Feature Category: Interviews

STARBURST: You served as executive producer on Dark Signal, which is a job title that can sometimes be extremely hands-on or can sometimes be a little vague. How hands-on were you with the film?

Neil Marshall: Well I’d known Ed for nearly twenty years now and had been pushing him and mentoring him as best I possibly could in trying to help him get his first feature made. So in that sense, I guess I was very hands-on in pushing him and giving him a good kick every once in a while and just helping him be as stubborn as you need to be to get it done. Also, I introduced him to Jonas , the producer, who I met at a BAFTA event. He said he was looking for a project, and I knew Ed had a project, and it was just a case of putting them together. Amazingly, more often than not when you do that it doesn’t stick, but they connected immediately. Ed’s project was something Jonas wanted to do and it all kind of clicked from there. So I was very involved with that process. When it came to making the film, as luck and timing would have it, I was shooting something so I didn’t get directly involved at all with the shooting. But even if I had been free, I wouldn’t have. As a director myself, I know what it’s like to have people coming in and kind of getting in your face and telling you what to do when you’re trying to do this kind of stuff. I wanted to afford Ed the respect I get from my producers and give him space to do it. I know he knows what he’s doing, and he sees movies in the way I seem them, which is kind of why we’re mates. We’re into the same shit. There’s no textbook on how to do this, no right or wrong on how to do these things; you have to go on your gut instincts, and I can’t tell him what his gut instincts are. If I was to tell him what my gut instincts are, it’d probably be wrong. I wanted to support him as a mate and as a producer in doing his job. After that, I looked at it and had a watch of the first cut and gave some notes on that, but that’s something that’s a bit more tangible as you can see it and express what it is; it’s out of Ed’s head. From that point on, I just helped steer it to where it is now.

You’ve worked with Ed as far back as The Descent in 2005. Did you always see him directing his own stuff?

I knew he always wanted to. We both started out making our own little movies. Mine was Super 8 films but he was on video or whatever because he’s a bit younger than me; he was the next generation. So he always wanted to direct, and I knew he was a great editor as he’d been working as an editor for a while; he’s got fantastic skills in that department. But I could see it in his work. He had directed a very, very low-budget film that he and his friends had done over a number of years, but what I could see from that was that he was great at doing action stuff, great at editing, and clearly had the skills to do it. It was clear that was what he wanted to do, so it was a case of whatever I could do to help that happen.

Dark Signal itself is a very unique movie in terms of the plot and also because of the fantastic setting, with the film being entirely set in North Wales. Was it always the plan to shoot the film on the North Wales coast?

I think Ed always wanted to film in that part of the world. He lives in North Wales, it’s with a bunch of people from North Wales, so it made sense to shoot it in North Wales. And North Wales offered up some fantastic scenery, which is instant production value. It looks beautiful so why go somewhere else to shoot it. The idea had been germinating for years. I know it grew from this idea of somebody stuck in a car, being haunted by a ghost. There was a hill up to his house that we were driving on one day, then he pulled over by the road and talked about what if there was a ghost out here in the moors at night, and I thought it was brilliant and unique for a ghost story. I told him to go ahead and write it, and he did! Then it grew from there.

 
Siwan Morris in Dark Signal 

The cast that was put together was fantastic, but the chemistry between Siwan Morris and Gareth David-Lloyd is a particular highlight of the film. From what you heard, was that something that came naturally or did Ed have to work on that with them?

Well I wasn’t on set to get any direct experience of that. I know Ed worked hard casting Siwan and Gareth and then working with them when he was directing. I definitely got a sense that he helped create that chemistry. It was important to get that natural chemistry between them, but it pays off handsomely as it’s a great relationship. I love the whole radio station setting. I think it’s definitely a little wink to The Fog, and why not!

You mentioned The Fog there, and there’s also Fulci favourite Cinzia Monreale in the film, but would you say that there are a lot of influences from elsewhere on Dark Signal or was it more a case of Ed just trying to make his own vision?

I think a lot of it is very much Ed’s vision and using the very Welsh influence in it. It’s very unique as you don’t actually see many Welsh-based horror films or Welsh-based movies. He’s certainly a Fulci fan as well, and he’s been a Fulci fan for years, so he was so happy to cast somebody from the Fulci movies. That was a huge deal for him and to get a bit of horror heritage in there as well. Then there’s James Cosmo, who’s a brilliant actor and perfectly cast in this role; he’s so threatening the moment he walks on screen. It was getting some faces in there that people know; that always helps with this sort of thing. But I’m glad Ed went for the Welsh flavour with this. It makes it unique and makes it stand out from the crowd. It’s not an obscure Welsh language film, though. It’s very much just a flavour, and that makes it very much Ed’s film.

And with yourself, when you were first making your steps into filmmaking, what were the films that made you want to become a filmmaker?

It’s something else that Ed and I share a passion for, but the movie that made me want to make movies was Raiders of the Lost Ark. You might ask how that led to me making horror movies, but Raiders of the Lost Ark has guys melting and people getting stuck on spikes, people getting into propellers. I’d say that my influences are very much there, but then I was also influenced by Halloween, Escape from New York, The Fog, American Werewolf in London, those sort of horror movies. And horror was very much a way-in. It was easier to do a low-budget horror movie that do an adventure movie. Let’s face it, I think for our generation and beyond, John Carpenter is a living God and a massive inspiration to so many of us out there. That played a massive part in how I got into the industry, and it’s rubbing off on generations still.

When you were putting 2002’s Dog Soldiers together, how easy did you find it to get that picture made? Was that a tricky process or was it maybe easier than you were expecting?

Well it took me six years from writing the script to actually getting it made, so it was a long process. It went through stages of almost getting made and collapsing twice before it actually got made. But I was younger then and just really stubborn. I don’t know if it ever occurred to me that it wouldn’t get made, but it was an uphill battle because horror films, at that particular time, weren’t fashionable. Especially in the UK, no one was making horror films. Then suddenly myself, Danny Boyle and Michael Bassett made horror films at the same time. Then it suddenly grew. At the time, there wasn’t a cheap way to make these things. We still relied on professional editing or professional cameras. Danny broke the mould with 28 Days Later, but it was part of the aesthetic of the film. At that stage digital just hadn’t come on that far so you required a certain budget. You couldn’t make films for the cost that you can make them now. It was too expensive. Then you look back now and you think the budget for Dog Soldiers was $2 million. Now, that would be a really big budget to do a low-budget horror movie with. Then, that was the bottom line; you couldn’t get much cheaper than that unless you asked people to work for free, which we didn’t want to do. All of that took time. Then the attitude we were getting from the British establishment was “We don’t do horror movies. That’s not our cup of tea.” So we ended up getting our finance from America and Luxembourg.

 
Neil on the set of The Descent 

Of course, you followed up Dog Soldiers with The Descent before then doing Doomsday and Centurion. Given how much of a splash you made with those first two films, how did you find the pressure put on you coming off The Descent?

I think the best part of it being at the beginning of my career was that I didn’t really feel the pressure. I just went with it. I had these ideas and I went with them. I made Dog Soldiers partly because I always wanted to see a feature movie where soldiers were werewolves. Nobody else was going to make one so I made one. Then I always wanted to see a horror film set in a cave. Nobody else was making one so I made it. The same with Doomsday. It was stuff that I wanted to see in movies and nobody else was making them. It’s kind of selfish in a way. I make movies that I want to watch. I think that’s a very, for me anyway, kind of an unjaded way of looking at things. In a way, I wish I still had that. Now I’m constantly thinking of the art of filmmaking and the practical aspects of filmmaking. All that’s just what I have to deal with. You just want to make the film you love but there’s so much pressure in getting the money involved and getting it released. The industry’s changing and there’s way more competition out there because so many films are being made now. You have to kind of break out. I think that’s why the Welsh angle helps with this as it makes it stand out from the crowd, because the crowd is way bigger than when I started out in terms of horror movies out there.

One thing we couldn’t not talk about is Constantine. You directed a couple of episodes of that but the show ultimately got cancelled after just one season. How gutted were you to see that get axed?

Oh yeah, I was really gutted. I think the show was kind of hamstrung from the start. Constantine is a cable character; he should not be on a network show because you have to alter the character to fit the network profile. And that just kind of pulls it apart. So we were left with a fairly shallow version of what Constantine could’ve been, because the reality is Constantine’s supposed to be this total bastard; he smokes, he drinks, and he’s horrible to people, and he’s awesome because of that. We had to take away the smoking and the drinking and the horrible part, so what does that leave? I think that we made the best show possible under the limitations. I think that Matt Ryan, another Welshman, is the best guy to play the part and did an amazing job. He is John Constantine now. It would be so good if he could carry on the character. I know he has – he made a cameo in Arrow – but it would be great to see more of that. I just think it’s a shame when the kind of build that there was for this show, to transform this character was such a waste.

Even in the build-up to the show it was announced that Constantine wouldn’t be smoking, which put some fans immediately on guard…

We did everything in our power to kind of crowbar the smoking in there. I think by the end of it we did actually have him smoking, but I got the feeling that if the show had run for a couple of years then it would’ve evolved into something darker and richer and we could’ve taken it in a different direction.

What’s up next for you then?

I’m still working on several movie projects and will hopefully get them off the ground. Mostly I’ve been doing TV recently, and I directed an episode of Westworld last year. I’m really excited to see the finished product with that. I did a pilot for NBC and that got picked up, a thing called Timeless, which is sort of a great time-travel adventure sure, kind of Back to the Future meets Mission: Impossible. That literally got picked up a couple of weeks ago. Then I’m just about to embark on a future project for Netflix, but I can’t really say anything about that yet. It’s a science-fiction thing, though.

The Dark Signal is available on DVD now.

One of the most prolific names in modern horror these days is the ever-awesome Tristan Risk. Having made a splash as Beatress in the Soskas Sisters’ American Mary back in 2012, Little Miss Risk has gone on to appear in genre favourites such as The Editor, House of Manson and Mania. With Frankenstein Created Bikers just one of many an upcoming feature for Risk, we caught up with this STARBURST fave to discuss her current projects, channeling her inner-Snake Plissken, the future, her thoughts on remakes, ageism in the industry, and a whole lot more.

STARBURST: Frankenstein Created Bikers has yet to make it to the UK, but we’re absolutely dying to see it. What can you tell us about that movie?

Tristan Risk: I think that a lot of people will really enjoy seeing this. It’s having its Canadian premiere in May, and it’s just starting to go round different places for screening. I think it’s going to be hitting the festival circuit pretty hard. I’m so proud of it, this is like the movies that I grew up watching, that I idolized. It’s Escape from LA, it’s Switchblade Sisters, it’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, it’s Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, it’s every Frankenstein movie, it’s so many genre hits. It’s kind of like sort of if you’re having sex and you’ve got like all kinds of things going on and you’re just like, “It’s so many sensations, I can’t even handle it!” I’ve only seen it once so far at a screening, and I need to see it ten more times because I feel there’s so many nuances that I’ve missed, that are hidden in different places all the time, because you do need to see it more than once to discover new things.

That’s certainly a great description. It also seems as if there may be a slight Troma feel to it. Is that the case?

I don’t think it’s got a direct Troma vibe but I think there’s definitely elements from that. There is a great big creature in there as well, because all good genre has a creature, all good genre has a biker gang, all good genre has some crazy chick who just blows things up, and there’s gotta be at least one eyepatch. One person in an eyepatch is the rule in genre.

So you were channeling your inner-Snake Plissken?

Absolutely! I hate to say it but Escape from LA is one of my favourite movies just because it’s so over the top. They’re just throwing everything in that. I’m pretty sure the writers might have had a little bit of, I can’t tell if it’s an affection for LA in the way that they handle a lot of characters… Just some of the characters in LA as opposed to in New York are so LA stereotypes, they’re so funny, like Bruce Campbell as the plastic surgeon just knocks my socks off every time. And Bruce Campbell is a good looking guy, but they just made him look so fucked up.

Risk as Val in Frankenstein Created Bikers 

Have you got any thoughts on the talk of an Escape from New York remake?

They’re doing a remake? Really?

Yep, and the shortlist for the Snake Plissken gig, at the last count at least, was Charlie Hunnam, Jon Bernthal and Tom Hardy.

Oh, yeah, that could work, I could see that.

To us, Snake Plissken is one of those sacred roles, it is Kurt Russell…

I know. And this is the world we live in now, we get so many reboots and remakes and sequels that in order for my mind to psychologically handle it and not go crazy and be like “Stop ruining my childhood!” that I think what I just have to tell myself is it’s like in the Marvel universe where they have a series of comic books titled What If. It’s just different ways to explore alternate realities or what if this happened. So I just like to think of a lot of these remakes or sequels as really expensive “what if” versions, then I can just have the love for the version that I like but I’m not ruining someone else’s enjoyment. There’s a whole generation of people… like when most people think of The Fly they’re thinking of the Cronenberg version, when most people think of Little Shop of Horrors they’re not thinking of the black and white one, they’re thinking of the musical from the 1980s. And I love both of those movies, but nobody came along and said, “Urgh, this sucks! It’s not in black and white, it’s not the original, it’s insulting to the original director’s vision.” So I don’t wanna be that guy to somebody else.

It can certainly be said that people can get a little too precious about things, and that’s something we’re guilty of at times, particularly when one of our favourite films of all-time is John Carpenter’s The Thing, itself a remake of The Thing from Another World.

Yeah, it’s a very freeing moment as a fan to let that go, because we have a bad history in fandom and genre culture in getting really… I mean, it’s good to love what you love but don’t go around slamming other people’s work. Theoretically, I could see someone doing a really cool movie that I get involved in, then maybe at some point they do the sequel or the remake or whatever. You gotta give it a fair shake, you just can’t hate it out of the gate. As a working artist, you can’t fault other people for taking a paycheck.

On that note, the last time we talked you mentioned your hatred of Michael Bay and his butchering of people’s childhoods…

If you’re gonna do it, do it well. This is the problem; I just don’t think that he did it well. I think he substituted a lot of storylines for explosions. Then again, there’s a bunch of guys who are watching this and grow up into 20-somethings and that’s gonna be their Transformers. If you showed them the old animated one, they’d probably be like “What is this crap?!”

I guess that’s part of the whole ‘letting it go’ thing?

There’s conservative politics to worry about, there’s fuckery in the House of Commons. I do not need to be giving myself ulcers about the Ghostbusters remake. I just don’t need that.

Did you ever get round to watching that Turtles remake in the end?

I did. I watched in on a plane as I felt like, “Okay, the airline’s paid for it.” I watched it and, again it’s back to there’s more explosions than were necessary for it. But I can see what he wanted to do with it. It just weirded me out to not see the Turtles organic and live the way they were when they were animatronic puppets. I’m sure again, though, that if you show someone who grew up with CGI the old school version then they’d be asking “What is this? What am I seeing? And you like this over this? This is so much more flawless.” It’s probably like showing someone when I was that age Harryhausen stuff and going “Look at this!”, and I’d be like “But we have better technology now…”

Harvest Lake 

Back to your plethora of projects, you’ve also recently worked on Harvest Lake. Where are things with that at the moment?

That’s just come out; that’s available on Blu-ray and DVD, and it’s doing the festival circuit right now. It’s got screenings all over the place. It’s been getting a lot of really good feedback lately.

With Frankenstein Created Bikers, that recently had its world premiere, right?

The world premiere was in Atlanta as part of the Atlanta Film Festival. It was their 40th anniversary and they had to open up a second theatre to screen it because they had so many people turn up to watch it. And then they added another screening on the Friday. So it opened the festival and closed it, too.

We guess the response to the film was pretty good then?

I think so. Because it was shot in Atlanta and had a lot of support locally, which was really, really awesome, but then you’ve also got everyone who came to support it and then Kickstarter. So everyone who contributed to the Kickstarter campaign feel very strongly and are very invested in it. I’m excited to see it take over the world!

Having not seen the film or have any idea on how it ends, is it a conclusive ending or is it positioned for any further movies to follow?

Oh, I think that Jimmy has either a prequel or another sequel. It’s actually a sequel to Dead God No!, James’ first film with The Impalers and the good doctor and all the rest. So with this one, this is actually the sequel but it’s a standalone film too, so you can go in there without having seen Dear God No!… although why would you want to?! You need to go see that movie, it’s absolutely wonderful, it’s like this perfect grindhouse biker film.

And would any prequel or sequel involve yourself returning?

I hope so. I would really hope so, ‘cos she’s really awesome. She’s kind of my spirit animal now. I notice that when I start to drink, the more alcohol-infused I get, the more Val’s voice creeps out of my mouth. It used to be Beatress but now I turn into Val when I get pissed off.

Does that mean you have to carry an eyepatch around with you at all times then?

I actually have a Swarovski crystal-covered eyepatch where I do a number where I’m the tightrope walker with no depth perception. So I have this glittery eyepatch, so I’ve been wearing an eyepatch for years now. I might just start doing that. I get eye infections really easy, so this is a great solution if I get pinkeye again or conjunctivitis, I can just swap it around. The only thing is that if I get it in both eyes, I can’t walk around with like a Cyclops thing going on.

It sounds as if your Val is a little like Suzi X from Rob Zombie’s The Haunted World of El Superbeasto…

Suzi X! Yeah! She’s voiced by Sheri Moon Zombie, in fact. And I have to say, I’d seen Sheri in House of 1,000 Corpses but that was the film where I was like, “This woman would be such a fantastic voice actress in other things as well!” And I don’t know if she has done anything, but I was so struck by how good she was as that. I would love to see her voice more characters, not necessarily just Rob’s, but anything. I think she would be really, really good at it. She yells at lot like Varla from Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Val is like somewhere between there and blowing things up a lot.

Ayla 

You’ve recently wrapped on Elias’ latest thriller, Ayla. When can we expect to see that?

We wrapped at the end of March, so that’s photography done. Now they’re going into post-production on that. Working on that was awesome. I got to have the wonderful experience of working with Nicholas in that, he played my brother… ish. You have to see the movie to get a better idea of it. Me saying my brother-ish, that’s kind of what encapsulates the whole movie. Nicholas is a great actor, and he dropped 20lbs to play this character, so he looked a little sunken, a little sallow, a little depressed. I remember seeing that and thinking “Man, that’s real dedication” as I’m eating from my bag of chips. Hopefully we’ll see it out next year. I’m learning in the film industry it takes about a year turnaround for some of these things, with post and all the rest of it. I give it about a twelve-month window there. I’m excited for that to come out as it’s so beautiful and sad and weird, and in a weird way sexy. I think there’s gonna be a lot of awkward boners when watching this.

Err, awkward how?

The characters are very beautiful and interesting, but I think there’s a lot of social programming that people are gonna be like “Why am I finding this arousing? This shouldn’t arouse me! Am I a sexual deviant?” To which I would reply, “Yes. Yes, you are.” But it’s all good.

We were big fans of House of Manson, which came out late last year in the UK despite being finished in 2014. How cool was it for you getting to work on that?

Oh good, I’m glad you liked it. I was really excited to be a part of something that was historical and treated the subject matter really respectably. I didn’t want to be in a film about Charles Manson if it was going to be really exploitative towards the victims and just kind of glorify him and what he did, because I think there’s likely a lot of material doing that as it is. I was really impressed with the way Brandon handled the subject matter and the characters, and he really humanized the victims, which you often forget in these things; you’re looking at crime scene photos and bodies, it’s just meat. He made a really good way of introducing these people who lost their lives because of this man’s social manipulations. I mean, even with my own character, she still has family that are alive today. I didn’t want them seeing House of Manson and going “Wow, that gave me all of the wrong feelings about the tragedy that happened to our family”. And I’m sure that’s still something very dark that haunts them, and I would never want them to think that I’m exploiting that or being insensitive to that in any way. I wanted to pay tribute to it so that Abigail wasn’t forgotten, that she had some kind of respect.

Have you had any feedback from the families at all?

No, I’ve not. I haven’t reached out and contacted them either because I figured if they wanted contact then they would approach me. And I also don’t know what they feel about the whole situation. If they just wanted to bury it and not really acknowledge it, it’s not my place to come up and be there with a shovel and be like “Okay, we’re gonna dig up all these old problems. Put on a pot of coffee, here we go.”

We guess that there’s not really many recent horror movies that are so solidly based on historical events, apart from looking at the Warrens in The Conjuring.

Yeah, Elaine is still alive, although her husband passed on. That’s kind of cool, and I think they’re doing another one based on one of their other cases. And the house I live in now actually has the same floorplan as The Conjuring, which is really interesting. I tell my upstairs neighbour that, and she was like “What’s that?”, and I just said for her to watch it. I don’t know if she’s watched it yet, but I thought it’s cool to know that she can watch a horror movie and imprint that… she might not be too enthusiastic about that, especially if I start playing the piano the same way that the piano gets played in the film or if I start hanging from the tree in the yard.

The Conjuring is just such an awesome movie; one of our favourite horrors of the past decade or more. But then James Wan tends to always knock these films out of the park…

I watched the new Fast & Furious movie when it came out. It’s not my taste in movies but we were going out with my boyfriend’s parents for his birthday, so I was like “Okay, I’ll go and watch it.” But if you watch it from the perspective of a frustrated gay romance then it’s the most beautiful story, and then the tribute to Paul Walker at the end was so good. I’m pretty sure spoiler sales and crappy Korean compact car sales spike every time one of those movies are released.

And that film took more than $1.5 billion, marking it alongside Jurassic World and The Force Awakens as one of the biggest movies of last year!

I wanna see Chris Pratt riding a motorcycle with velociraptors, I wanna see some Jedis, and I wanna see some cars go really fast. That’s all I want in life.

And obviously for a new Halloween movie… or maybe that’s just us?

We’re creative humans; we can still come up with some good kills for him, I think.

It’s a tricky one with Michael Myers, tricky as to where you take him now.

I mean, Freddy and Jason… Jason went to space and then to Hell. I think the shark has officially been jumped for those two at this point. Now I wanna see maybe Michael and Leatherface face off, let’s do that – celebrity horror mash-ups.

The whole Texas Chain Saw Massacre franchise jumped the shark a long time ago, with Texas Chain Saw 3D the final nail in the coffin for us even though there’s another entry in the series on the way soon.

We know two rules: don’t stop by the side of the road, and refuse the chilli politely. I think, especially as a woman, you get very in-tune with being aware of your surroundings and your situations. And being a horror enthusiast such as myself, I see like fifty million red flags where most people might see maybe one pale pink tissue in the wind. I’m like “Oh hell no, I am not going anywhere near that shit!”, and my friend will be all “Come on…”, and I’ll be “This has rape and murder written all over it! Let’s just avoid this situation altogether. What can go wrong at the guy’s isolated house with the hot tub? Plenty!”

Risk as Beatress in American Mary 

Your work has ticked so many boxes in the field of horror, so many subgenres have been covered, but are there any other parts of horror that you’re eager to explore?

Yes! I would love to do a cryptozoology film, I would love to do a haunted house film, I would like to do an exorcism film. I still think that there’s a lot of things. I’ve gotten really fortunate in that I’ve got to try a lot of different styles of films and subgenres, but there’s still so much that I’m excited to try and get an opportunity involved with. I think also, the older I get I feel very comfortable in prosthetic make-up, so I’m hoping to eventually transition into doing almost more mask-and-suit work. I know there’s quite a few men in the industry who do it, but I don’t know if there’s quite as many women who do it, and with a background as a dancer then I think I could bring something interesting to it as well. Just because, as we get older as women, sometimes we’re not getting cast in the right roles. I watched something recently where the lead dude was in his mid-50s and his love interest is 25 or 28. I was like “Come on, you’re dealing with daddy issues!” Why couldn’t she have been 40-something? That means that guys in real-life are “Oh no, I’m 55. I should be dating a 20-year-old”. Yeah, you tell me how that works out for you, dude.

From the perspective of a female in the industry, do you think that there’s started to be a shift away from the ageist mentality in film recently or is it just as bad as ever?

Oh, I think they’re fully stuck in their ways. At least in mainstream media, very stuck in their ways. I don’t see a lot of change coming from that direction because it’s the status quo and it’s what’s been working for them so far, so why would they screw with that? But you see in independent films, you see more authentic casting in characters, which I like. I watched recently We’re Still Here, and I enjoyed it for the fact that it was a group of mature adults – and by mature, I mean past 30 and being portrayed as older people who have adult children. So you’ve got these four actors in a haunted house situation, which we don’t see very often; often it’s younger people, it’s teens, we don’t often see older people unless it’s one character who might get offed or have a heart attack or be the benevolent spiritualist witch or healer kind of character, kind of like what we saw in the original Poltergeist or Elaine Warren in The Conjuring. That’s kind of where those rules are for those women. So it’s interesting to see in independents, and I really like We’re Still Here for that.

Who were you favourite scream queens of yesteryear then?

I like a lot of the ‘80s scream queens. Brinke Stevens is a big one for me. Not only did she keep her body natural at a time when it was popular to alter your appearance in terms of boob jobs and stuff… Not to hate on the women who do get breast surgery, but for someone who also grew up with small breasts, you see all the scream queens with the fake boobs and I’m like “Oh, I don’t look like that.” Then I saw Brinke Stevens and was “Oh, I look more like that and can identify with that. That’s cool!” Then to also find out that she’s a marine biologist on top of that, in addition to being a scream queen, it was so cool. These women who do writing or have something else going on as well as the scream queen stuff, I like that. I think it’s easier to stand out when you’re not into the whole conformity thing. Like I don’t feel comfortable in Los Angeles. I don’t feel like I belong there. I find that a lot of people are very superficial in that particular place in the industry. I find that people tend to be more authentic when you embrace your flaws as well. I mean, I’m sure I have… I belch a lot, I smoke pot like a chimney, and I eat a lot of really delicious, healthy natural foods that make my body have really interesting sounds and smells. Nobody’s perfect in this, and I think that when you just embrace whatever flaws or strengths you have that are unique to you, that’s when you actually become more iconic in your own right, standing and doing your own thing rather than trying to conform to the cookie cutter. A lot of people look at my boyfriend because he is a body modification enthusiast and he is transitioning to being a human dragon right now. He’s got 3D horns implanted in his head, his eyes are tattooed, he’s got pointed ears, his tongue is split and he just got it tattooed, and he’s got a very large body tattoo that’s eventually going to cover all of his body including his face. He’s just like “This is me. This is who I am.” You’ve never met someone who’s more open, honest and authentic because he’s like “This is who I am. I’m just putting this out there and wearing this on my sleeve” versus someone who wears a suit, works 40 hours a week and then maybe jerks off to child porn. They’re the bad kind of deviants, the kind of deviants we don’t like. They were all actually done, his mods, by Russ Foxx, who was the flesh artist consultant on American Mary.

On the topic of American Mary, you’ve talked before about your love of the Beatress character. Now with you as Val in Frankenstein Created Bikers, which is your favourite role you’ve played in anything to date so far?

Oh shit! I think definitely Val and Beatress. All my characters are like little different parts of me, but Val and Beatress are very much… I don’t know if they’ve always been there or they’ve developed into larger parts of my personality, but they’re definitely there now. I kind of feel like they are me and I’m them a little bit, so I feel very close to both of those characters. I really enjoy a lot of different, strange weirdos that I get to play and I think that they are all part of a kaleidoscope of my personality in all of its weirdness. I’m basically wearing my neurosis on screen for everyone to see.

It may be a silly question, but is it still as enjoyable to you as it was when you got started?

Yeah, it is. The honeymoon ain’t over yet.

Frankenstein Created Bikers will hopefully be available in the UK soon, but in the meantime you can keep up to date with all of Tristan’s work by following her on Twitter.

Richard Denning is the man behind the UK Games Expo, Britain’s biggest and boldest table-top, wargaming, boardgaming and traditional games convention. STARBURST caught up with him to find out more.

STARBURST: How did UK Games Expo come about?

Richard Denning: I’ve always been interested in games of all sorts, and I was aware that there were hobby games conventions all around the world, but not an awful lot in the UK. Quite a few large scale wargames shows, but not much on for board games and roleplaying. So I went to Germany’s Essen Spiel and the American Gen Con and these huge events are really focused on games enthusiasts. We wanted to create something that would engage the general public more.

Would you say it’s closer to Gen Con or Essen?

Closer to Gen Con, but it’s our take on it really. Our’s is a convention that goes on into the evening. Essen is more of a trade show that closes down in the evening, whereas Gen Con just keeps going. Our’s is more a big, long board games party. Its three days, playing games into the wee small hours.  That’s what we’re trying to achieve, our own take on a big games convention.

UK Games Expo is in its tenth year now. What are the next five years going to be like?

When we started out we didn’t have the intention of attaining the scale we have now. Very much for the first few years it was a hobby event we did in our spare time. We ran out of space, so we had to decide what we wanted to do with the event.  We had a long talk about it and decided to push it as far as we could go. We want to make it the equivalent of Comic Con and similar big events, but for board games.

Why the burst of interest in boardgames?

Computer games can be a relatively solitary thing. You’re in your own room, maybe talking to someone miles away in their own room. Hobbygames are an innately social thing. People have games evenings, they go to the pub or cafes to play games.

What’s this about a festival of food?

Well outside the venue we have plenty of food vans of all sorts of foods from all over; lots of options for everyone of every taste. It’s a good chance to socialise and eat.

What game is in constant rotation at you gaming table?

Well at this time of year we’re getting ready for the convention, so there’s lots of games to judge for the awards, so lots of different games. The one I played last night was called Halflings Feast from Triple Ace Games; it’s an eating party for halflings. My favourite game is Agricola, but this time of year I get to play lots of games.

Talking of Agricola, I understand you’ve a tournament going on?

Yes, plenty of tournaments. We have the largest Star Wars X-Wing miniatures tournament in the world going on, the Yavin Open. The winner gets to go to a special Star Wars event. We have a Catan tournament, and the winner gets to go to the final in the US. The winner of the Agricola will get to go to the final in Vienna. The winner of the Pandemic tournament gets to go the final in Spain, and the ultimate prize is to travel anywhere that is on the Pandemic boards.

UK Games Expo is at the Birmingham NEC and the nearby Birmingham Hilton, running from June 3th to 5th. Book now to avoid disappointment.

The Beauty is Image Comics’ latest smash hit series that dares to ask the odd question “What if physical beauty was a sexually transmitted disease?” In the world of The Beauty, physical perfection is attainable. The vast majority of the population has taken advantage of it, but at what cost? We caught up with writer/artist Jeremy Haun and co-writer Jason A. Hurley to find out more.

STARBURST: Tell us about The Beauty?

Jason A. Hurley: The Beauty is a sexually transmitted disease that makes people beautiful. It’s hit the mainstream in a big way, and it’s one of the first diseases that people are actively trying to catch.

Jeremy Haun: The first arc followed police detectives Foster and Vaughn as they unravelled a conspiracy to hide the truth about the cost of the disease. The second arc opens the world of The Beauty up a bit. We’re taking a look at life and love in the criminal world of The Beauty.

How would you explain the premise to your grandmother?

Haun: Well, I’d probably sit her down in the kitchen, make her a nice cup of tea (she likes Sleepytime), and tell her “PLEASE DON’T READ THIS BOOK.” Like most grandmas, she likes to support me. While I’m pretty sure she’s seen some stuff and had her share of adventures, I’m not sure she could handle some of what we’re dealing with here in The Beauty. People get old. You don’t want to have to explain that your funny book might’ve been the reason for a loved one’s untimely demise.

Hurley: Oh, I wouldn’t, I haven’t, and I have absolutely no intention of doing so. I mean, Jeremy drew a LOT of weiners in there.

Where did the idea for The Beauty come from?

Haun: I was out in LA looking at all of the beautiful people and wanted to tell a story examining the lengths that we go to in order to look good. I got back from the trip and pitched the idea to the only other person I know that’s average looking enough to tell the story with me. After a four-hour car ride together, Hurley and I had almost all of the first arc figured out. The rest was history.

How inspired is it by real life issues?

Hurley: On a worldwide scale, it’s very inspired by the headlines that we see, the way celebrities are photoshopped and glamorized, and the way big pharmaceutical companies act in the public eye. On a personal level, Jeremy has far more experience with STDs than I do, so I’ll let him cover that one.

Haun: Some of us went to college, lived life, and came out the other side a more worldly individual. Some of us sat around and played a lot of Nintendo Virtual Boy. It’s a good thing one of us is writing what we know.

Why do the themes of sex and death make for such compelling stories?

Haun: Well, it’s the two things that most of us are really good at… most of us.

Hurley: It’s what most people want more than anything, and what most people dread more than anything. You can’t get much more compelling than that?

Haun: Exactly.

How did the book end up with Image?

Haun: I’ve had a relationship with Image since the beginnings of my career in comics, nearly fifteen years ago. My first few projects were Image books. Over the years, I found myself mostly working for Marvel and DC. While I loved working for the big two, I wanted to get back to doing creator-owned work. Telling my stories my way is where my heart is at. Image is the place to do that.

Hurley: We pitched the book to Image, and they got behind us in a big way. They’ve been great to work with, and have really let us do exactly what we want with the book.

Where do you predict the series will go?

Hurley: Well, we’re wrapping up the production side of things on the second story arc, and starting in on the third. Things are planned out to about five arcs right now, and more if we can swing it.

Haun: There are a lot of stories we can tell with this concept. More and more all the time. As for predictions, I’m thinking this thing is going to be bigger than the Beatles. I’m no fortune teller though.

What’s next?

Haun: We can’t talk about that, can we?

Hurley: No, that would be telling.

Haun: Mum’s the word. Sorry. I can’t say anything more than it’s really, really big. Like Mark Millar bragging big. But not another word.

What story do you still need to tell?

Haun: There’s a hell of a list of them. That’s the blessing and curse of being storytellers. We’ve both got some new things we’re working on, but for the time being, our main focus is The Beauty.
HURLEY: I think every writer has a notebook full of ideas that they’re always trying to work toward. Like Jeremy said though, The Beauty is the biggest thing on our plates right now.

Volume One of The Beauty is out now.

NESS is a Del Toro-inspired Lovecraftian graphic novel featuring a big scary Scottish monster and plenty of cosmic horror. It’s currently seeking funding via Kickstarter. We caught up with the creator, Chris Welsh, to find out more.

STARBURST: Tell us about NESS.

Chris Welsh: NESS is a giant monster horror movie in comic book form. If Del Toro made a Lovecraftian film set at Loch Ness and then let me do the comic book tie in, that’s how I’ve been describing it, the elevator pitch. It’s really about a young woman grieving her mother, who is caught up in a crazy plot hatched by supernatural creatures/monsters intent on controlling the world.

Why the Loch Ness Monster?

The book is set at Loch Ness and features monsters, but Nessie herself doesn’t make an appearance. The suggestion is that the creatures in the book could be responsible for the sighting. Or if not, they’re much bigger and scarier and meaner than Nessie so they might’ve scared her from the Loch.

Why do we still want to believe there’s a Loch Ness Monster?

Well, the alternative is to believe there isn’t a Loch Ness Monster. Which sounds terribly boring.

Apart from NESS, what’s your favourite take on the Loch Ness Monster?

There was a Loch Ness film made years ago starring Ted Danson that I used to watch as a kid. I have no idea if it holds up or not, but I’ll say that because I can’t think of any other really great piece of media with Nessie in.

Why Kickstarter?

Kickstarter is a fantastic tool for indie creators. It puts the decision of what gets made into the hands of comic fans and it enables people to help out small time creators directly. This is the fifth Kickstarter I’ve been involved in and I plan to use it to fund the rest of the NESS run too.

Why did you pick the team you did? What else have they done?

The only member of the team I’ve worked with before is Dee Cunniffe, who colours another comic I co-created called Doc Dino. Rob Carey has worked on the Lightning Strike anthology, North Bend, and The Life & Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. His work is just incredible; I honestly don’t think I could have made a better choice for artist. Robin is one of the masterminds behind Madius Comics, but he’s also a quality letterer. The process of picking the team involved lots of tweeting for recommendations, seeking out portfolios and checking out other small press titles for talent. It took ages, but I think it paid off.

What’s next?

We’re jumping straight into NESS 2. It’s a four-book story arc, a mini-series, and each script is written. We’re prepping to start on the artwork for book 2 as soon as the campaign for #1 is over. It’s a going to be quite an ambitious schedule with plans to get all four books out in 2016, but with any luck we’ll be able to pull it off!

How can we help?

As with any Kickstarter campaign, the trickiest bit is getting the word out and letting people know it exists. It’s gone pretty well so far but we have two weeks left and would love to get more eyes on our work.

You can contribute to the Kickstarter by following this link.

Metal Made Flesh is a critically acclaimed high-octane comic book series set in a hi-tech cyberpunk world, produced by Subversive Comics. Well regarded for its eye-catching art and addictive storylines, it’s always a pleasure to see new Metal Made Flesh books come out. We caught up with writer Cy Dethan and legendary artist Gary Erskine to find out more about the latest instalment, The Final Piece of Me.

STARBURST: Tell us about your new Metal Made Flesh book.

Cy Dethan: The Final Piece of Me, and by necessity any peripheral story told within Metal Made Flesh, is a tightly-focused snapshot of a galaxy in motion. By taking the workings of a traditionally near-future SF genre and unfolding them into this enormous, war-riven epic, Simeon and Jeremy have built a supermassive vortex of alien politics and universal extinction. Any story told within it, however personal its concerns, needs to reflect that. You’re basically picking a single atom from the larger whole and splitting it, then riding the chain reaction outward.

Gary Erskine: I was a fan of the Metal Made Flesh series already so was excited to be a part of this universe. Cy’s script really captured the world perfectly while also allowing for more personal moments with the character and inspired me to push the visuals as much as I could on every page. Simeon’s art is so rich with detail that it played to my strengths and I had a lot of fun working with Cy’s script to push that.

What challenges did you face writing for the MTF world?

CD: It’s always a blindfolded tightrope walk when you take on characters and settings that other creators have invested so much of themselves into developing. The trick to it, for me, has always been to lose the pseudo-omniscient “writer’s distance” mindset and drench yourself in the world they’ve created for you. If you can place yourself in the position of an inhabitant of that world, then the stories and characterisations grow organically. Ditch the outsider’s “wouldn’t it be cool if…?” mentality and instead think, “Here I am. Now what?” I’ll also drop in here the fact that working with the amazing Gary Erskine was necessarily an exercise in upping my own game. Gary’s a legitimate rock star in comics, and every page he draws offers up new, unexpected opportunities. Creating a story with him is humbling and inspiring at once.

GE: I love the cyberpunked genre very much and always enjoy any opportunity to return to that world. Jeremy and Simeon have already created and established a rich and detailed world in Metal Made Flesh and a host of wonderfully realised and eccentric characters including Izobel. For my part, I try to bring the very best of my game to the story and made sure that there was a level of commitment to the art that complimented Simeon’s work and also allowed me to have fun. Cy’s script also helped tremendously as it had some great scenes and the flashback part of the narrative really helped show a bigger story within the build of a tighter story. The action scenes in particular were great to play with!

Is cyberpunk ever going to go away?

CD: Not while I live… Honestly, the relationships between the gross machinery of our bodies and the intricately fallible software of our consciousness is something that I can’t see getting definitively resolved any time soon. As long as there’s tension and evolution in the way people and information interact, I think the cyberpunk conversation is always going to be relevant and worth pursuing.

GE: No. The genre is too rich already and open to new interpretations. If anything, it will become more relevant to our current lives with the assimilation of machines/gadgets in our everyday lives. We are so tied to devices now for almost every aspect of our lives that cyberpunk is a closer possible narrative than many will consider.

Why do you love dystopia so much?

CD: Perfection is tedious. Harmony is not my field of expertise. As an unreformed Generation X-er, I’m genetically distrustful of anything resembling an authority structure and so profoundly desensitised that I doubt I’d recognise true inner peace if it were thrashing rabidly in a cage strapped to my face. You call it dystopian nihilism. I call it Tuesday. To-may-to, to-mah-to…

GE: I think a dystopian future is more realistic and expected than a harmonious perfected world. That is not a nihilistic viewpoint but more of a considered acceptance of where we will end up as a species. It is also a prepared position and unlikely to disappoint when it happens. I can’t image a ‘sunshine and lollipops’ future the way we are heading right now politically or socially.

What makes Metal Made Flesh so unique?

CD: Simeon and Jeremy’s universe offered a number of very specific and fascinating opportunities when writing The Final Piece of Me. For one thing, as an action-based story it allowed me to combine my enduring love of fast-moving and/or bladed metals with my overwhelming suspicion and resentment of the fragile human(oid) form. More importantly, it was an invitation into a vibrant, vital world and a chance to pry apart some of its most intriguing characters – physically, psychologically and philosophically.

GE: I feel Metal Made Flesh reflects the combination of many great sources and inspirations including film and art: Metal Hurlant, manga like AKIRA and Ghost in the Shell/Appleseed and other Sorayama’s Gynoids. The work that Jeremy and Simeon have done to distil everything into a fully realised and personally individual world is remarkable.

What other projects do you have planned?

CD: Right now I’ve got a paranormal spy-fi thriller called Phantom Lung & the Garden of Dead Liars in production at Markosia, along with a graphic novel and two one-shots coming from Barry Nugent’s Unseen Shadows project. Row Bird and I have a story in the upcoming Bomb Scares anthology from Time Bomb Comics, and I’ve contributed an angry steampunk short to Adam Cheal’s next British Showcase collection (also from Markosia). Loads more in various stages of development, but those are the ones I can talk about in my outside voice at the moment.

GE: My current project is FRONTLINES: Requiem with Ivan Brandon and Yel Zamor. Requiem is a sci-fi limited series based on the FRONTLINES novel series by Marko Kloos and very much in the Starship Troopers mould. Having a lot of fun building the visuals and designs for that world. I then return to my creator-owned project ROLLER GRRRLS based on the roller derby sport and community. Other work on hold for now include Incendiary.US, Zachariah Gunn: Dakota and Island Life. They will be hopefully be developed and then Kickstarted next year.

Writer/director Lucile Hadzihalilovic founded the production company Les Cinemas De La Zone with Gaspar Noe and worked on several of his films, including collaborating on the screenplay to Noe’s Enter the Void. In 2004, she directed the feature film Innocence starring Marion Cotillard which, among many other honours, was awarded Best Film at the Neuchatel International Fantasy Film Festival and the Bronze Horse for Best Film and Best Cinematography at the Stockholm Film Festival.

Her new film Evolution follows the nightmarish journey of 10-year-old Nicolas (Max Brebant) who grows up in an isolated community on an unnamed island. The only adults are the sylph-like women who are the mothers. The only children are little boys. When Nicolas goes swimming in the sea around the island and finds a boy’s body floating inside the coral, his suspicions are alerted. Who was the boy? What is the significance of the hospital Nicolas and his friends are taken to and the bizarre experiments that happen there? When it is Nicolas’ turn to undergo the operation he begins a tentative friendship with a young nurse (Roxane Duran) who reveals to him some of the island’s secrets. Nicolas also begins to suspect that the woman he calls mother (Julie-Marie Parmentier) might not be his mother at all.

The screenplay for Evolution was awarded the NHK/Sundance Prize in 2009.

STARBURST: We love Evolution! What has the reaction been like from other viewers?

Lucile Hadzihaililovic: Thank you, I am very happy you enjoyed it! To my big surprise, we have received very good feedback – some viewers have really loved it and understood it, which is wonderful, especially considering when it was just a script we had tremendous problems getting the project financed because people didn’t understand it. Of course, there are a few viewers that haven’t liked it and have really rejected it but still recognise we have tried to do something different. On the whole, audiences have really embraced the physical and emotional aspects of the film. And it works very well in the theatre on a big screen.

You won a Sundance Prize back in 2009 for the script, so it took a long time getting the project in front of cameras?

Yes, it was a long journey. The script that won at Sundance was probably one of the first drafts but the award didn’t help at all when it came to making the film happen. Maybe things would have been different if the film had been made in the States or the UK where people are more used to the genre film and know how to play with it, I don’t know, but in France the problem is this: there is either ‘art’ or there is ‘the low’ forms of entertainment. And for French people, what is imaginary or metaphorical is something which is not very common to them, so I had this problem that the film was supposed to be an art house film but for people here , because of the element of sci-fi or fantasy, it was not considered so seriously.

It definitely seems like a very personal film.

Yes, it is very personal. I was quite confident after I made Innocence, even if it hadn’t been a commercial success, that I could do something personal. And maybe it’s because I’m here in France, where it’s quite well considered to do something personal, that I was able to inject more of myself into the work. But the actual mood of Evolution, the kind of film it has turned out to be, I think will be better understood overseas.

With Evolution, did the script change dramatically from the draft that won at Sundance to the story it is today?

Absolutely, in fact even before Sundance, the beginning of the project was based more on a situation and the situation was this boy going to the hospital with his mother and not getting better but growing even worse and the mother wanting to keep her child somehow linked to her. That was the very beginning of it. It was really based on that one situation and some distinct images and feelings. So I had a lot of material for a while, I accumulated a lot of elements for the film, but then I had to structure it so I looked for someone to work with and I found Alante Kavaite, who’s a director but she’s also a very good writer. Alante helped me to structure the story and we also talked a lot about this little community where the film takes place; we discussed who the women were, who are the children, how life works on this remote island, etc.

But each time we tried to make the film happen, in terms of financing, we couldn’t get the whole money and people said it was because they didn’t understand this or that, so we had a tendency to add more description and more elements to the script to give the readers a more detailed explanation. For that reason, the script became bigger and longer and more expensive, so I tried first with one producer but he couldn’t find enough money, and then I found another producer, Sylvie Pialat, with whom I did the film, and she said “Okay, but you’re going to have to cut your script if you ever want to make it happen,” because there wouldn’t be enough money to film all that we had written. In the end I cut one-third out, which was a lot, and I cut all the additional elements, the layers we put in year after year to make it more understandable or give it more explanation – I took out a lot of that – so the script kind of went back to the essence of the project. I don’t regret it in a way. I think the film would have been more like a sci-fi film if I had kept everything, and now it’s something more like a dream, like a nightmare, which is how it was at the very beginning of the project. To make a kind of Oneiric and nightmarish film rather than a sci-fi or fantastic film.

I have my own interpretation of the film, but I can see that some elements can have many different resonances for different people. I know who the women on the island are for me… the kind of creature they are has an echo in mythology or folklore and I think it works very well. For that reason, we thought we didn’t need to explain too much because these are elements that are quite familiar to most people thanks to traditional myths and legends, and also through some certain kind of films.

Evolution is very pure cinema. The dialogue is minimal, and a lot is open to interpretation…

Yes. For me, I don’t understand why film should be so closely linked to theatre or literature. I think that cinema is a part of the visual arts and it’s also linked to musical forms of art. I’m surprised that more films aren’t looking towards visual arts rather than literature or film. What I like with cinema is that it’s not verbal and it’s a way not to say things aloud but to communicate feelings and ideas through the emotions and through images and sounds.

Thinking of Evolution and Innocence, there is the obvious link between them of childhood and death, birth and rebirth. Are these themes that especially fascinate you?

It’s really what I would like to talk about. It’s the subject of my films. I don’t know why, it’s so much about this time period when you are around ten, eleven years old and you are still a bit of a child but you are on the verge of becoming a teenager and it was a period in my life where personally I had a lot of fear, expectations and all that, and there were various kinds of directions that I had to explore. I don’t know why, but for me it’s a very interesting time in a life because it’s a moment when you still have the naiveté and the creativity of a child because the world is still very mysterious, you don’t really understand what the adults want, or what they are doing, and then at the same time you begin to question what is around you and somehow begin to get a kind of independency.

So a lot of the story tension lies in the fact that children can interpret but also misinterpret what is going on around them?

Exactly! Maybe they are making an exaggerated phantasmagoria out of what is really happening. In the case of Evolution, you can imagine that maybe Nicolas has a mother who is a bit rigid and then he thinks she is not his mother and that she’s an alien. I think it is a very common moment in many children’s lives that at some point they think they can’t have come from their own parents!

With both Evolution and Innocence, audiences do have the opportunity to project themselves and their own memories of childhood on to the film. They are both reminiscent – but especially Innocence – of Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Yes, Picnic at Hanging Rock was definitely a kind of a reference for Innocence. This group of girls together, which is not a very common element in films, and also the sense of mystery, of growing up, linked to nature. Yes, Hanging Rock is a film that I really loved a lot and I guess has made a big impression on me. I also really love Peter Weir’s film The Last Wave, a story about the apocalypse told from the point of view of a dream.

You were brought up in Morocco?

Yes, I lived there until I was seventeen years old.

And you filmed in Lanzarote, with buildings that have very much a Moroccan influence.

Lanzarote was very interesting because it’s volcanic, so instead of having a normal seaside we had this very dark and black stone beach, which was very interesting. Also, there is a feeling of isolation because there is a lot of space, and this small village is really apart from every other construction on the island. I was really lucky to be able to shoot there.

Did you know when you were writing the script that this was the location you’d choose?

No, at the very beginning I didn’t know the Canary Islands, I’d never been there, but I knew I just wanted this story to happen in the South, under the sun. I like the fact that it sometimes feels like a kind of horror movie that doesn’t take place in the darkness but in the light. And then some producer who knew the Canary Islands suggested it could be a very good place to shoot the film. He was really right because when we did the scouting there it was even better than I had expected.

The underwater photography was amazing. How difficult was that to do?

Under the water it’s more complicated, it takes a long time. In this case we couldn’t see what the cameraman was doing when he was under the water because we didn’t have communication with him while he was down there, so we had to explain to him in advance the kind of shots that we wanted. And then in the scenes with the actors, I don’t dive myself and I don’t use an oxygen bottle, but I wore a mask so I could go under water and watch a little bit of what the actors were doing, but I couldn’t see the images the cameraman had actually taken until we were back on the surface. He did a few shots and then he came out of the water and we watched what he’d filmed and then many times we had to do it again so it was a very long process but he was very good. To begin with he was a bit surprised because he was used to making documentary films and he wanted to have a very clean, very wide image whereas we were looking for some dirty water or some precise kind of angles that he wasn’t used to taking. Also, since it was in the sea, the actors were not able to do exactly what we wanted them to do – even a very simple thing like crossing the frame was difficult because of the currents and so on. But it was great to work with this cameraman because he knew our location very, very well. For instance, the shot we have at the beginning which would normally have been taken by an entire second unit, he did it all by himself. He knew where to go to get the kind of landscape we wanted, to get the weeds and so on, and he knew the precise time of day to get the best light. He was very open and very good, and Manuel Dacosse, the DP, gave him precise instructions about the image and the parameters for the camera, etc., and he really listened and his results were wonderful. Working with him was a gift from the film gods!

Do you change your style of directing when you work with children?

The good thing with children is that they don’t ask you why, why do they have to do that, what is the psychology of the character, etc., they just obey – more or less! But they do have to be very closely directed, which is sometimes a bit tiring because I would have liked them to be a little more… in the moment. Very often I do extremely steady shots with very precise positions in the frame so the actors have to be exactly in the right place. I don’t make it very easy for them, it’s a way to make them be more rigid, but at the same time because they are children there is a lot of accident in the way they play that gives their performances a life and a freshness. In Innocence there were a lot of little children and the two actresses were a bit like assistants, whereas in this film the nurse and the mother are more part of the action, I had to find ways to make the children concentrate. They get bored very quickly so you have to make it fun for them, but not too much fun or they’ll be laughing during the shots. In fact, the problem with the main actor, and I really liked the boy we chose, but he was laughing all the time so the difficulty we had was to help him concentrate and be serious.

There’s a lot that that little boy goes through, and a chilling moment…

Yes, but with children they don’t think! None of them really care about the story, they were more interested in the experience of the shooting. And in that moment you’re talking about, being in the tank was a privilege, so Max was very willing to do it. He was very concentrated in that moment because it was very exciting for him to be in the tank.

How closely did you work with the composer? There doesn’t seem to be a lot of music but the science fiction motif of the story comes across most clearly in the score.

At the very beginning, I didn’t want to use music at all. I thought that we could do more sound design. But when we were doing the editing, I found pieces of music to help the editor edit the film, and in the end I found that a few of those pieces worked really well, except that they were just references so we had to find musicians that could do the same. That isn’t really the right way to approach things, because by giving such precise references to the musicians it makes it very difficult for them to create, but what happened is that I found a piece with an Ondes Martenot – an acoustic instrument which is very interesting because it has a very strange and specific and unique sound and texture, a kind of intimate and melancholic resonance. So I knew that I wanted to have a kind of melody that would be played through this instrument and, like many people, I had also been totally amazed by the score in Under the Skin, so for the part with the violins and other strings we kind of imitated what Mica Levi did on that film. I was not totally conscious that what we have is a science fiction score but I see what you mean.

Maybe it’s because the Ondes Martenot is very reminiscent of the Theremin Bernard Herrmann used on The Day the Earth Stood Still?

The Theremin is quite close to the Ondes Martenot but the Martenot is more interesting, a bit more complex if you know how to play it, but yes, it’s quite close to the Theremin and very linked to that ‘50s or ‘60s sci-fi sound.

What’s next for you?

I’m not really sure. I’m working on an adaptation of an amazing book by an English writer – it hasn’t been published yet so I’d prefer not to give any more details – but it’s very dark and bizarre and very much about madness. Maybe it could be that. And for once the main character is not a child, which would be a big step for me! But I’m not totally sure if that’s the way I should go now because I have to be very careful about not having a project that will take me five years to get off the ground.

Is the process of setting up a film more difficult than when you started?

It has become harder in the last ten years, I would say, because there is less diversity and a little less source of finance, certainly in France. But I don’t think it will be harder to set up the next project than it was to make Evolution, even though Evolution was not such an expensive film. I think now I should try and find a project that begins more with reality than dreams, or that goes from reality to another reality, because doing things the opposite way – as we did in Evolution – is quite hard for people to understand on a script level. Evolution was financed through the art house system of financing, which means that we needed to get everybody’s consensus, and the nature of the project meant that sometimes people would really get it and be very excited about it whereas other people in the Commission would be like “But we don’t understand, what is it going to be?” and become very uncomfortable because of the children and the other dark elements the story involved. In the art house system, people want the films they commission to be about very serious topics and that’s a difficulty. But on the other side, Evolution wasn’t commercial enough to raise sufficient money from other avenues. And yet it’s not only a question of money, it’s also a question of politics. They want to finance films with more direct social and political issues rather than the nightmares of a child!

Evolution is in UK cinemas from May 6th.