Kevin Doherty director of horrror, bloody film "LIGHTS CAMERA BLOOD!" gave me the chance to have a nice talk and he could tell me his thoughts about the genre since his own prspective and also talk about his film and his new projects.
EFF: Hi Kevin a pleasure talk to you. How and when did born your
love to make films?
KD: It was when I went to see
Star Wars back in the fall of 1977. I
had been to the movie theater with my dad and to the drive-inn before Star Wars
- I remember experiencing the big screen by seeing Peter Seller’s Pink Panther
movies and some Disney flicks - but it was Star Wars that absolutely blew me
away. It wasn’t just a movie to me. It was an experience. Like a carnival ride. It was an experience I’ll never forget. I remember everything of that day. What I wore, who I went with, where it was
playing, brushing my teeth that morning…everything. After I’d seen the movie, I felt exhilarated. I think the seed was planted on that
day. I wanted to move people the same
way the makers of that film moved me.
EFF: You are from Canada, right?
What city are you from? Tell us a little about your life there, how it is?
KD: I'm from Winnipeg, Manitoba
in Canada. It's a prairie town smack-dab in the middle of North America. We're
a smaller city but have a thriving and very active art community. Our Fringe
Theater Festival is the second largest in all of Canada. Our winters a snowy
and cold, summers are bright and hot, autumn’s are beautiful and Christmas is
very pretty here. We love our professional ice hockey and Canadian Football
teams too.
EFF: Now speaking about your
films, you have made three feature lengths until now, and the last one is
"lights Camera Blood", why you decided give it life and how the
idea it came to you?
KD: I was in a serious Herschell
Gordon Lewis phase (whom we sadly lost a few months back) several years ago and
the idea struck me that he probably should have made a film like Lights Camera
BLOOD! But probably wouldn't so I decided to do it. It's definitely a tribute
to his gore-exploitation films of the 60's and 70's.
EFF: Now, talking about the film
screening, how did it go? How the audience assimilated your film?
KD: After I finished the film I mailed DVD's
out to several horror film review websites and was delighted that almost all of
them reacted favorably to the film. There were a few that didn't "get
it" but if you're not familiar with "bad" splatter films of the
60's and 70's you'll miss the point and most likely be a little disappointed..
BUY IT: AMAZON
EFF: Are you a horror fan? What
films you like the most and also what directors?
KD: I LOVE the horror genre. I really like all
film genres (well, maybe not romantic comedies), but really prefer getting
thrilled and scared. The very first horror film I ever saw at the theater was
Jaws - I believe it was the re-release in '78 and I was just a young kid. That
scene of Quint getting munched on and Alex Kintner being mauled in the water
absolutely terrified me. I also vividly remember watching televised
"censored" versions of Halloween and The Omen as well around the same
time period and really digging those but I think what really hooked me on
horror in general was the Salem's Lot TV mini-series and the release of John
Badham's Dracula - which I wasn't allowed to see but my best friend's mother
took him and he told me all about the film and the Dracula story. We both
discovered Famous Monster of Filmland magazines at that time and we became
obsessed with anything horror. The most frightening experience I ever had at
the movies was when my dad took me and a bunch of my friends to see The
Changeling at the theater for my 10th birthday. My parents really tried to convince
me to go and see that Peter Sellers movie Being There instead but I was
hell-bent on The Changeling and could not be swayed so we went. I remember
taking a paperclip or something sharp and poking a little hole in the bottom of
my drink cup after it was empty and peering through it during the really scary
bits. Some of my friend's parent's were not very impressed that we went to a
horror movie. As for directors that I like, I'd have to go with John Carpenter,
M Night Shyamalan, Spielberg's early stuff and I love Rod Serling's work -
though he was a writer I have to list him as a definite influence.
EFF: Seeing you filmography you
have made three films bottled in three different genres, what kind of film you
like to direct now having these experiences?
KD: Yes, I have tried comedy,
dramedy and horror, but my main love is horror for sure. So much more
challenging. And it's way cooler.
EFF: Your film looked to me like a giallo film,
talking about some cameras shots, did you take some of that too?
KD: Thanks for that. I also love giallo films
but hadn't had the intent to mimic the style of one with Lights Camera BLOOD,
but perhaps due to the nostalgic feel of it, maybe it lends that impression,
which flatters me!
EFF: If you could directing a
horror remake film, what would it be and why?
KD: A remake? Wow, I never ever thought about
that. I have so many of my own ideas brewing in my head that I'd really much
rather do something original, but if I were given a contract with hefty pay and
had to choose...I'd like to take a stab at - man! Sorry I can't think of
one!
EEA: can we consider this film as
a micro budget film? How was whole process for create it? Cast, location,
funding, equipments, share it with us.
KD: Micro budget for sure. On the
DVD and BluRay there's a commentary that I do that actually lists all and each
and every one of the expenses I had during the making of the film which isn't
much. The locations and talent was all free as was all the equipment. I had to
build three different sets in my garage so most of the cost I incurred was
materials for construction of the sets and the cost of the tapes I recorded on.
Oh yeah, and the gore effects cost a bit. Actually a whole lot of bit. Probably
the most costliest expense of the whole film. I probably spent about $400 CDN
on the gore.EFF: What equipments did you use? Cameras, edition softwares, everything.
KD: We used a Sony HDR High
Definition camera and filled up about 17 Digital Video tapes at 1 hour each -
so I had about 17 hours of film to edit with. Lot of the stuff we shot only
took about 3 or 4 takes. It was all cut on Final Cut Pro.
EFF: What would you say for those
newbie filmmaker who are undecided to how shoot their first film?
KD: For those just starting out I
highly recommend making a short film first. It's a great way to get a small
taste of the process and to gain some experience on a smaller scale. It exposes
you to everything you'll need to know about from what kind of time commitments
it's gonna take out of your life, equipment and cast/crew requirements,
securing locations, props, wardrobe, how much money it's all gonna cost and the
biggest one of all - developing a really thick skin. Then when you wanna take
on a feature, you may hafta triple all that - depending on the magnitude of the
project. Oh and discipline. You'll need a lot of that.
EFF: Horror films, what is the
best sub-genre for you? Slasher, gore, creature, supernatural, giallo, etc?
KD: I don't really have a
specific horror sub-genre preference...I love films like The Sixth Sense, The
Omen, The Blair Witch Project, Creepshow, The Ring, Halloween, Carpenter's The
Thing, The Changeling, C.H.U.D., Night of the Living Dead, so as you can tell, it's really very
scattered.
EFF: How is the indie production
for micro and low budgets films, does exists guarantees where to shows your
works in Canada?
KD: Everyone here in Canada, as I am sure
filmmakers in all parts of the globe, are all making micro-budget films. The
technology is available to everyone and anyone. And for nothing. As for Film
Festivals to showcase works here in Canada, there are several! As I know
there are in other parts of the globe.
EFF: Tell us anecdotes from your
films, good ones and bad one, at least one of each.
KD: Good and Bad, eh? Ok I'm
going to ramble on here so I apologize in advance but you asked! Here's the the
best, or most memorable experience that I had. For my short film
"Something for Santa", we shot in my own, hand-crafted living room
set I’d built in a tire warehouse. It was awesome and worked almost perfectly.
It was the first set I ever built and I was very proud. The worse…well, there
were two. Shooting night scene exteriors in the small town of Lorette in
Manitoba (a 45 minute drive from our city) for my feature length film
"Black Bridge" back in 2002 and having dozens and dozens of volunteer
extras, actors and crew drive up from Winnipeg, only to have rainy weather all
night. This happened almost every night
we filmed out in Lorette which was six nights in a row. We filmed in Lorette because I knew a
homeowner out there who had a massive bush/forest area that I needed for a
scene and they allowed me to use their electricity! What should have been
accomplished in two nights lasted six.
We had entire nights wiped right out without one frame of film
shot. People became enraged and dropped
out of the project. Getting extras to
come out was nearly impossible after that first night. It was a nightmarish experience that I have
learned a great deal from. The other was
a disastrous incident that occurred during the same film shoot on "Black
Bridge" which happened in September of '02. It was a Friday night. Up to that point, I had almost 20 one-hour
tapes full of footage. We'd been
shooting all summer long from June right up until that point and had some
priceless material. That night, I had a
large crowd of crew, actors and extras making the dreaded trek back out to
"rainy" Lorette. Everyone made
it out except for my cameraman who was mysteriously absent the entire
evening. He had made no attempts to
contact anyone and wasn't answering our calls to his home, so I had to shoot
everything myself (he'd left the camera gear with me from the previous
shoot). We got some good stuff. In fact, it was the best night of the whole
bush party scene, but would turn out to be the worst in a different way. Also it was the only night we did not
encounter rainy weather. It was quite
chilly however, but at least no mosquitoes.
We went out the next night to
shoot some more. Again--no luck of
contacting the cameraman. He was nowhere
to be found and was not returning phone calls.
So we went out to Lorette again and did some more shooting, this time it
rained off and on, but we got it done anyway.
Man, those nights out there were frustrating, exhausting and very late.
The next day, on Sunday, I again tried calling
my cameraman but again with no success.
I became quite worried and puzzled.
I called my cameraman's friend, (My brother, in fact! Can you believe it! What a small world!) to ask him what had
become of him, or whether he'd heard anything from him lately. It was my bro who informed me of the
dreaded news that my cameraman was so reluctant (and afraid) to tell me. Apparently, on the Friday, my cameraman
headed out to the shoot at seven o'clock.
He stopped at an ATM to get some money.
Upon the return to his car he was approached by a couple of punks. They'd asked him for a cigarette.
When he declined, they asked to see what was in the bag he was
carrying. They tugged on it, my
cameraman tried to wrench it back, but they struck him several times in the
ribs and knocked him to the ground and made off with his back pack. In his back pack were most of the master
tapes of the film. An entire's summer
work of shooting gone just like that. I was devastated. If there ever was a time that I could have
bawled as an adult, it was that Sunday afternoon. I felt faint and sick. Thinking of everyone's effort, time and the
money that had been sunk into the project up to that point was crushing and heart
wrenching. He felt equally as horrible
if not more so. He felt so bad about it,
he couldn't muster the nerve to break the news to all of us. He'd spent the weekend trying to figure out
how to let us know. I don't think my
brother enjoyed being the one to tell me.
My cameraman would never really recover from the incident. We had to re-shoot almost everything
throughout the winter months (luckily, the footage missing was mostly
interiors). My cameraman never came back
out after that. I don't believe he fully
recovered from it. From then on in, I
was to shoot and re-shoot all by myself.
I had serious notions about just
cancelling the entire production and moving on with something else. Everyone involved felt awful about it. We all felt spent, worn out and concerned
about taking more time off work. The
thought of doing all that shooting again was unimaginable. I had to coax a couple of actors to re-do it
and they finally came around and agreed to go through it all again. Eventually, after the shock wore off, cooler
heads prevailed. Everyone believed in
what they were doing, and amazingly enough, we did it. In fact, it was a blessing in disguise. The re-shot footage turned out better than
what we'd done before (the actors were so familiar by then with the story and
their characters, everything seemed natural).
EFF: What is new in your career? What can we expect in the future?
KEVIN DOHERTY'S | Twitter | Imdb | Webpage | Youtube
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