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Bad Lads
As you read this, Ron Perlman and John Malkovich are dealing with a potentially apocalyptic infestation of mutants at a cinema near you, in an adaptation of the actually-fantastically-decent roleplaying game, Mutant Chronicles. Under the jump, Death Ray writer M.J. Simpson speaks to director Simon Hunter about the lessons of CG, storyboarding and The Guns of Navarone.
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A feature film based on the steampunk-meets-corporate-dystopia Mutant Chronicles role-playing game first went into development back in the 1990s, and after passing in and out of the responsibilities of half a dozen writers and directors, the job finally fell to Simon Hunter, a young British director whose debut feature was the acclaimed chiller Lighthouse. Hunter brought two crucial ideas to the project: he proposed to shoot most of the film against green screens, digitally adding the gritty, war-torn world in post-production, and he demonstrated the practicality of his approach by shooting an expensive, seven-minute ‘teaser’ film. M.J. Simpson spent a day at Shepperton Studios where the feature was shot, way back in the summer of 2006. You can read further interviews with the cast and crew of Mutant Chronicles over at his website.
Death Ray: Why did you decide to shoot the film in sequence?
Simon Hunter: Mostly because it’s all inside in a stage. It always makes sense if you can shoot it in order. If there’s no big problems doing it that way, then why not? It helps continuity. It’s also helpful to the actors of course, because they can see how their parts grow as the film goes along.
DR: Has the project changed since you first became attached?
SH: Not really. I’ve been shooting a lot of commercials in the same way that we’re shooting this. When we did the teaser for Mutant Chronicles last year, we shot it very much in the style that we’re shooting this but in a smaller way. This is the same way, the same style but just on a much larger canvas with more of everything.
DR: How different is it from Lighthouse?
SH: Completely. Everything’s different, I’m different. I’ve been shooting stuff continually for five years. With Lighthouse I came out of film school and shot my first film. I can’t think of anything similar, actually. The crew’s much better, I’m better, the art department’s better, the camera department’s better. I’ve made sure I’ve got people on board that are right on top of their game. And also I’m more experienced and know exactly what I’m doing. The two biggest things are: the script is great, and we’ve got quality actors, And that’s worth all the production values in the world, to suddenly have good performances. It’s fantastic.
DR: Are the crew mostly people you’ve worked with before?
SH: Some are. Paul Hyett, obviously, who’s designing our mutants, did Lighthouse with me. One or two others. But there are new people I’ve brought onboard. Some haven’t done this sort of film before. I wanted to try and not go down the well-trodden path of just hiring in somebody who happened to work on Alien3 or that kind of thing. People tend to hire for genre films people who have made genre films and I think that’s sometimes a mistake because people who haven’t done them can bring new things. Rather than just being in love with Aliens and giving us the look and feel of that, which I don’t want on this film.
DR: To what extent is this a science fiction film and to what extent a war movie?
SH: I suppose it’s science fiction, it’s not of the real world that we know. It’s an alternative universe that exists, very much drawing on the past to create this future, not what we think the future might be. A sort of steampunk world. In that respect it is science fiction. But it’s very earthy, there’s nothing high-tech. Everything’s large scale, everything’s been built enormously, much bigger than they need: guns, ships, everything is on a huge scale. Which is great. But essentially, storywise, plotwise it’s a war movie. It’s The Guns of Navarone and our guns are the mutant-making machines in the centre of the Earth. Our mission is to get a band together to destroy these machines, all made up from the four corporations that run the world. Unfortunately they’ve been killing each other for the past x-hundred years but they have to bond and get along together.
DR: A lot of this is going to be done in post-production. Have you got a clear idea of what it’s going to look like?
SH: Yes, 100%. We’ve worked out what the ships are going to be like and we’re building most of our environments as models, as miniatures, which a lot of people don’t do any more. Our post-production in a way is creating our scale and is very much part of the look so it has to be pre-designed. Our production designer will work all the way through. Our whole workflow while we’re making this is very different to how most films are made. Most of our shots are visual effects shots in some way or other but that doesn’t mean they’re bland spectacle shots. They’re there to create our world and to create an environment that you just couldn’t find so we just have to create. Certainly it means we can have millions of CG creatures around and steam-powered ships and interesting locations that we couldn’t really build. We’re doing a lot of this is in miniature rather than 3-D which I personally prefer.
DR: I understand you had someone from the company that makes the Mutant Chronicles game down here recently. What did he think?
SH: Well, we signed a deal with the game company the day after they left the set so we must be doing something right. I think what people don’t want is a bland, summer family movie that’s some game tie-in. That’s not what it is. I don’t pretend to know the Mutant Chronicles world very well. I want to show a little bit of the world but in great detail rather than trying to tick all the boxes that you normally do with these sort of films. The first thing is, who are our characters, do we care about them, and are we going to root for them? And if we do, then the film will be a success. So no, we’re going to concentrate on getting this film right. Whether they make another one, and whether they make games of it, is irrelevant unless this story works, this story’s exciting and interesting.
DR: Do you think this could be the start of a franchise?
SH: I’m not interested. If it is, fantastic. But we don’t want to bear that in the back of our mind all the time: "Oh my God, we’re going to have to make parts two and three!" It just gets you stuck. This has to be self-contained, exciting, interesting and fun for the audience. But it can’t compete with the big budget blockbusters, we just can’t for budget reasons. And also people are just so bored with the bland summer films. I’m trying not to do that.
DR: Does post-production happen while you're still filming?
SH: No, it not only has to be in the can but I want to do a cut. I need to get in the cutting room and make sure that the cut works without any of the effects being done, without any of the music being laid. To check that the human drama works and the story works on that level. When that’s done, then we can start adding all the flourishes and things.
DR: You’ve got this very tightly storyboarded. Does that mean you’ve effectively ‘made’ the film before you even begin shoooting?
SH: I tend to shoot exactly as the boards are because on the storyboards you have time to consider everything. You have to make a decision at some point about what the film’s going to be like, what it’s going to look like. I’d rather make that ahead of time than in the cutting room. So I stick very closely to them. They’re very helpful to me. What will be on the cutting room floor? There’s no mystery about it. What will be on the cutting room floor will be what’s on the cutting room floor with most films, which will be those scenes that we wrote because we thought the audience would need to have them for plot reasons or character motivation, and then when we view the film we think no, it works well without that. So I have to say - and most directors never say this - that the DVD extra scenes should be the dullest scenes in our cut. It’s always a big thing when you see on DVDs ‘with extra scenes that were cut out’; well, there’s usually a good reason why they were cut out. They were cut out because they were dull. They’re expositional nonsense usually. We won’t go for a long running length, it will be a tight 105 minutes, something like that. Don’t hold me to that, but that’s where we want to be.
DR: Are you having much involvement with the design process?
SH: All the way through. I’m very, very hands-on in all departments; probably drives them all nuts but that’s who I am.
DR: But it must be tremendous fun to get to play with great big guns and big, chunky tanks.
SH: Yes indeed, all that’s great fun. We’re trying to go for a look that you won’t have seen. People always say, “Well, what sort of film is it like?” and I can’t think of many. I don’t want it to be like all the science fiction films you’ve seen before. That doesn’t mean people will like it, some people may hate the film, but you’ve got to be fresh. That’s just up to you guys to say what you think, whether you like it or not. If you hate it, that’s fair enough - although others may really like it. But to be bland and try to cover all bases, that’s the greatest sin. I think when you haven’t got much money – and our production budget’s very small – you have to be risky because that’s when you can be bold. If you’ve got 60 or 70 million then you have to play it safe on the whole because you want to recoup that investment.
DR: Is this presold to a lot of territories?
SH: It is. Quite a few territories. On the basis of the teaser and the names we’ve got. Everything has come from the teaser. That was how we got the actors on board. So that’s a lesson to young film-makers out there who want to have a go. We spent £30,000 on the teaser.
DR: Was the teaser helpful for you? Did you learn stuff that you could apply to the main shoot?
SH: I’ve learned what I’ve been doing all the time. I’ve been specialising in technology and special effects and I wanted to use that to create my world cost-effectively. I wanted to have little bits of set and do set extensions and lots of easy things but it does give you a size and scale that you just couldn’t afford. On this film, if we built all the sets it would be four times the budget. And if we found locations, we’d be searching the Isle of Man for a huge, futuristic, corporate council building and we'd end up using the Douglas town hall!
Mutant Chronicles is in cinemas now, and will be reviewed in the next issue of Death Ray.
Administrator October 16, 2008, 02:14:18
