theunseenfilm.com

‘The Unseen’ is a feature length horror movie completed in 2004. Shot on DV, the story tells of a shape changing alien beast that takes over a remote English village, killing the inhabitants. A group of speleologists, on their way home from an expedition stop off at the village and uncover the deadly secret. They then become trapped in a forest that surrounds the area and have to try and escape back to civilization.

The idea for ‘The Unseen’ was conceived in 2001. I was having a break from my own film-making after graduating from university in 1999 and decided I needed to get back to making my own films. I’d worked on several other projects between 1999 and 2001, but these were other people’s films (features and shorts) and I was usually doing camera work or working as assistant director. Some of the films were good, others not so good, and I felt I had to get back into writing and directing my own films. I wasn’t quite sure whether to continue with my experimental short films (which had been critically well received) or move into more mainstream movie-making and start directing horror films. I decided to be honest with myself and what I really wanted to do was make independent horror movies. Soon after, the premise for ‘The Unseen’ was born.

I’d mainly worked using Beta SP until that point, but with DV becoming so cheap, I decided to invest in a DV camera and some other film equipment and start making ‘The Unseen’. The idea was an amalgam of elements of some of my favourite films such as ‘The Thing’, ‘Southern Comfort’, ‘The Evil Dead’ and the ‘Quatermass’ films but written around an original screenplay. I wrote the script, raised funding for the actual production and advertised on shooting people for cast and crew. The production took off very quickly and a few months later in the summer of 2002, we began shooting.

I’d always been a film buff but until I was eighteen I had studied and wanted to do painting at degree level. It was then at art college that I discovered a film-making course and signed up. I ended up specialising in that, ditched the painting and went on to do a degree and master’s degree in film and video production. I’ve never looked back since although the painter side is still very much with me and is a great bonus. Most film-makers I know can’t draw for shit and don’t have a great eye for composition. Painting has helped me have a strong eye for composition and every production I’ve worked on this has been evident.

Yes I’ve always loved horror, and even bad horror. My interest in more experimental film came from my background in painting and through studying avant-garde and experimental film at University. Directors like Jan Svankmajer, John Smith and Luis Bunuel and interested me a lot in those days and still do today.

Science fiction has always been a passion as well. The Quatermass films and TV serials, along with 50s B-movies have shared a place on my video shelves with Italian and American horror for many years. I also write articles and conduct interviews with key players in Italian horror cinema for magazines, websites and DVD supplements. Italian horror cinema of the 70s and early 80s is, I believe, where a lot of the best horror cinema in history has been made. Although these films have gained a cult following over the years, they are still relatively unknown to most mainstream horror fans. Lucio Fulci’s ‘Zombi 2’ and Ruggero Deodato’s ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ are two classic pieces of horror / exploitation cinema are really groundbreaking films of their time and still pack a heavy punch today.

My Master's degree was a very practical based course but as it was experimental it wasn't about making commercial shorts, or drama shorts. You had to use the film/video camera in the same manner as an artist would use a paintbrush. Therefore you wouldn’t necessarily make films that were scripted or that had a full cast and crew. You could make more improvisational works or films that explored an idea or theme. We would have lectures and workshops on how to use equipment i.e. cameras, editing, printing facilities but the choice of projects was very much of our own choosing. Most of the people were very weak technically on their films and I always addressed this by making experimental films that were also technically proficient.

Many of the films I made were based on little ideas and were very dreamlike in their look and feel. I was interested in Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist film at the time and many of my films were made using this approach. One film I was particularly pleased with was a short called Insect Noir. This film focused on a child who experiencing hallucinatory dreams about a corridor containing nightmare imagery. This was based on a recurring dream I had myself when I was a child. The film was shot on black & white super 8mm film and went on to be shown at a number of festivals.

I had purchased a lot of digital equipment prior to filming ‘The Unseen’, not just for this production but also for future films. This kept the budget down to a bare minimum. The total spent on the actual production of ‘The Unseen’ was £5,000.

The majority of the budget went on the material costs for the special effects artists (£2k) plus cast & crew travel expenses and lunch (£1500). There were a few things we had to hire such as additional lights and we paid a small fee for a few of the locations. Nobody was paid a wage though and all worked for the experience and for any net profits we make from selling the film. The shoot was for a period of 25 days, so the travel and food costs mounted up over this time as you can imagine.

The special effects ranged from elaborate animatronics (dog corpse, exploding head) to the quite simple (alien claws). There were other effects like the space capsule wreckage and an alien cadaver that had to be made and this work was divided between three special effects artists. They collaborated on some of the effects and worked individually on others. The results were very impressive for such an incredibly low budget production.

The cast were an interesting bunch. Most had acted in film and television prior to ‘The Unseen’ although there were a few new-comers. This did prove difficult at times and on occasion there was a struggle to get the desired performance. Fantasy movies are difficult because there are such a range of emotions that an actor/actress has to express. For example, the character of Anna has to go through practically every emotion in the film, from humour, romance, to fear, terror and the final revelation that she is alone in the world. Elizabeth Healey did a sterling job portraying Anna and the mysterious Dawson (played by Craig Stovin) was also very memorable. Overall I was quite pleased with the performances and some of the cast have gone on to act in some quite big productions with high profile casts.

Day for night is something that has been done for decades on many films (from big budget Hollywood films to zero budget shorts). Look at the Western genre and you'll nearly always see day for night filming. A give away is always the blue sky and even clouds visible and to be honest it is never very convincing. Yet audiences have grown accustomed to it and generally accept that it is meant to be night time. When shooting on a smaller format such as DV and doing most of it in camera, it becomes even more of a challenge.

The simplest way of achieving day for night is to avoid shooting the sky and to set the white balance to tungsten on your camera. Then drop the aperture a few stops but no so as to lose too much detail (you can tweak it in post later) and shoot. My camera man on ‘The Unseen’ wasn't too convinced by day for night and I must admit in hindsight I'm not overly convinced either. But on a zero budget shoot in a forest it is near impossible to bring lights in and power them, not to mention getting your cast and crew to work through the night. True we could have hired a generator to power some lights but then we would have had a noise problem. As all the sound was recorded live on ‘The Unseen’, it just wasn’t feasible so we chose day for night. Some of the shots are quite impressive and far better than in much bigger budget productions. One of my favourite movies, ‘Quatermass 2’ features some appalling day for night filming in bright sunlight, yet the film still works.

The best advice I can give is to try and avoid too many night scenes when writing your script unless you can light them. There are a few night scenes in my next film ‘Soldiers of the Dead’ but we are hoping to get a bigger budget and crew so that we can light these scenes properly.

I don’t believe any director can be passive, especially on a low budget film as the whole production would probably fall apart. Because I had written the script for ‘The Unseen’ and was directing and producing, the film was very much my own vision. Therefore I had to be hands on and explain every minute detail of what everyone was doing and what was happening in each scene. One thing a director has to realise is that film-making is all about compromises and you have to have a knowledge of how to alter something on the day. Some directors get upset because they can’t get a certain shot in the day that they had dreamed about prior to the shoot. Adapting to circumstances is an essential skill of a low budget director.

The most important thing is getting sufficient coverage so that the scene can work, even on a basic level. If you spend too much time on one shot that is only of an aesthetic concern then you run the risk of missing out a shot that is more vital to make the scene work. If you have the time then do it, but also get an idea of how many set ups you're going to achieve in one day. The way I wanted to shoot ‘The Unseen’ was far more elaborate initially, but we had to compromise mainly due to the length of time it was taking to light the scenes and get the sound right. I also simplified the ending due to it being beyond the scope of the budget.

There’s no easy answer or quick fix when it comes to learning film-making. Film-making is a craft and you have to make your mistakes and learn from them. The internet along with cheap technology has led everyone to believe they can be a director. Really this is all about ego and a desire to be famous. Everyone wants to be famous at the moment and you only have to look at the sheer desperation of people on talent shows like ‘The X Factor’ to see this. And as we know though, most of these people have no talent and are absolutely crestfallen when they are told so.

A lot of people rush into their films without properly preparing for the shoot. Pre-production costs nothing and basic things like getting a storyboard or scouting locations properly are so important. If the director turns up on the day of shooting having not planned things properly, they’re just going to waste everyone’s time and things can only go wrong. Plan everything meticulously beforehand!

Know how you are going to edit the film when you shoot a scene to avoid wasting time on long takes that will never be used. On ‘The Unseen’ we spent ages getting the sound right on a number of wide shots and going through the entire scene sometimes. In hindsight this was unnecessary as the wide shots were only used at the start or end of the scene and the sound was mostly taken from the closer shots. Basically, this wasted time that could have been spent getting better close ups for coverage. If you’re shooting with live sound, think about how you’re going to use the sound beforehand.

Sound is often criminally ignored on no budget movies. Whilst DV can look bad sometimes, if you have good sound then the audience is far more forgiving. All of the dialogue on ‘The Unseen’ was recorded live on location using a DAT recorder and shotgun mics. This was a real test and although it took sometime to get right, and occasionally at the loss of a close up it worked very well. I wouldn’t recommend ADR-ing your film unless you have the facilities to do so in your budget. ADR can sound very false if done incorrectly and can ruin the audience’s suspension of disbelief.

The producer ultimately provides the tools for the director to do his job. They’re also the one who is ultimately in charge of the production and will steer it in the direction that it needs to go. The director is not the biggest man on the shoot, it is the producer. On ‘The Unseen’ I was in charge of co-ordinating the entire shoot as well as directing it. This is not an ideal situation but we had such a tiny crew on the film that it was the only choice. Plus I knew precisely how the project was to be co-ordinated on a day to day basis so I had no problem doing it. It did occasionally feel like a one man band and I wish I could have had more time devoted solely to the directing side but this was incredibly low budget cinema. I had two executive producers on the film, but their only real input was a little financing and help on the occasional day – the rest was down to me.

I may co-produce my next film, however I really want to concentrate on directing therefore the main producer duties will fall on somebody else’s shoulders. Getting a good producer for a low budget film is much more difficult than finding a good director. I have a producer lined up for ‘Soldiers of the Dead’ and as he is a big zombie fan, film-maker and has written books on zombie movies, so is clearly the guy to lead this particular project in the right direction. We also share a love of war movies and Italian horror and are therefore bound to work well together and steer the movie to success.

I wouldn’t say any one scene was that difficult to shoot logistically. Most of the filming took place in a large wood in Hertfordshire and every day we’d all meet up in the nearby village about 9am each day and head down to the woods with all the equipment. We’d find the spot we were going to shoot a certain scene and begin setting up. The make-up for the cast would take a while, so while that was going on the cast would rehearse and I’d work with them and also plan precisely how we’d cover each scene. The sound recordist would wander off and get some ambient sounds for the day and about an hour later when everything was ready we’d begin shooting. We’d have about half hour for lunch and wrap for the day no later than 5.30pm. The shoot was great and everyone got along famously. I believe part of the reason for this is that everyone was treated well. There were no 12 hour days where the cast and crew were worked into the ground as is so common on low budget shoots. Therefore everyone was energised on each day of the shoot, which was a good thing as the weather did try and ruin the shoot on more than one occasion.

The entire film was made within a five mile radius of my home town Letchworth. The villages, woods, interiors were all within easy reach so we never had to travel too far with all the equipment. We had one sequence involving the wreckage from a space capsule that required setting up in the woods along with some smoke effects. This took a little while to get right but wasn’t too difficult. The finished result was one of my favourite scenes in the film.

I calculated what the film would cost to shoot and the minimum I could make it for would be a few thousand pounds. However we required several special effects scenes that would cost a bit to produce so the total ended up at £5,000. I did alter the original script a fair bit to make it more realistic within the budget. The ending for example was far more elaborate than the relatively low key ending in the final cut. I believe the one in the film works better but in the original, Anna makes it back to civilisation and ends up in a police station. However she’s horrified to discover the entire town is infected. There were also scenes involving soldiers (that Dawson mentions late on in the film) who try and stop the protagonists escaping. We didn’t have the resources at the time to do these scenes so I wrote the ending with Anna being led back to the village and finishing up wandering off towards civilisation unsure of her humanity.

The film is currently being submitted to a number of festivals worldwide. These are mainly ones where there isn’t an entry fee (I don’t agree that there should be a charge for submitting your work to a film festival, especially if it is an independent film festival). Also the subject matter doesn’t fit in with most festivals, which would much rather see a film council funded short that attempts to tackle issues of race and gender, than an apocalyptic alien movie!

We are currently seeking distribution for home video and DVD; however in the mean time the film will be available from our website from early 2005 in a special edition DVD. Several distributors have expressed a keen interest thus far. By far the most amusing was a well known UK distributor who wanted to buy the film, but wanted to guarantee an 18 certificate and suggested shooting a few extra gore scenes. I toyed with the idea for a little while, but the film is finished and I have several new projects I’d rather concentrate on. Plus anyone with knowledge of film brokering knows that the home video rights for a low budget movie aren’t anything to get too excited about. Therefore the idea of funding additional scenes was a no go. ‘The Unseen’ comes across as quite retro at times – a mixture of 1950s and 1970s sci-fi horror and that makes it difficult to market as a new film. Ironically if I’d made a gore-fest (which is what I didn’t want to do) the film may well be in Blockbusters now!

However I’m also quite excited about the prospect of independently releasing the film. I get to put precisely what I want onto the DVD which will include a director’s commentary, a making of, deleted scenes, bloopers, unused footage, still galleries, storyboards and much more.

‘Soldiers of the Dead’ is a full blown World War II horror feature film with an incredibly simple yet effective premise. I can’t give away too much of the plotline at present, but the script will be touted around in 2005 with the aim of securing the funding necessary to do the idea justice. We plan to shoot the film on high-definition (HD). I’ve talked about the idea to several well known directors who’ve all said it’s an excellent premise and one that could be more popular than the recent British horror films like ’28 Days Later’ and ‘Dog Soldiers’. It can be shot relatively cheaply too so we’ve high hopes of getting this project off the ground. I really can’t wait for this project, but before that I have two other features to direct, the first of which is ‘Zombie: Passage of Darkness’ and the other is a horror/ghost story as yet untitled that will be shot on HD.