Exclusive V/H/S: Viral Interviews Part 1: Gregg Bishop, Justin Welborn, Nacho Vigalondo, Marcel Sarmiento
As Hollywood studios push for cinema to exist exclusively in digital media, there is a not-so-quiet cry for the grit of analog VHS. Part nostalgia and part need to hold on to something that is not just an ephemeral format, this fascination has kept the V/H/S franchise alive in the marketplace with its third installment, V/H/S: Viral, arriving first on (ironically) VOD platforms October 23, 2014, with a limited theatrical run slated for November 21, 2014.
The fetish for crackling tracking lines, the lack of image stabilization—this texture applied again to the subgenre of the found footage film, wrapped around an anthology series exploring highly different voices and narrative obsessiveness. These bits of hand-held voyeuristic techniques situate the audience’s eye as a direct participant within the movie’s action.
This immersion can also be compared to the first-person shooter type of video game, and it’s not just for kids anymore—on phones, tablets, and in most households we are experiencing worlds in a direct point-of-view orientation (heads-up-display) as we, ourselves, run headlong into strange worlds filled with danger and monsters, only to respond within seconds or lose our simulated life onscreen.
At Fantastic Fest Dread Central was escorted into two abandoned karaoke rooms to discuss V/H/S: Viral. The first room was inspired by Disney’s Haunted Mansion; the second, Jem and the Holograms. Our first interview with some of the creators behind the film’s segments did not start until everyone had whiskey— these then are their tales of applying the digital to resurrect the analog, told in two parts.
We bring you Part #1 from our Haunted Mansion group below; check back for more tomorrow.
GREGG BISHOP – WRITER/DIRECTOR (DANTE THE GREAT)
DREAD CENTRAL: Where did your idea come from?
GREGG BISHOP: The idea came from an article in 2007 about a police raid on David Copperfield’s warehouse, and it ended up being nothing; I think it was just a crazy assistant or something. But it just kind of was a springboard to the idea of: What if a real famous magician was dabbling in black magic and making people disappear? I thought it was just kind of fun, something you hadn’t seen before. That’s the whole thing with the V/H/S movies… each short is so unique and something you hadn’t seen before, and that’s what we’re aspiring to.
DREAD CENTRAL: How did you establish the point of view in the film?
GB: This one is a little unique in that it is a hybrid. Kind of like a documentary-style idea, where you have footage from the real world—so you have interview footage, security cameras, just footage from everywhere all put together…The idea is to give the film an energy. In found footage there are always challenges that happen in justifying the camera, so it becomes a problem. The whole thing’s a cheat anyway. We’re not trying to fool anyone. The producers say, ‘We’re past trying to fool anyone.’ Nobody’s been fooled by found footage since BLAIR WITCH. Everything’s a cheat. If you cut it’s a cheat. If you add subtitles it’s a cheat. We went in with the idea of not letting the found footage [style] mess with the story. Stick with story first, and abandon the found footage if we have to.
DREAD CENTRAL: So it’s an evolution of found footage; what would you call this new style?
GB: I don’t think it’s a new style. I’m definitely not the first director to do it. I mean, Neill Blomkamp did it in District 9, which I’m a big fan of. I I think we’re abandoning the tape idea this time. It was very much the rules in Part 1 and 2, but not in Part 3. There’s been END OF WATCH. Audiences are so smart these days they can make that leap. We had some ideas of making the whole thing found footage and floating cameras around, like in CHRONICLE, but that would take me more out of it. ‘Why is this guy floating cameras and pointing them at himself?’ Versus just telling the story.
JUSTIN WELBORN – ACTOR (DANTE THE GREAT)
DREAD CENTRAL: How were you selected for the role of Dante?
JUSTIN WELBORN: [Gregg] told me he had written this script with me in mind. We had done other films together—DANCE OF THE DEAD, THE OTHER SIDE. We’ve been collaborating for a while. He told me he wrote something with me in mind, so I said, “Let’s make a movie! What’s it for?” And when he told me it was V/H/S—that was a deal-sealer.
GREGG BISHOP: I just want to add that in casting Justin Welborn, I wrote the script for him because I knew he would come in with the missing pages. That’s what all great actors do is come in with your missing pages. He adds so much to the role that I couldn’t come up with myself. You turn the camera on the guy and he’ll say crazy stuff that you’re like, “Oh God! Thank God! I didn’t write that, but that’s awesome! We’re gonna put it in the movie!”
JW: I think all the craziest stuff was with the practical effects and especially the fire. I’m wearing this very flammable cape. We’re in a warehouse full of sawdust. I start throwing around fireballs, and you can’t missed with that stuff. And I missed. ALL THE TIME. I almost set myself on fire several times during the movie—but all worth it.
DREAD CENTRAL: Both you guys are huge horror fans?
GB: I didn’t really set out to do that, but horror films became the way to do indie films. If you want to make movies, make a horror film, and then we’ll do whatever else. And then all of a sudden you’re watching horror films all the time because you want to see what everybody is doing, and you’re involved with all the directors and all the other actors who are doing things. You can tell when somebody didn’t have a lot of money and took the world with it. So that’s really inflated the amount of horror that I’ve watched over the past ten years.
DREAD CENTRAL: Horror actors are always game to do crazy shit that actors in other genres aren’t.
JW: I think it’s a relief, and a release, and it’s always fun. You can have more fun making the movie than the movie turns out to be if you’re not too careful.
NACHO VIGALONDO – WRITER/DIRECTOR (GORGEOUS VORTEX)
DREAD CENTRAL: So, the idea behind your segment?
NACHO VIGALONDO: This is the first time I confess this, but this segment is inspired by my sexual past life. My story portal links two universes. I’ve been in both of them in my life. I don’t want to be too specific about it. My two most beloved genres are horror and science fiction. I love science fiction. I love horror.
DREAD CENTRAL: What do you love about science fiction?
NV: Science fiction is not a genre, actually. Every science fiction movie is a different genre, with science fiction tropes. Science fiction is more than a complete genre: it is a catalog of tropes which creates the craziness, the pull of some ideas. It makes your story reach for bigger places. (I don’t know how to say it properly, even in Spanish!)
I love science fiction. You can make a drama, you can make a comedy—it can be a perfect drama, a perfect comedy, even if they don’t have something new. You can make an old-school drama and go to the Oscars. But if you make science fiction, if you make horror, you are forced to do something new because people are not going to buy the same thing twice. So I love the fact that if you make science fiction or horror, you are forcing your imagination every time, and I love that aspect of the thing.
A good horror movie, a good science fiction, somehow has to tell you something new every time. It’s in constant renovation—I love that. And in this case when I found a way of mixing horror and sci-fi in this organic way, I instantly fell in love with the story. I wanted the found-footage element to really link it to the story. I wanted the camera in the hands of the guy to be part of the plot all the time.
DREAD CENTRAL: How is this very personal to you because they’re not polar opposites if you think about an average love affair?
NV: In the common universe, in the first universe, in the common universe, it’s not a sexual universe. The kind of relationship they have is kind of boring because he’s working in the basement, and she’s sleeping up there. That universe is not sexual at all. And the other universe is hyper-sexual. Everything has to do with sex, all the time. They have genital monsters, and they seem to be sexual predators all the time. And they seem to have set this kinky time. The Satanic element is somehow in the background, it is not as important. I thought it was funny to tell how in both universes, the non-sexual and the hyper-sexual, things are going wrong for the two guys, in two places. I wanted to find some kind of balance between these two different universes.
DREAD CENTRAL: How did you come up with the upside-down crosses, with the blimps, with the world-building aspects?
NV: I love Satanism. I love all the aesthetics around it. If I lived in San Francisco in the ‘70s, I’d be a follower of Anton LaVey. In science fiction, I’m more of a fan of Philip K. Dick than of Ray Bradbury. I like Ray Bradbury, but he’s so nice all the time. I prefer darker science fiction.
MARCEL SARMIENTO – WRITER/DIRECTOR (VICIOUS CIRCLES [THE WRAP])
DREAD CENTRAL: What was the inspiration for your segment?
MARCEL SARMIENTO: The inspiration in general was to try to do something different from the first two movies. Instead of having a slow burn like the first two movies, which kept coming back to the same place, to come back to something different each time. To sort of jolt the movie forward. There was this viral video that some kid took of a police chase right outside his house To take it on the road, to expand the mythology a little bit.
DREAD CENTRAL: Did you use a lot of analog techniques in your cutting and to create the texture of your segment?
MS: Yeah, I thought because this was like a change, because it was the wrap, and after breaking it up each time for twenty minutes at a time, it was difficult for the audience to come back for two or three minutes, to get back into it. I felt that emotionally… very glitchy, arty, to have fun with that whole thing, to take it to the nth level.
DREAD CENTRAL: How was it working with the actors in your segment?
MS: It was good. Most of them, it was the first thing they ever did. It was fun—we had all night shoots, and wet, in the L.A. river in muck. When you do something like this, you’ve got to be down for it because you’re certainly not doing it for the money.
DREAD CENTRAL: So you do it for the love of the genre?
MS: Love of the genre, yes. This was a chance to do an experiment. You don’t have that many opportunities to do that, and V/H/S is one of those. That’s why so many segments really shine, because people really took a chance.
DREAD CENTRAL: Do you think because of this experience, it will evolve the look and feel of what you work on in the future?
MS: I don’t think I will do found footage stuff, unless I find something that’s more of a hybrid, something like Gregg’s segment. I’m not a fan of shaky-cam – I know my wrap is very shaky. So I approached it as doing something that I know really isn’t my forte.
DREAD CENTRAL: So you approached it as ‘I don’t like shaky-cam; I’m going to do a lot of shaky-cam’?
MS: We didn’t say we were going to do a lot shaky-cam, but just the fact that there were a lot of chases, and we were running around with GoPros — it was going to be fucking shaky. So we just made the choice to try not to make it as less shaky as possible, but it’s going to be frenetic, and right in the middle of the movie, it might not make a lot of sense, but at least it’s going to be something fresh. It’ll feel like you’re getting your money’s worth because it’s five different little stories and we’ll tie it all up in the end. So that was what was exciting for us to try.
ENSEMBLE
Dread Central: Were any of you influenced by the anthology horrors of the ‘80s or ‘90s, like Creepshow or “Tales from the Darkside”?
GREGG: I grew up watching old “Twilight Zones” and “Amazing Stories.” I really looked forward to every episode. It was more TV stuff for me. I’d always loved anthologies and always wanted to be a part of one, so when they invited me, I thought, ‘What better one to be a part of?’ It has such a long line of fantastic directors and creative people.
JUSTIN: I watched “Tales from the Darkside,” but I also read all the comic books. House of Mystery, House of Secrets, all that kind of stuff. I was always, “I want all the comics in the world!” (SCARY VOICE:) “YOU GET ALL THE COMICS IN THE WORLD!!!” “NO! AAARRRGHH!” (LAUGHS). Now, Cain, give me the evil moral of the story! “Be careful watch you wish for!”
MARCEL: Watching all that stuff growing up, I don’t even remember referring to them as anthologies. I feel like that term is sort of a new conceit in the last ten years. I just remember seeing shit I liked on “Twilight Zone.” They worked perfectly for what they were, and I didn’t expect any more. I loved that shit.<
NACHO: Compared to US television, Spanish network is a piece of shit!
DREAD CENTRAL: But you had boobs, though, right?
NACHO: Not on television: We didn’t have boobs, we didn’t have “Twilight Zone.” But here I am, I don’t know—I survived! I remember being blown away by the ‘80s remake of ‘”Alfred Hitchcock Presents” on Spanish TV. I didn’t know it was a remake at the time. I was so impressed by the stories, and then later I found out they came from people like Roald Dahl. I loved the fact that the morals are there all the time. Those are not fantastical stories, but I love how perfectly crafted they are. They found a way to tell the perfect story, with the perfect assemblage of pieces, of really small pieces. I loved the fact that you could tell a story with so few elements.
Synopsis
A police chase after a deranged ice cream truck has captivated the attention of the greater Los Angeles area. Dozens of fame—obsessed teens flock to the streets with their video cameras and camera phones, hell—bent on capturing the next viral video. But there is something far more sinister occurring in the streets of L.A. than a simple police chase. A resounding effect is created onto all those obsessed with capturing salacious footage for no other purpose than to amuse or titillate. Soon the discovery becomes that they themselves are the stars of the next video, one where they face their own death.
Categorized:News
