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Jake West - 2009 (Part 3)
"Absolutely. I think that really, in fact, in any film that you do, the true art of film really comes into it in the editing room a lot of the time. That’s where you make the final decisions on things. That’s where you give it its shape and its timing. That’s the soul of a film, the editing. I think it’s one of the most important processes and a process that’s unique to film: the manipulation of time and space in vision and sound. It’s what make films unique and I think to ignore the power of that is foolish. “I love that process, I absolutely love editing. I couldn’t wait to actually get into the editing room. Also, as a director, it’s a pleasure because all of a sudden you’re in a room and the film is yours again. For that period, the film is yours and you can play around with it. You can do that and it’s great when it comes together in a way that you really want to see it come together. From what you’ve shot, seeing it evolve like that. That’s one of the big pleasures of film-making, I think." I understand you shot this film on the Red camera. "It was shot on the Red, yes." What advantage did that give you? "On Pumpkinhead we shot on 35mm and obviously I loved the aesthetic of it but it does mean that you’re always worried about not being able to shoot so much, especially when you’ve got a limited budget. It gets to the point where you have enough money that it makes no difference but on a two million pound budget it can make a difference. On a horror film where you have a lot of characters and you need to get a certain amount of coverage. Shooting film, we were looking at the costs of it and it was getting a bit too expensive. And it would have meant that we could only have shot with one camera as well. “The advantage of shooting with the Red - we were one of the first films to shoot with the Red because it was just becoming popular at that point; not a lot of people had used it. The producers were quite concerned about that because they hadn’t shot Red before so they were saying, ‘Are you sure we should be testing it?’ Because it was still in one of its beta builds when we were using it. What inspired my confidence in it was when we found Jeff Brown who was our Red guy. He was the guy we had on set who was going to be there if we had any problems. He’s an owner-operator, he had the kit but he’s one of the few people in the UK who’d been speaking with Red from the very beginning. He had one of the first cameras and he’d been updating it. Basically the guy’s a complete geek who knows everything about Red, so when something did go wrong it could instantly get addressed. “Whereas some producers who had had difficulties with the camera just didn’t have that person on set. The thought that they could solve things themselves if they had trouble - and you can’t, you need somebody who’s a real tech-head. So we had no problems with the Red camera at all because we had the right person there so if there were any potential issues it was just solved straight away. We had him there all the time and he was the guy doing all the data transfer at the end of the day. He set up a system where we had our room with computers and hard drives in it in arrays. We would shoot drives and he would be uploading footage during the day, everything was being checked. Which was brilliant because it means that as soon as you’ve finished your day’s shooting you can go and watch your rushes - at full spec! “Which is fantastic, it gives you a lot of confidence in what you’re shooting. The advantage of shooting onto hard drives means you can keep the cameras rolling and shoot as much as you want. The other advantage was it meant we could afford to have two cameras all the time on set, so I could shoot two cameras rather than one camera. Which once again gives you an advantage because when you get to the editing room you’ve got all that extra footage. I was reading an interview with John Woo the other day. A lot of people say, ‘Oh, John Woo’s style is amazing.’ He said: ‘I shoot with as many cameras as possible because I don’t know how I want to cut it until I go into the editing room. I’ll shoot with different cameras, all shooting at different speeds, and later on I’ll decide how I want to do it.’
“We shot the zombirds with high-speed lenses and we shot in 2.35:1 cinemascope. So we were shooting with exactly the same lenses we would have shot with if we were using 35mm film. The lenses were just beautiful. And shooting in the 2.35:1 ratio, I’ve always wanted to shoot in that ratio and Doghouse was perfect for it because we’ve got six or seven guys so you’ve got frames to fill with a lot of characters. You get these lovely shots of them all in frame at the same time. It’s really lovely to shoot in that aspect ratio." What sort of push is Sony putting behind this? There’s about a month to go and there’s not been a lot about it so far. "Well, obviously Sony made the decision to release it at the head of summer rather than waiting for an autumn slot because their opinion is that it will do better if it comes out quick. The downside of that is then, obviously I only finished the film on Friday. That means with the print deadlines and stuff, there’s no way they’re going to get that sorted. Because, as you know, print deadlines are two to three months ahead. That means they’re taking a risk on it. You’re not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like. I feel a bit disappointed in that sense but they have committed to a £6-700,000 P&A spend which means there will be a big print campaign and a big television campaign." Is it going on the sides of buses? "I don’t know. I’m waiting to find out what their campaign is. We’re having a screening of the film tomorrow and I think they’re going to talk about what that media campaign is then. I haven’t been really very involved in it because I’ve been doing the film! Literally we mixed the trailer last week as well, while we were doing the film, because that was running behind time as well. So trailers are now out in cinemas I believe. There’s been about 600 trailers gone out to cinemas around the country. I’m told it’s a 200-screen release, a proper nationwide release with a substantial TV and print campaign. “They are spending money on it so I’m assuming that people will know about the film. But obviously the internet and websites is the primary way of getting the word out. How effective that is in the time span we’ve got remains to be seen. Obviously I want to do everything I can to ensure that people hear about the film but obviously they do have their own PR team. Sony are using Vertigo to release the film independently in the UK because they handle a lot of their own independent releases. So Vertigo and Sony are the ones guiding that hand. I’m always worried about these things because I don’t like it when things feel as if they’re being rushed. To me, the film is finished and I’m very happy with the final result of the film."
"With these kinds of films, to a certain extent the DVD is always going to be the market where it’s expected to do better. If it does well at the cinema then that’s unusual because, as you know, most British films don’t do very well at the cinema. But because they’re going out on 200 screens and because of the cast we’ve got, there is a chance that we could make some money at the box office. But it would be very foolish of me to make any prediction on that because it could make no money at the box office and I’ll just end up looking like an idiot for making that prediction. Whatever I say won’t be correct. But if things go well then maybe it could do some business because of our cast. “Obviously, people have got to know that it’s there but once people start seeing the TV ads and things like that, all of a sudden people are going to start saying, ‘Hey, I saw your film on TV.’ A bit like when Noel Clarke spoke about it last year at Christmas. So I’m assuming that hopefully people are going to be interested in it because of our cast. Much more so than because of me. I’ll do as much as I can but I would imagine it’s Danny and Noel and Stephen who will catch people’s attention more than me because my fanbase is quite obvious. If you look on the web, it’s all over the horror websites, the horror guys all know about it. They’re not the ones we need to get the word out to, it’s getting it out to the mainstream which is important. “However, you could argue that perhaps sometimes with a campaign like Lesbian Vampire Killers, maybe they did too much and it actually pissed people off. Everyone knew about it months and months beforehand so when it finally came out they were fed up with it. At least with Doghouse they’ll go, ‘Oh, it’s a surprise, it’s a sleeper, it’s come from nowhere.’ Certainly it won’t give people time to get fed up with it. But I don’t know whether that’ going to work in our favour or not, mate!" Have you left it open at the end so that if this is a big hit there could be a Doghouse 2? "Indeed there could be. When we were writing the script, it was very much discussed between myself and Dan. There is so much mileage in this idea that absolutely there could be. We designed it and we have sketched out how it could be. But it works as a stand-alone film which is very important because we’re not banking on the fact that we’re ever going to make another Doghouse film. But the actual overarching idea behind it lends itself to being extended and also it lends itself to putting the boot on the other foot with the next film where things will mutate and the virus will start affecting men. “So you get to see the other side of the sexual politics played out as well. Which is something we thought would be a lot of fun if we wanted to do it. Obviously we need to see how Doghouse does because there’s no point otherwise. We’ve got the ideas for how we’d like to do it but that’s only ever going to see the light of day if Doghouse does well. I don’t want to get involved in developing a sequel to something that people don’t want to see. And I’m really hoping that they do! BIt would be great if people want to see more of it, but we’ll see."
"No. I’m going to Cannes because I’ve got duties with my Nucleus Films label, as you know, with Marc Morris, and we need to find a few more acquisitions. Also I could do with a bit of a break and I want to have a few meetings about some potential future projects that we’ve got. I’ve got two more with Dan Schaffer, a couple of scripts that are finished, They’re nothing to do with Doghouse. One is a satirical horror film, like American Psycho meets Clockwork Orange, called The Killdarlings which is very mad and fun. We’ve also got a film called Rollover which is what I call a revisionist action film. A very funny, quirky action movie but with the Jake West stylings in there. Those two projects we’ve got finished scripts on so we’d like to see if we can get them off the ground. “So I’m hoping to see how that will go but obviously we won’t quite know the lay of the land until we see how Doghouse does. Because people are only going to want to give me more money if Doghouse is a success. If it’s not, then I’ll go back to the drawing board. So I’m very excited about doing some more projects together with Dan Schaffer because we worked so well together on this film. We really clicked, we have a real simpatico thing going on. So it would be delightful if this would be the first of many, but like with all film projects, you never know what’s going to happen! “You’ve asked me about this in the past: what’s your next project. It never ends up being the one that I told you about! Therefore I don’t want to promise anyone. But these are things which we’re interested in doing and we do have a couple of finished scripts to go on. So if there is some heat off the back of Doghouse, we want to try and press one into production if we can." Last question. With this, a decently budgeted, named cast film going out widely in cinemas, 2.35:1 and all that... are you finally at the place where you want to be in terms of your career? "Ironically, it’s quite interesting: from that point of view, when you say it like that, it makes me realise that this will be regarded as my first proper film. So it’s almost like my debut movie. To the wider world, that is. Because obviously the only people who know about my films are people who are into strange cult movies. The rest of the world doesn’t know I’m a film-maker. So in a sense, this is what most people go through with their first film: a two-million pound film with some rising actors and an interesting concept. So in a sense, to the wider world, this is my debut! “But yes, absolutely. I feel very happy about this because I’m very happy with the script and with the development process and what we’ve got. I’m genuinely satisfied with the film. Obviously, with any movie you always want more time and more money and there’s still things that I could improve and do better on. Because, being realistic as a film-maker, you know that’s true. I think that with Doghouse, it’s a piece of work that I’m very, very proud of and I’m anxious to see how it goes down with the public. It may be that it connects with them and people really enjoy it or it could go the other way. You just can’t tell - but that’s part of the magic, isn’t it? “For some reason, films sometimes spark the public consciousness and people really get into it. If that was the case, that would be really wonderful. But I’ve never been in that position and I don’t know what that’s like. If not, it will just become another cult film so I’ll be back in the same place. But I do think I’ve made a better film and I hope that it does well financially and it means we can get a bit more money to do another interesting project. Because we are trying to do stuff which is original and different to what other people out there are doing. I think that’s what the film world needs, I think it needs some people who are going to do some stuff which maybe nobody else will do! And we’re your guys!” | ||
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You are an editor - so is the post on a film like this as much a part of the process as the actual shooting?
“So he doesn’t actually plan his edit because he doesn’t like storyboarding. And John Woo shoots with up to 17 cameras! Now, it’s interesting when you start hearing stuff like that. I really plan my stuff, plan it to be shot in a certain way. I’ve never had the privilege of thinking: what would happen if I shot with 17 cameras? Obviously his films are incredibly well edited and John Woo is a visionary director, I’m not taking that away from him. But to me, to shoot with two cameras was great! That meant we could shoot with two cameras all the time. We didn’t always use the second camera; sometimes when you’re shooting the intimate dialogue scenes you only need one person. But when we were shooting any action we shot with two cameras which was great.
Do you think it’s something that might do okay in the cinema and then pick up more on DVD?
Are you taking it to Cannes?