do the Blue Snaggletooth prequel story. I’m a huge Star Wars fan. I’d do anything.

Finally, the ending of The Belko Experiment sets up the possibility of a sequel. Would you be tempted to return to direct?

Never say never. I know James has some thoughts on where the story goes. We all talked about it while shooting, about the different ways it could go. Ultimately sequels come from fans’ desire to see them. So if the movie gathers enough fans and it’s certainly got a lot of fans so far, there may be more Belkos. If there’s an appetite, the makers of the film would be happy to come back and make some more.

The Belko Experiment is available on DVD & Blu-ray 21st August 2017

ANNE RICE needs little introduction. The New Orleans born author is best known for her

Gothic fiction, Christian literature, and erotica. Her series, THE VAMPIRE CHRONICLES, detailing the adventures of the Vampire Lestat, redefined vampires and their role in genre fiction. Her book, INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE, came out in 1973 and was adapted into a movie starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise in 1994. Her latest novel sends the infamous Lestat to Atlantis. We caught up with her to find out more…

STARBURST: How would you describe Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis to new
readers?
Anne Rice: It is a full-fledged Vampire Chronicle featuring my hero, Lestat, in his new role as prince of the vampire tribe. Only a short time has passed since Lestat assumed this role, and set up a court in his ancestral chateau in the mountains of France. Much to his surprise, Lestat finds himself confronting a new species of immortal. And the species is connected to the spirit that gave birth to the vampires of the world thousands of years ago. As Lestat has revealed, this spirit, named Amel, fused with a mortal queen of Egypt to create the first preternatural blood drinker or vampire, and all vampires made since are connected by this spirit. Now, as this new species makes itself known, Lestat realises that they may be the worst the threat the tribe has ever faced.

Why Atlantis?
I have always loved Plato’s story of the lost empire of Atlantis, and longed to do my own Atlantis mythology, and this book gave me a golden opportunity. I found I was able to connect an Atlantian origin story to Amel, and subsequently to the vampires, while at the same time offering a very complete story of the mysterious kingdom of Atlantis itself. I found it immensely satisfying to walk the streets of Atlantis in my imagination, and to speculate on how an advanced technical civilisation might have developed without going through the industrial and military evolutions that we have seen in our world. The people of Atlantis go from being a hunter gatherer people to inhabitants of a marvellous techno-paradise, and Amel’s genius and personality emerge at the centre of Atlantis. As for the new immortal species, they do offer a threat to the vampires, yes, but they also offer friendship, knowledge and huge advantages, and Lestat must decide how to navigate the danger to the other vampires and to himself. Amel is something of a hero in this story, and I long to work with him again.

Is there anything left for you to explore in fiction? What’s next? 

I feel I’ve only begun! My son and I have just finished a collaboration on new book, and I have more books in my imagination than I can find time to write. I have a mind that races spontaneously to create cosmologies and characters and stories. I want to write much more about Ancient Egypt, much more about ghosts and spirits, much more about werewolves, and much more about my beloved vampires.  

Will you write another Mummy story? Are we done with Mummies now?

Great question. As I mentioned my son, Christopher and I have just collaborated on a novel and it is a sequel to my earlier The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned. The title is Ramses the Damned: the Passion of Cleopatra. It picks up right where the first Ramses novel left off, with the immortal Ramses and his immortal love, Julie exploring the world of 1914 right before the beginning of the Great War. Cleopatra, Ramses’ lost love, figures prominently in the novel, and other mythic characters emerge. We had a wonderful time writing it, and are already have a third Ramses novel planned.

Why do you keep returning to Lestat? What is it about that particular monster? 
Lestat is like no other character I’ve ever discovered or created in my writing. I love him with my whole heart, and he is so real to me that I can easily envision him, or hear the sound of his voice whenever I want. He’s inescapably alive for me, and I want to go writing about his adventures as he faces the complexities of the modern world. I can’t answer what is it about Lestat in particular, except that he sprang to life out of the corner of my eye when I was writing my first novel, Interview with the Vampire, and when I did devote full attention to Lestat some eight years later, he became some sort of fusion of myself and my husband, Stan, some deep fictional embodiment of our ongoing love affair which went on to last for 41 years. Lestat is the male in me. He’s the hero I long to be, and the monster that I so often am in real life – impetuous, reckless, loving, and desperately needing love. 

Why are some monsters so romantic?
I’m not sure I can answer this question. I can say that for me monsters have always been intensely romantic, and I have personally identified with them as outcasts, and have wanted to explore their suffering, and the elements that make others afraid of them. A movie I saw in the 1940s, Dracula’s Daughter, presented the heroine as very romantic, a tortured artist doomed to drink blood to survive. The character stole my heart. Vampire movies fascinated me, never giving me enough about the vampire himself or herself. I longed to hear the monster’s personal story. I longed to know the monster intimately. Why this is, I don’t know. I was always attracted to the power and isolation of the monster, identifying with the monster’s alienation, and feeling strangely at home with the monster in my soul.

 

Interview with a Vampire came from a very dark place. How does writing
that book compare to this one?
Yes, it did come from a dark place, a place of loss and grief for a lost child and grief for a lost Catholic faith. But with each subsequent vampire novel, I have re-entered that realm to find Lestat anew and hear his voice. I am and always will be an outcast in my own mind, a person who belongs nowhere, unsure of gender identity, unsure of any belief system, suspicious of any and all authority, seeking for the meaning of life, no matter what happens to me along the way. The Vampire is the perfect metaphor for the outsider, the outcast. He is really the perfect metaphor for human beings. Writing about vampires enables me to talk about my ‘reality’ – my world.  

How does it feel to be founder of modern vampire fiction? 
Thank you for your description. I don’t know that everyone would agree with your generous description there. If my work did encourage others to write about vampires, to mine the pure gold of the metaphoric power of the vampire, I’m pleased. But I think cultures show interest in different concepts at different times for reasons that are difficult to chart. And for some reason our culture near the end of the last century showed a tremendous fascination with the vampire and other mythic monsters as well. And this has continued right through the present time. Television and film today are obsessed with the supernatural in trying to fathom the depths of the human condition. After 2,000 years, as belief systems crumble and technology overwhelms us with seeming magic, we feel more than ever disconnected as thinking humans from the rest of the biological or mammalian world. In literature and film about monsters, we search for ourselves. Everywhere I turn, I see novels, motion pictures, and TV series reflecting our search for a new morality, for new rules, for new types of families, for new ways to make life not only bearable but beautiful and worthwhile. Supernatural characters, vampires, witches, mummies, werewolves, super heroes, angels inhabit these novels, films and TV series. Surely this is because we are grappling with the unique mental and moral abilities that separate us from all other creatures on the planet. Our profound emotional and spiritual gifts offer us immense vision and knowledge in a vast universe in which we feel minuscule, insignificant, lost. Again, the vampire is a metaphor for us as we confront our gifts, our ability to know just how tiny and fragile we are. We kill to live every day just as the vampire does every night. We are predators; loners in our souls. We are damned by one another and by cultures alien to us, we compete for the very air we breathe. We seek for redemption, safety, goodness, and happiness but are ever aware of how nearly impossible it is to maintain such states. We are monsters all right.  The vampire is the icon of our age. Alluring yet condemned as evil; fearsome yet seductive; beautiful yet dark.

What is it about horror and murder stories that fascinate us so? 
They allow us to ponder the violence that is part and parcel of our daily lives. As I mentioned above, we are all predators, killing to live every single day. Horror, murder, violence, death… all this is rooted in the competition that is part of biological life on our planet. To survive, one must devour. And for over eight thousand years or more, we’ve been pondering that, trying to make rules about what is good, what is bad, what is permissible, what is unforgivable. And we struggle constantly with it. Well, horror and murder stories let us think about it comfortably, play with it – work it out so to speak – in an entertaining and cathartic way. This eases the tension for a little while. I’m convinced after reading and watching murder mysteries, even the most playful English ‘cosy’ mysteries, that all murder mysteries are about our personal horror of death and our refusal to accept it. We look for the ‘murderer’ because we ourselves will soon be murdered by life, and we feel it is really unfair. After all, we feel immortal, don’t we? And we can imagine being immortal, yet we will die and we know it. So it’s comforting to watch Miss Marple or Miss Fisher or Inspector Barnaby or Lewis find ‘the murderer’ in a story and bring this awful bad person to justice, because no one will ever bring the ‘murderer’ to justice that will kill each and every one of us.

Will you ever be kind to your characters? 
I love them! I am very kind to them! I love Lestat and see to it that he always triumphs no matter how the odds are stacked against him. I heard a saying a long time ago, that Tolstoy said the measure of a writer was the love he showed to his created characters. I liked that saying, though I don’t know whether Tolstoy really said it. And I feel that I only write about those I love. If I do introduce a character that I don’t love, well, he or she disappears from the story very soon. My prose has been faulted for too much love, hasn’t it?

If you could change one thing about your life, what would it be? 
I would live in a community where I could walk to everything, grocery stores, theaters, restaurants, bookstores, the doctor’s office, the post office, every single thing. I grew up in New Orleans and it was like that for me in the 1940s and ‘50s, though you could ride the streetcar everywhere for seven cents. And later for many years I lived in the Castro District of San Francisco and it was like that, and you could take the metro to ‘downtown’ in ten minutes. But sadly, I’ve spent most of my life in places where I could not walk to everything. And that is certainly something I ponder a lot. 

If you could change one thing about the world, what would it be?
I would take away all violence and cruelty. We would all love one another. Violence would be so abhorrent as to be a shocking exception. Actually loving everyone is more respectable today than it ever was in the past, and people today do imagine ‘world peace’ in a way they never dreamed of before. So maybe we will somehow get to that stage. Our sense of injustice is being refined and expanded all the time. The fact that Western Europe has not known a war since the end of WWII is an amazing fact. Western Civilisation today has achieved an amazing level of harmony and peace with democracies flourishing everywhere. That’s a wonderful thing… so we will get there, won’t we? We are shocked, saddened, and horrified by the acts of terrorists, and we can measure our worldwide improvement by how much we are shocked by these things, and how we all pull together to condemn them. Every life lost is an unforgivable tragedy, but we must never lose sight of how united we are now in condemning those who shatter the peace of this world. As for those countries which are war torn and filled with suffering, it is too soon to be thankful that they do not make up much of the world; we must do all we can to help them, ease their pain, take their refugees, and not feed the fires of violence that rage in them. But over all? When you look at the entire world? This is a time of uncommon concord, of peace. It isn’t popular to say so, but it is true. Western Civilisation will always be a work in progress and therefore it is not good to praise what we have achieved while there is still so much work to be done. But really for most people on this planet, this is a very good time to be alive. I am profoundly thankful for the world I’ve experienced. I wish everyone were living in safety, and comfort, with all their needs met.

What inspires you, beyond writing? 
What inspires more than anything in this world is the kindness of people; the tender mercies people show to one another all around us every day. I just marvel at it, the kindness of people who stop to help one another, who take the time to offer assistance when you’re lost or confused or don’t know the language, the gentleness and concern people show one another. Everywhere I’ve travelled I’ve seen this, and encountered kind people. I am amazed sometimes as I walk through a city or a park or a town at the many happy kind people I see. I think we take it too much for granted. We forget about it. But people everywhere on this earth do love one another, and seek to be kind to one another.  It is really a dominant theme in this world. This inspires me to believe that maybe there is an afterlife.  

PRINCE LESTAT AND THE REALMS OF ATLANTIS, published by Penguin Random House, is out now in paperback.

Gareth Tunley is a versatile British actor, appearing in films such as Sightseers, Kill List and Down Terrace for Ben Wheatley, and shows such as Fresh Meat and Peep Show on television. Now, he turns his hand to writing and directing with the release of his debut feature The Ghoul. Gareth took some time to sit down with Starburst to discuss working with Ben Wheatley, his own career and directing a “bunch of clowns”.

Starburst: Without spoilers, how would you, as the writer and director, describe The Ghoul as it’s a film that defies obvious categorisation?

Well, I’d describe it as a psychological thriller about a cop who goes undercover to investigate a strange double murder. He goes undercover as a psychotherapy patient, and as his sessions continue the lines between reality and fantasy begin to blur. I’m not reading that from a rehearsed script I promise. Entirely off the top of my head. Beyond that, I would agree it’s a hard one to describe. We do front load our twist rather. That said, I think it’s rather spoiler-proof as the twists and turns keep coming as the story progresses.

There were points in The Ghoul that reminded us of Danny Boyle’s Trance and we wondered if, while filming, it was tricky keeping track of exactly where you were in the story as we’d assume you didn’t film chronologically?

We didn’t film chronologically, partly because we were on a short budget, but the short answer is yes, it was difficult to keep track of the various streams of reality. I find that difficult at the best of times, never mind with a film. It was all about getting the script nailed, and I spent a few months getting that right. At one time, I had a big chart on my wall which made me think I was starting to become like a character in the film: lots of charts on the wall and books on the occult. It’s not a good look, is it? No one wants to be found like that, it’s not going to make for a very good obituary so I went back to the word document. In essence, we just told the cast to play every scene as it comes and not worry too much about the complexities.

You mention the cast, and you’ve drawn some terrific performances from actors more known for lighter, more comedic work. As an actor yourself, do you have an advantage in knowing what makes a cast tick, and what buttons to push to get the performance you want?

I guess there’s two things to touch on there; the nature of the actors and my own acting background, such as it is. I mean, I’ve had what you might politely call a low-key career. If I was working as a spy, I couldn’t have been more low profile. But I have some sort of experience, and insight into what it’s like to be on a set and what it’s like to be in front of a camera when someone yells “action”. It’s also about building a good atmosphere on set. We had a fantastic cast that I knew I could trust, and it’s true they are mostly from a comedy background. They are, literally, a bunch of clowns, in the nicest possible way. I think that brought a different energy to what is a very serious film. There was a lightness of touch. With Tom Meeten who played the lead, he has quite a physical comedy presence and when you bottle that you get something rather special. The first time I met Tom was in the basement of a comedy club, and he was wrapped in bin liners and gaffer tape, getting yelled at by Steve Oram. This was a comedy act I should stress and not a breakdown. So, this is quite a departure, but he knocks it out the park.

The Ghoul is a very dark film; was that always there from the original idea or did it develop through production and when you realised the performances you could garner?

I think it’s a film about a character who’s quite vulnerable and impressionable. We realised partly in the edit quite how much really. In a way, it’s about playing with ideas and concepts, and as we continued the edit we realised quite how much the performers had brought to it.

You’re three years down the line from when you filmed, and began writing before that. How does it feel now you’re reaching the culmination of all that work?

Films always take a long time, and with a very, very low budget it takes even longer. We have been finished for a while, but it takes time to get it out into the world through festivals and screenings, and the release now has outstripped all our dreams. It’s astonishing it’s going into cinemas. We shot all the dialogue in just ten days, and I thought it might end up just being me screening the film on a sheet somewhere.

You’ve worked extensively with Ben Wheatley in the past. For new filmmakers like yourself, do you think the way Ben makes films and the, often strange, subject matter he includes has created greater opportunities?

It’s a mystery at times how he makes films of such quality, when essentially, he’s making them on the run. Ben is not just an influence, but has been an inspiration from very early on. I was in Down Terrace for him, and seeing how that was made on a similar budget meant that, for me, you had no excuse not to try and make a film with even a small amount of money. The energy and passion Ben brings to a project was a galvanising force for me, and without Down Terrace, The Ghoul probably wouldn’t have happened.

What’s next for you Gareth?

Currently working on getting a new script finished and out there, something a little different and more action led.

The Ghoul is in cinemas from the 4th August, read our review of the film right here.
 

Tom Meeten is an actor, writer and comedian best known for roles in television shows The Mighty Boosh and Star Stories. He has also in appeared in many films such as Burke And Hare, Paddington and Sightseers, and can now be seen in British thriller The Ghoul. Tom took some time to talk to Starburst about crossing over to the dark side, his reasons for taking the role and the complexities of craft services.

 

Starburst: Gareth (Tunley, writer and director of The Ghoul) has described his cast as, affectionately we presume, “a bunch of clowns”. You are known for your comedic roles, though, so what was it that drew you to the darkness of The Ghoul?

Tom Meeten: What drew me to it initially was, well, being asked to do it. Gareth asked and I said “yes”. In all seriousness, you get typecast in things so it’s great to do different stuff. One of the reasons I enjoy this career is the variation of what you can do. With this, though, I’ve never really done any drama. Doing a serious role there’s a chance to properly explore a character in depth that you don’t always get with quirky comedy.

There’s certainly a depth to your character, and we wondered if you fully realised how dark you’d have to go in the role?

In order to properly prepare, we rehearsed a lot as it was kind of a first time for me and Gareth. When we came to filming, it became incredibly immersive. You can’t always prepare fully, and the role definitely took me to some darker places. And after all the edits and sound design you see it develop and when you finally see the film, it’s even more intense than when you played it. I’m lucky, though, as to be lead in a film, and a good film at that, is incredibly exciting.

Your character is very withdrawn, almost naïve and unresponsive.

That’s true. On the page he was very passive, and easily manipulated by those around him. In some ways, because I was coming to drama for the first time, I really tried to pare down the performance, and I was always critical with myself that perhaps I’d done too little. It was a conscious effort, though, to internalise the horror the character is going through. It also makes him unreadable as he’s almost playing two characters. In a strange way, it was easier playing the breakdowns rather than the cop, as you could release more. Gareth was great at getting the performance; we developed a shorthand.

You’re also a producer on the film, and we wondered how far that role went. Did you have to sweep up at the end of the day as well as act? How was it balancing those two roles?

Often, when you make bigger films, you’re just sitting around being well treated, with drinks and snacks being provided for you, and watching other people work really hard. Then you get called up, do a couple of lines, and then get whisked back to your trailer. The idea of chipping in; I like that. With The Ghoul, it felt like we were a little gang, and it’s exciting feeling more a part of things. Being a poncey actor doesn’t do it for me. I’d rather be pushing our home-made dolly, that came from a wheelchair, down the street. It’s more immersive. There are some things as a producer I’m not keen to do again such as contracts. It’s just paperwork which is really dull. Getting involved, though, and helping out is great and it can only really happen on a low budget film. Working out how many vegetarian pizzas we need for example.

We have images of you making cheese sandwiches with Alice Lowe.

(laughs) I didn’t make Alice do that, as she wasn’t a producer. She got to sit and relax in her chair. We knew everyone on set well, though, and had worked with them all before. And everyone’s on deferred payments so it’s like a team pulling together. So, no, Alice didn’t make cheese sandwiches. Maybe I’ll do a film about Alice Lowe making cheese sandwiches. With a dark twist.

Where do you go next as you’ve done both big and small films?

I just like working really. I did a little on Alice’s film Prevenge, and on my old comedy partner Steve Oram’s Aaaaaaaah! I guess you can hang on for the big stuff and wait years, or you can just get out there and make films. Gareth has another one in the works which will hopefully have a catering budget so I don’t have to worry about the cheese sandwiches. And I’m also writing something myself, and I’ll undoubtedly call on all my brilliant friends to help out. It’s like a collective or a movement making these interesting films.

Like a Ben Wheatley version of The Footlights.

Like a comprehensive or polytechnic Footlights, yes. Ben was one of the reasons The Ghoul got made. I met him a long time ago on an ill-fated sketch show for Channel 4 and it’s been amazing to see his rise. Many of us have all worked together on the comedy scene so it’s quite a gang; Simon Farnaby, Michael Smiley, comedians doing serious roles. It’s an exciting and kind of embryonic time.

 

The Ghoul is in cinemas from the 4th August and you can read our thoughts on it right here.

Fighting Fantasy Legends is a new PC and Mobile game inspired by three classic Fighting Fantasy adventure novels. We caught up with the legends behind the Fighting Fantasy books, Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, to find out more. We also caught up with the man behind this exciting new game, Carl Jackson.

STARBURST: What is Fighting Fantasy Legends?

Carl Jackson: Fighting Fantasy Legends is a digital card-based RPG set in the world of Titan, on the continent of Allansia. Players assume the role of a hero who has been tasked with saving Allansia from impending doom at the hands of three seriously evil bad guys. The game combines the events of City of Thieves, Citadel of Chaos and The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and adds RPG elements such as player levelling, random encounters, and some tough decision making. The game is available on iOS, Android, and PC/Mac via Steam now.

Legends looks beautiful. How important was the art to Fighting Fantasy’s success? What did you look for in a fantasy artist?

Steve Jackson: The quality of Fighting Fantasy artists has always been a prime requirement for the series. In the early days, we had White Dwarf and fantasy artists come to us with their portfolios. This put us in touch with Britain’s best fantasy artists, when FF arrived we already had a stable of top quality artists to draw from. This was very important at the time.

Ian Livingstone: Art has played a crucial role in the success of Fighting Fantasy. I always looked for artists who were able to draw realistic incredibly detailed fantasy art demonstrating lots of drama and movement. I was lucky enough to convince Iain McCaig to paint the covers of Forest of Doom, City of Thieves, Deathtrap Dungeon and Island of the Lizard King. He is an exceptional artist and it is no surprise that he went on to design Star Wars’ Queen Amidala and Darth Maul. It is with great excitement that I can announce that Iain has painted the cover for the collector’s hardback edition of The Port of Peril, my new Fighting Fantasy book being published by Scholastic.

A digital card game? Isn’t it a rather odd idea?

CJ: Having some of the iconic encounters of the books represented as a deck of cards works really well. It’s a great way to add a random element to the already recognisable books. In the books, you might enter a room within Firetop Mountain and encounter an Orc who is guarding a box which contains a magic potion, but what if you went into that same room and you simply drew a card from the top of a deck and followed the instructions on the card instead? It might still be an Orc to fight, but it could perhaps be a trap that you’ve stumbled into or maybe even a fantastic treasure to take with you. This random element adds a great deal of replayability and keeps players on their toes as they never know what to expect.

Legends only covers Thieves, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and Citadel of Chaos. What are your favourite bits of those books?

CJ: It’s very difficult to choose my favourite moments from those books, but I’ll try!

With City of Thieves, it’s The Spotted Dog Tavern is probably my favourite place in this book. It’s almost like a Wild West saloon, with many different races having a drink in there. There’s quite a lot to do in this one location – get into a brawl, get directions, attempt to settle an argument between some Goblins, gamble, etc. It’s a very rowdy place! It really sets the tone for the rest of the book and you find it quite early on, so it’s very important.

Warlock of Firetop Mountain?  I’d have to go for the gambling Dwarfs near the maze. Despite the chaos going on all around them, these guys are sat in a room enjoying a good drink and a laugh. They’ll happily let you join in (but are good at spotting a cheat!) and might also give you some directions through the maze. For Citadel of Chaos, it’s O’Seamus the Leprechaun! This little blighter tricks the reader in all sorts of imaginative ways but can ultimately give them the best help possible.

What was the most fun Fighting Fantasy book to write?

SJ: Don’t know the most fun FF book to write, but Warlock was special as it was the first book. Next, I’d say Sorcery was the most challenging book to write.

IL: For me, it was writing City of Thieves. I really enjoyed describing Port Blacksand as a foreboding place where nothing good is going to happen to you.  

Can we expect to see more development of the world of Allansia in other media?

SJ: We are in discussions with several people who want to take Fighting Fantasy to new areas. Particularly audio. Watch this space!

IL: More and more Fighting Fantasy content is being developed for digital platforms, which is great to see. Personally, I would like to see an extended live action series filmed for streaming. And I would love to see an epic cinematic-style Fighting Fantasy video game with ultra-realistic graphics.

Any chance of a Fighting Fantasy movie?

SJ: There have been a couple of movie producers who have made enquiries about film rights to FF. In particular, one who got to an advanced stage on a movie based on House of Hell. The difficulty is that FF is interactive. How can a movie be interactive? More likely are video game versions, which can use the interactive format. And that’s what we are seeing with FF Legends and Tin Man’s adventures.

IL: Of course, it would be a dream come true! A really fantastic screenplay for Deathtrap Dungeon already exists, written by Fighting Fantasy fan Martin Gooch. Martin is an independent film director and has already produced and directed two feature length films. He is endeavouring to get funding for the Deathtrap Dungeon film.

We understand Ian saw John Robertson’s F&F-like stage play The Dark Room recently. Any chance we’ll see Fighting Fantasy on the stage?

IL: That could be a lot of fun, asking the audience to decide the actions of the actors!

How has Fighting Fantasy changed your life?

IL: It’s given us a great sense of pride and personal achievement to have created a series of interactive books set in a fantasy world which has given so much pleasure to millions of people. It still amazes me that 20 million books have been sold around the world. And now in its 35th year, we have Scholastic, the world’s largest children’s book publisher, reimagining and relaunching the books to a new generation.

SJ: Apart from the nice houses and nice cars, FF has made it possible for us to turn our hobby into a business. As a game player that has meant a most satisfying career.

If you could give the younger, Dungeons and Dragons-buying versions of yourselves one piece of advice, what would it be?

IL: Retain ownership of your intellectual property.

What video games are you playing now? What are you finding the most exciting?

CJ: I have many games on the go at the moment, which is usually the case. Video games are such huge beasts nowadays that it can take a very long time to get through them. I’m a big fan of open world games and RPGs so The Witcher 3 is my current favourite game, but I’m also playing through Skyrim for about the sixth time. The VR version of Skyrim looks incredible so I might just lose myself in that when it comes out.

IL: I’m playing Snake Pass and Fallout 4, but I also play games in development at the studios I advise, e.g. Crackdown 3 and Dead Island 2, which are being developed by Sumo Digital and Erica from a new studio called Flavourworks. That’s pretty exciting.

What board games are you playing now? What are you finding the most exciting?

CJ: Tough question, I play so many! My current favourites are Machi Koro, Descent and The Lord of the Rings LCG. When the core mechanics of a great card/board game grip you, it’s a great feeling and seems to wake up a part of the brain that doesn’t get used very often (in me, anyway).

Why are we so fascinated with fantasy? What’s caused the revival in all things orcs and dragons?

SJ: It’s an interesting question. Why not pirates? Or Gangsters? There is something magical about fantasy (literally!). Imaginary worlds where anything is possible will always be fascinating to us. Pure escapism.

What advice do you have for anyone wanting to be a writer or a games designer?

SJ: You need a new angle. A Unique Selling Point. Something that sets your game/book apart from the rest. In the video games industry, we talk about the ‘Elevator Pitch’. Imagine you are in an elevator and you suddenly realise you’re standing next to a senior exec from Electronic Arts; the person who decides which games EA will sign up next. He’s trapped and you can make him listen to your pitch. His room is on the 25th floor. And this is how long you have to get your pitch in and persuade him that your game is brilliant. If he can’t get it before he gets out, you’ve failed the elevator pitch. This is apparently how Peter Molyneux sold Dungeon Keeper to EA. It was a fantasy role-playing game but this time you took on the role of the baddie. You’re not a traditional FRP character as a treasure-hunting hero looking for loot. You are the owner of the loot, just peacefully getting minions to mine gold and treasure. Everything is fine. Until those pesky treasure-hunting heroes arrive. A great idea, or not?

Fighting Fantasy Legends is out now for PC and Mobile. Fighting Fantasy enjoys its 35th Anniversary this year, and celebrations include a Fighting Fantasy Festival in London and re-launch of the books by publisher Scholastic. Find out more at www.fightingfantasy.com.

Guillaume Rocheron is a French Visual Effects Supervisor, noted for his ground-breaking work that frequently expands our horizons when it comes to filmmaking. Having won an Oscar for Life of Pi, Guillaume’s work has most recently been seen in the live action remake of Ghost in the Shell. He took a few moments to sit down with us to discuss bringing the lauded anime to life.

STARBURST: You’ve spoken before about being a fan of the original 1995 anime Ghost In The Shell, so was it more exciting or more nerve-wracking commencing work on the live action film?

Guillaume Rocheron: It was a very exciting prospect as I kind of grew up watching the original, and it’s really something that I’ve always loved. Through the years, every time you watch it you find so much depth. It’s just such an interesting world, and more and more relevant in today’s world. Because of that, I was really excited about making a motion picture. The original is fantastic, but we were looking to create something completely different. That gave us the creative freedom to play around with it, as what works as a cartoon doesn’t always work as a film. We got to design the world.

Was there an aspect of the world you felt most keen to explore?

It’s exciting because there’s so much. It’s a universe that has cyber-enhancements everywhere, over-population and the advancement of vast cities. It’s somewhere you need visual effects to bring to life, and you need the audience to go with you in the story. There is conflict between humanity and technology and that goes to the core of the story. The audience has to really buy the world.

You balanced practical and visual effects in the film. Was that part of making the world feel as real as possible?

Absolutely. Rupert (Sanders, director) always said that, even though there are such advanced visuals, he wanted the world to feel tactile. We embraced this approach and we aimed to film with some animatronics. The “shelling” sequence, for example, was designed on a computer and then we looked at what we could create for real and then film. We worked with WETA in New Zealand to build the skeleton, but filmed it against a blue screen and brought in the visual effects. So, in that scene, there’s a combination of the two; in the beginning of the sequence there is animatronic and visual effects, then completely visual effects, and towards the end it’s animatronic again. We mixed practical mannequins with little touches. Our approach was to assess each scene and see what made sense and where. Finding the best combination was key, making sure as an audience you really bought into the world.

And was that the same with the cities?

Yes, we treated the city-scapes in much the same way. Some things we shot entirely on green screen as there was too much, such as the water fight. It was too complicated and choreographed to do practically. For the jumping shot, we shot on green screen, but we used Hong Kong as the backdrop. We found lots of streets that were gritty and imperfect. This gave us an incredible patina and palette to work from. We changed some of the architecture but we started from something that had happy accidents. Some restaurants had steam coming out of them or people would just walk across the shot. If you shoot everything on green screen you’re not necessarily capturing authenticity. Sometimes films can look too digital.

What do you think will be the next major advancement in visual effects?

It’s an intriguing question because it’s the same challenges as filmmaking challenges, but the Holy Grail is to create digital humans. Over the past few years, on this film and my next one, visual effects is a tool that facilitates storytelling, and we’re working hard to make it more readily available. I think the next big leap will be being able to visualise what you want on set or in pre-production, rather than just in post-production. That way, you can really look at a story or a script and visualise what you want. This will lead to better worlds being created and better characters being realised. There really is no limit.

Ghost in the Shell is available for digital download now and Blu-ray and DVD on August 7th.

There’s a new film score podcast to which you should be listening, and it’s a name familiar to anyone who’s bought a Death Waltz vinyl reissue over the last few years. If you’re the sort of person who pays attention to the little details, you’ve surely seen the name Charlie Brigden on the obi strips for all the scores which Death Waltz has reissued. His summations of the music on the discs within will readily convince any who read them to pick up any LP about which they might be waffling.

It’s, therefore, an excellent stroke of luck for the public at large that Brigden has teamed up with his wife, Lisa, to bring his knowledge to The Sound of Fear, his new documentary-style podcast chronicling the history of horror music. We asked Brigden about the show and his involvement with film scores…

STARBURST: How did you come to be enmeshed in the world of soundtracks?

Charlie Brigden: Okay, so it didn’t technically come from soundtracks, originally. I was born just as Star Wars kicked into gear, so naturally when I was a kid it was my first port of call for everything, and as a result, I had a bunch of the toys but I also had the books and tape sets – ‘listen along with the story and turn the page when Artoo-Detoo beeps’ or what have you. And along with the story narration, these things had dialogue and effects from the movie as well as John Williams’ score. 

So, I’d be listening to them, acting the parts out with my figures and my Millennium Falcon and, in time, I’d really started noticing the music. I was given some money when I was a little bit older and went out and bought the Empire Strikes Back LP – which, by the way, sucked in Europe because they cut down the US/Japan set down to a single LP, and it was a weird way round so the Star Wars main title was on side B. From there I would notice music all the time, and I’d get main and end credit music on tape by holding a recorder up to the TV speaker, and I did that for a while, at least until I was able to buy music regularly, and amongst NWA and Metallica there would always be soundtracks.

In addition to the show, you also do a lot of writing. When did you start working with Death Waltz?

I had to look this up because my memory is a nightmare – the fucked up thing is I have an entry on Discogs as an ‘artist’ where some person has actually gone through and noted the releases that have had my name on, it’s humbling as fuck and weird at the same time.

I started talking with Spencer from Death Waltz late 2013, so about a year after they launched; by January, I was writing what they call ‘sales notes’, basically the synopsis/descriptive you get on the website to tell you all about the product, and this was before Mondo so when DW had their own site. My first one was Ms.45 and then I did their RSD releases for that year, and later on in the year they made the decision to start including obi strips – I imagine it’s because Spencer is a crazed fan of Japanese vinyl – and they began to put my notes on those too, which was awesome.

Sooner or later, they put my name on them as well, although there are a bunch after a certain point – I don’t know when – that don’t have it because I stupidly forgot to add it on the text I sent to DW. I also did liner notes for their 2014 reissue of Godzilla by Akira Ifukube and I have a couple more that I’ve just filed that are pretty awesome.

This is not your first podcast — why did you start The Sound of Fear?

I guess a few reasons. I’ve always been really interested in – this’ll sound really pretentious – the educational side of writing about film music, and horror has always been something that’s spoken to me since a very young age, and the fact that there’s not really much on film music in general, and especially not horror, which surprised me. I was also a fan of two documentaries on the BBC here, which was Mark Gatiss’ A History of Horror and Neil Brand’s The Sound of Cinema, the latter especially because it really made a point of providing historical context for these things, which in the age of instant video and mp3 is very often missing. You watch and you consume, but unless it’s an Arrow or a Criterion, it’s rare that you get anything saying ‘OK, this is why these things are what they are.’ 

Like Dracula and Frankenstein, those two movies – huge iconic Universal monster movies – they only have music at the beginning and end because the producer, Carl Laemmle, Jr, didn’t like film music much and actively had to be convinced to let them try and put music under scenes in the film, which, of course, really helped make these pictures what they were.

I wanted to tell stories like that, and while I’d experimented with podcasts that were kind of a film music rip-off of Karina Longworth’s amazing You Must Remember This podcast, nothing was done consistently because I found it hard to find an overarching theme. With The Sound of Fear, it’s easy, and the only issue from there is deciding what you’re going to focus on from there because there’s so much out there.

You’re teaming with your wife on The Sound of Fear. What made you look to her as narrator?

First and foremost, it’s because she’s female. She has a great voice and I kept seeing tweets out there saying how movie podcasts were basically a sausage factory, so I thought to bring Lisa to narrate was something different, especially in regards to horror as a genre have a huge cross-gender appeal that doesn’t really get much press. I also wanted to try and do everything but narrate, because it’s always the thing I had problems with. And it’s fun – we have a blast.

How do you determine what gets played and what you discuss? Do you start with a theme or find one comes together?

The post-it notes. Everything I do in terms of all my writing is organised using post-it notes (still trying to get 3M to sponsor me), so once I decided I wanted to do it vaguely chronological, I got my post-its and plotted out what I saw as the important and interesting milestones in horror music, and then decided how long I wanted each episode to be and what period to cover. Originally they were going to be an hour long, but I thought with a somewhat dry approach, I didn’t want each episode to overstay its welcome.

From there, it’s really picking and choosing exactly what should be covered, as opposed to what I want to, which means I’ve had to man up and cut out some really great personal favourites, but it’s all about telling the story. Some are longer than others just because of the sheer amount of material covered – Episode 3 is 36 minutes long and covers Hammer through Psycho. I was originally going to leave Psycho to the next one, and have it link to Texas Chain Saw, but that made that one really long, and I felt it really worked great as a narrative ending Episode 3 with that huge, huge impact of Psycho that left horror wide open, which then allowed 4 to go straight in without having to rely on beginning with that story.

The story is chronological but I try to link things in a meaningful way and set it in an ‘era’ of sorts, which a lot of the time is already something that exists, like Universal and the neo-Gothic stuff of Hammer and Corman’s Poe cycle. Episode 4 maybe sets stuff out a bit differently, because it has to cram in a ton of subjects, so there’s a theme of using pre-existing music with Night Of The Living Dead and all the library music that leads to The Exorcist’s classical music, and the devil children theme with The Omen and Rosemary’s Baby. Episode 5 is all about slashers, so that’s a pretty easy one to cover and it lasts for the whole episode.

Is there a set schedule for releasing the podcast to which you try and stick?

At the moment, it’s monthly. I originally wanted to do it every two weeks but it’s just too much right now to put it together along with all my other commitments – family, life, my actual job, other writing etc. But I’m trying to do a lot more in advance, so hopefully, we can get it out a bit quicker in the near future.

What’s the response been to the podcast – people’s reactions/number of subscribers?

It’s been really great – I mean, we don’t have a massive amount of subscribers – I don’t know if that’s because our main feed comes from Soundcloud, which is more a music service – but we’re nearly at 5K Soundcloud listens, which is amazing considering we’ve only been going for a couple of months. It’s difficult because horror music isn’t a casual thing – you have to be really committed to listen to what is ostensibly music designed to freak you out – so we’ve had people say they don’t bother with it because they don’t like horror music.

It’s a bit disappointing, because I want to dispel some of those myths that all horror music sounds like jangly piano and Bernard Herrmann strings. A lot of horror music has a real beauty behind it: I guess, to contrast a lot of the darkness. We’ve had some great feedback, though – from people slightly obsessed with Lisa’s voice, to people who are genuinely happy that they’re learning some new things. Even composers: Cristobal Tapia de Veer, who wrote some amazing music for the series Utopia, really likes it, and posts on our Soundcloud, which is great. We’d certainly like more feedback, but I’m pretty sure everyone else on the Internet would say the same.

Is there a means by which people can support the podcast?

Sure, you can sign up to our Patreon at patreon.com/soundfearpod. From there you can get early access to the episodes, and behind the scenes stuff like blogs. I mean, it’s not massively cheap because there’s the usual hosting fees, but then the cost of research materials – anyone who buys soundtracks knows they’re not cheap, especially the reissue stuff, same with a lot of DVDs or Blu-rays.

But, it would be cheating for me to wing it – sure, I know a fair bit about horror and film music, but I still do a hell of a lot of research, most of which is watching the movies with headphones and really deconstructing their sound from there, even if it’s a movie like Alien that I’ve seen a million times. Any help anyone can give us would be received with huge gratitude.

The Sound of Fear can be found at soundcloud.com/soundfearpod.