|
 |
Find interviews by: | ||
| | |
Paul Matthews (Part 2) Go back to Part 1 of this long interview
"Yes, exactly. It's very difficult. Everybody moans and groans about the British film industry, but there are an awful lot of films being made of one type or another. Most probably are financed from outside the UK. But with schemes like the Isle of Man's and what have you, hopefully we can make more. The pity is that we have to rely on such schemes to keep the industry alive. It's a shame the government can't do more or business can't do more or the financial institutions in some way help us develop the industry. Or redevelop it, put it back on its legs again." Would you like investment from government or industry? "I would prefer from financial institutions or business rather than government, because at the end of the day any industry needs to stand on its own two feet and be self-sufficient. It's no good relying on government handouts and then whinging about the fact that they've been taken away. It's much better, we'd be much stronger, if we had private investment or money from outside. We could then become self-sufficient as an industry rather than relying on the government. Because the Americans don't rely on the government. It's a billion-dollar business over there; it is the highest exporting business in America. And it's privately run by individuals who are in the business to make money. “The one thing I think that we lose sight of in Britain is that films are a commodity. It's no good making a film because you want to make a film. You have to make a film because you believe in it, but also that people want to watch. They pay to watch it, and then you can make another film. I think that's something we tend to lose sight of. Just because it's commercial doesn't mean it's nasty. It's not a dirty word to make a commercial movie. It's commercial movies that give you the opportunity to make the occasional movie that's more art-house or so on. That less people might well watch but it might have more social value. But people want to be entertained and we've got to make entertaining movies." Are you happy with the level of production you have right now or would you like to have a big success and step up into a big outfit? "It would be nice, yes, to do that. Obviously we'd like to make more movies. The problem with it is it takes such a long time to get the idea, the script, the paperwork, the finance in place and actually make it. It then takes you six months to put the film together and whilst you're putting the film together and all that, you can't be doing two projects at once. We turn out roughly two a year at the moment. We'd like to make that three a year, definitely. But that means more people, bigger overheads, and all those type of things. But we'll see how it develops."
"They do, yes. They churn them out as genre movies and they all work to a formula. To a certain degree Rampage works to the same formula. There are the things in Rampage that you would expect to see in a sci-fi alien movie. Obviously you have the alien, the girl who's in peril, the hero and all this type of thing. So yes, there is a formula but it's a recognisable formula. And actually subconsciously when people watch these movies, if that formula isn't in place then they're disappointed. It was the same when we made the westerns. There was a certain way of making a western that people expect to see in westerns even if historically that wasn't actually that correct. But that's what you expect to see so that's what you really have to show to a certain degree. “But it really depends; I don't know. There's nothing wrong with churning out movies one after the other because at the end of the day occasionally you churn out a good one. We do it slightly different to the Americans. We spend more money and we try to have greater quality like on Rampage. Because we can't compete head-to-head with them. They've got bigger studios, more money, more muscle. They know how to do that sort of stuff; that's not what we do. For us it's a year's worth of work to just get one movie finished." When you take Rampage to the AFM, what has it got that will make it stand out to buyers? "The problem is: you say about all the movies they churn out. When you take a movie like Rampage to the AFM it competes against all the low-budget videos that are around at the time. But it also competes against all the big-budget Hollywood blockbusters with Mel Gibson and who knows what starring in them. So you're competing on two levels. You're competing against the lower-budget videos and you're competing against the big-budget blockbusters that Hollywood turns out. “So what we try to do is make sure that we can hopefully compete against the bigger movies quality-wise in the photography. Technically, our film will be as technically good as any of them. From there we use the best actors and the best people we can in the UK to try and compete against the lower-budget stuff, although we have spent millions of pounds on making the film. So Rampage is a step above the low-budget end and we're going head-to-head with the big-budget, to a greater or lesser degree." Are you gradually increasing the budget on each successive film? "Yes, we are. Rampage was... what was Rampage, Liz?” Liz Matthews: “It depends whether you mean what it really cost or what we tell people it cost. What it really cost was £575,000.” "Yes, but that's if you discount all the deferments, but what was it in reality with all the deferments? LM: “About a million."
LM: “Oh sorry, that was Grim! This one is a million and a half pounds. This is a real million and a half pounds.” "Grim we shot in three weeks, this one we shot in four weeks, and the difference shows on the screen. It would have been nice to have five weeks or six weeks.” LM: “And when you add the deferments to Rampage it rounds up to two million. Which is really representative of what you get in terms of production value." Is Veronica in charge of the financial side of it? "Yes. But as I say, at the AFM we go head-to-head with all the big blockbusters from Hollywood as well as all the low-budget stuff. So we like to think we're a step above the low-budget end and hopefully try and compete with the bigger ones." Do you watch much of the stuff that's in direct competition with this? "We do and we don't, really.” LM: “It's basically what's feeding all the cable services. Apart from all the big blockbuster premiere events, all the other movies on Sky are directly in competition with us. And we're in competition with them in terms of getting a place on Sky or a place on a video release or whatever. The big big problem is getting the theatrical release, which is dire for every single filmmaker in this country, dire." Would you be looking at doing a limited theatrical release? LM: “On Rampage, yes."” There's certainly a market out there. "Oh, without a doubt. But it's just so difficult to get distribution in the UK. People like Virgin Cinemas, they're a British company, they've taken over the cinema chains. You would have thought they could occasionally put out a British movie, wouldn't you?"
"The next film we've got in development is a family movie. It's a sci-fi again, but it's a family orientated movie. A little bit along the lines of ET but not quite. It's about a family from America who inherit a house with a goldmine. When they uncover the goldmine, they find that there’s some aliens trapped in the goldmine. And all the folklore and old wives' tales that have been built up in the area - things like fairies and pixies and hauntings and changelings and what have you - are all down to the aliens. Who actually caused the problem because they're trying to get free. Then on Christmas Eve, the family release the aliens, and they all fly off into the wild blue yonder." [This is what eventually became The Fairy King of Ar - MJS] Is the recurring Christmas theme profitable? "It is, yes, because family movies at the moment are doing quite well. But also if you put a Christmas feel to it, then it's a movie you can sell every year. Every Christmas, all over the world, there's a two/three/four week period where TV stations put out family orientated movies. So if you've got a good solid, family movie, and it's got a Christmas feel to it, then you can do quite well, because you can resell it and resell it. Whereas a normal movie, they might put it out every three, four, five years." Are you one of these companies that has dozens of things in development, or do you just take it one at a time? "We have dozens of things in development. We have dozens of ideas sent to us by people and sometimes it's very difficult because we haven't got the time to look at everything and take everything on board. But we tend to keep it to our own ideas and one or two ideas that we really like, that we'll try and develop further. We've got half a dozen ideas that carry through to the next couple of years." Would you ever adapt stuff? "I don't like adapting stuff, no. We adapted the westerns from some books written by JT Edson, which was okay. I quite enjoyed that because I'm a western fan. So it was great to do some westerns. But I find it harder to adapt stuff than just to get an idea and write a script and get on with it, basically. The trouble is, when you adapt books everybody who read the book has their own preconceived idea of what it looks like. The imagination's this big and the television or cinema's that big. So you can never actually - or rarely - do it in terms of what people expect." Do you shoot a cinema ratio or a TV ratio? "A film like Rampage we shot for cinema. But making sure at the same time that it'll be okay for TV." What about the music? "The music is something we're still working on. I haven't quite decided yet." Do you tend to go for library music? "It depends because each film's different. Something like The Proposition has got a different feel to something like Rampage. Something like Grim again is different as well. So really we've got to find the right composer to give the film the correct feel. It's so important that you get the music right, just because it sets the mood and it carries a lot of the emotions in the film. So yes, it's difficult. I'm talking to a couple at the moment, but we haven't made up our minds yet."
"That was designed by the Costume Designer. That was Ffyonne. She did a great job, actually. She designed Kadamba's costume which sort of fits with the alien's colouring and what have you, which is very good. It's a bit Barbarella really but that's okay because that's the type of movie it is for obvious reasons. She designed all the other costumes to fit in with an American feel. She got the American police uniforms and all that sort of stuff. So Ffyonne did really well." I see you've got Species and Alien3 there on the shelf. Are you studying them for reference or trying to make sure you don't copy them too closely? "Not really. Peter's a member of a video club and he gets four films a month. That's just part of his collection. The other thing is, when we're developing this or when I'm going to be directing, I quite like to watch a couple of monster sci-fi movies, just to get a feel for how you could do it. Or how I could do it. Not exactly copy, but just to get a feel for the genre." Obviously the special effects side is a lot more intensive here than on the others. "Jim Francis was the Head of Special Effects, a company called Lightforce. They were with us for the four weeks and they did a great job. It takes a lot of time to set some of their stuff up. But they did really well. The other side of special effects is the digital effects which we had to work on. A company called PremierVision are going to be doing that for us, and they did the effects on Grim as well." Do you prefer in-camera effects or post-production stuff? "I prefer to do it on the day. My problem with digital effects is: if you do it on the day and it works, everything goes great and you've got it. If you do it digitally and you shoot with the thought of putting a digital effect on something, that's great. But if the digital effect doesn't work, then you haven't got anything. So it's very difficult. I don't like that element of not having it after you've spent all that time and effort doing it. And I don't quite trust computers anyway. I'm not a computer boffin at all. I never use them. I know they can do amazing things. We do film it with the digital effects in mind, obviously, but I just don't like that element of not being in control, of what could go wrong." Are you going to use them to distort the alien POV shots? "Well, we did that last time on Grim. But what we did this time was we created our own camera filter. We got a distorted piece of glass and painted some veins on it and what have you, put a blue gel over. So that we actually created our own physical filter to shoot through which gives us the alien's POV. Which is great because now it's on film. I don't have to digitise anything, I don't have to create a computer image and I don't have to pay a lot of money to have it put back to film afterwards. So it worked really well. And it was very simple and easy to do. That's an instance where I think it was better to do that than create the digital effect afterwards. Because there's a lot of cost involved in digital effects.” Official website: www.PeakViewing.co.uk Go back to Part 1 of this long interview where Paul Matthews discusses how PeakViewing was set up, how it is run and the casting and production of Rampage. | ||
| | |
It must be a bit galling that most people don't even know that there is a British film industry?
In America monster movies are churned out and many of them are pretty terrible.
And how does that compare with 
What else do you have in development?
Who designed Kadamba's costume?