Opening this Friday is âThe Unbornâ and itâs written and directed by David Goyer (âBlade: Trinityâ, âThe Invisibleâ, co writer of âThe Dark Knightâ). The movie is a supernatural thriller that follows a young woman pulled into a world of nightmares when a demonic spirit haunts her and threatens everyone she loves. Odette Yustman ("Cloverfield") stars as the woman and Cam Gigandet (Twilight) plays her boyfriend.
Hereâs the synopsis:
Sometimes the soul of a dead person has been so tainted with evil that it is denied entrance to heaven. It must endlessly wander the borderlands between worlds, desperately searching for a new body to inhabit.
And sometimes it actually succeeds.
Casey Beldon (Odette Yustman) hated her mother for leaving her as a child. But when inexplicable things start to happen, Casey begins to understand why she left. Plagued by merciless dreams and a tortured ghost that haunts her waking hours, she must turn to the only spiritual advisor, Sendak (Gary Oldman), who can make it stop.
With Sendakâs help, Casey uncovers the source of a family curse dating back to Nazi Germanyâa creature with the ability to inhabit anyone or anything that is getting stronger with each possession. With the curse unleashed, her only chance at survival is to shut a doorway from beyond our world that has been pried open by someone who was never born.
Anyhow, the other day I posted my exclusive video interview with writer/director David Goyer and now itâs time to post the roundtable interview I participated in. If you donât know, a roundtable interview is where a group of journalists sit around a table and take turns asking questions.
Q: Why did you turn down directing this so many times?
David: Well, first of all I was maybe going to direct another film instead, so there was that. And then I didnât know, Iâd never done a horror film before, so I didnât know if I was ready to do a horror film, but then we started talking about someone else directing it and I didnât really want someone else to do it so then I said, âScrew it, Iâll do it.â
Q: What was the biggest surprise directing a horror film?
David: I think the biggest surprise is just â I think directing a horror film is sort of a lot like directing a comedy, which is thereâs not really a formula for whatâs funny or whatâs scary, there are these kind of innate rhythms and you just have to find them. I mean, I know what scares me. Itâs not particularly scary when youâre doing it on the set because youâve got a hundred people around you and you know whatâs coming obviously, so itâs not until you get into the editing room that you can decide whether or not itâs scary. But itâs really not until you test it, we tested this film more than any film Iâve been involved in before. Itâs there in black and white, they scream or they donât scream. And then you just modulate it and hopefully you get more screams the more you go along.
Q: Can you talk about the genesis of the idea, there are about three different things in the film that I donât think Iâve seen before in horror movies.
David: Is that good?
Q: It is good, Nazis â
David: No, come on, youâve seen Nazis.
Q: But the blued-eyed thing, and the twin thing.
David: There were twins in The Shining.
Q: Thatâs true, okay so itâs not original.
David: You havenât seen a dog with an upside down head before I hope. The genesis was I was in
Q: Is there a pro-life metaphor in there somewhere?
David: No, no, I mean, pro-life for a demon baby? No.
Q: Life begins at demonic possession.
David: I guess.
Q: Was there an earthquake on that set or not?
David: Yeah there was. No, no, no, itâs absolutely true, we were filming the exorcism, it was bitterly cold, it was the dead of winter in
Q: And how did everybody react?
David: Well, we had wind machines and things in the room already, and we had these big chandeliers that were on monofilaments, so everybody thought at first â I mean, it was actually happening while we were filming it, so everyone thought, âOh, itâs just special effects.â But then more stuff started falling and everybody realized â and then the next night we had a tornado warning, we had tornados, and we had to evacuate the set. So that was pretty fun.
Q: How far have you come as a director?
David: Oh, a lot, I mean, I think most people when they start donât really know what theyâre doing, and God knows I learned a lot on Blade, but I know that for me at least, this is the first time I was kind of able to cut in my head and say, âNo, I donât need that shot, I need that shot,â and the movie turned out â I storyboarded a lot of the film, but it turned out very similar to what I had boarded and what I had [envisioned]. I donât know, I remember that fourth script I wrote was Blade, and that was the first time I felt like oh I really as a writer am on a roll now, and this is the fourth thing I directed and I just felt like, oh Iâm really getting the hang of it now.
Q: Can you talk a little about the collaborative process with your cinematographer and the visual side of the film? The camerawork in the opening is very nice.
David: Oh thank you. Well, obviously Iâm friends with Chris Nolan, and he was encouraging me to shoot anamorphic , which is the format that he shoots all of his movies in, and itâs a format that I had never worked in before, even as a writer, well with the exception of Batman Begins. And anamorphic is a â I also think I would not have shot with anamorphic if it had been my first film directing because you need a bit more technical expertise when youâre shooting with it, but I picked a DP that had shot anamorphic before, and we just spent a lot of time in the locations talking it over. I find at least for me that the films that are scariest are the ones that feel a bit more realistic, so we try not to have a lot of crazy, a lot of long takes, a lot of â where the camera movements that draw attention to themselves and things like that, but hopefully at least from the beginning frame itâs kind of creepy with that frozen river as youâre going down and things like that.
Q: The whole flashback to the concentration camp in sepia was really well done
David: Thank you.
Q: It looked like a high production value
David: Yeah, Iâm really proud of it, we made the movie for $20 million and I think it looks way bigger. Iâm very proud of the production value.
Q: What I really noticed was the sound, as a director do you go through the scenes looking for the right places for the sound or do you put them in later?
David: Obviously some you think youâll have a bang or something like that in, but sound is â itâs not really that much of a secret, but scary movies probably half of it is the sound, so you spend a long time with sound and you wrestle with the sound, and you wrestle with â interestingly enough when youâre previewing a film youâve only got temp sounds and you donât have foley and things like that, so you have a lot more music in it, and then as they start to build the sound design and the soundtrack, you find yourself pulling music cues out when youâre on the final mix, and so like a lot of the scenes when she hears the tapping in the mirror and stuff like that, those used to have music in them, but I think they become scarier with just the silence. I really like the sequence at the beginning of the film where she hear something in the baby monitor, and then sheâs sort of looking up in the bottom of the stairs and I just like â itâs very quiet and you just kind of hear the creaking of the stairs.
Q: Do you have concept for the sound design as you start the movie, or is it something that evolves in the process of postproduction.
David: Usually it evolves in the process of postproduction. I think with a movie like this I told my sound designers, and Iâve worked with them before, is we really have a latitude to be non-literal, so that the visual style is fairly literal, or fairly naturalistic, but the sound design wasnât literal at all. I donât know if youâll notice but we hit various things that donât make any sound like when sheâs walking that kind of haunted film, anytime the lens would flare we would have this kind of slightly grating high pitched sound, anytime the light would happen or things like that, which was just fun to bring sounds to things like that, because it obviously affects people in an unconscious way.
Q: Can you talk about casting Jane Alexander.
David: Well, I knew that I wanted a really great actress to play Sophie, itâs sort of her being the explainer role, and if we didnât have a great actress â I knew we wanted to have someone doing a Hungarian accent, and so they had to be damn good, and I think that Jane Alexander is one of the best actresses around. She was thrilled to do the part, it was really exciting. In fact, we shot with her first, we shot her scenes the first three days and she was a trooper, it was 15 degrees in that location, no heat, and sheâs running around in that scene â because I called her up the day before and said, âHow would you feel about doing all that stuff barefoot?â And she said, âOh, okay.â Sheâs in her sixties and sheâs running around barefoot, and it was cold. We were wearing long underwear and all sorts of things.
Q: How much better prepared do you feel now to do your next film?
David: A lot, a lot more, I mean, this is a film that I felt I prepared well for and we didnât encounter any big surprises, it went fairly smoothly so Iâm excited to dive into another one.
Q: Will you talk briefly about casting Odette and
David: Well, we saw a lot of young actors, we werenât specifically trying to find people that were new per se, we saw over a hundred actresses for Casey, and Odette was just far and above the best one that came in. Sheâs a really great actress, sheâs a fresh face, I think sheâs got a very exotic beauty to her, I think the camera loves her and audiences find her sympathetic, so it was pretty unanimous when she did her audition everyone wanted her.
Q: What scene was it she auditioned with?
David: Oh Lord, I donât remember. She did a couple of scenes, but I will tell you, all the women we made them scream at the end it. And my point was itâs not specifically that you have to be a good screamer, but I needed to know that the actress would go there, so if youâre not willing to scream in front of the three of us, youâre not going to be willing to do that in front of two hundred crew members. And in terms of
Q: And you didnât warn Odette that she would have stuff stuck in her eye?
David: No, I would spring that on her, I used to spring that on her at the last minute. In fact, that particular day we were in an ophthalmologistâs lab and the ophthalmologist was our tech advisor on the day, and I said, âIs there anything really uncomfortable we can do to her?â He said, âWell, I can put this speculum thing in her eye,â and so right before we rolled I said, âYou know honey, weâre just going to do this little thing, itâs fine, and weâre rolling,â and sheâs like, âWhat, what, what are you doing?â And I said, âItâs okay weâre just going to do one take and Iâll do it too.â And then we did eight takes and then we ran out of time.
Q: And did you do it?
David: No, I didnât do it.
Q: That reaction seemed pretty authentic.
David: Oh no, it was, she was intensely uncomfortable, and she was uncomfortable with the potato bugs.
Q: That wasnât CGI?
David: There were CGI bugs but there were about 500 real ones and they were all over her. And in fact, we finished filming and we were resetting and stopped filming for about 15 minutes, and she started screaming all of a sudden because one of them was in her bra. And she was like, âGet it off me, get it off me.â She started tearing off her clothes.
Q: You and Jonah might have a real chance of a screenwriting nomination this year for The Dark Knight, have you wrapped your head around that?
David: No, I donât think any of us could have imagined the reaction, the reception that The Dark Knight had, we thought it would do well with â it did far and beyond anything anyone expected. Iâm enormously proud of my small contribution to the film, and what can I say? But yeah, you canât even wrap your head around that.
Q: There must be discussions about a third one
David: Maybe. If there were I wouldnât tell you.
Q: Can you give us an update on your next projects, directing and writing?
David: The next project directing-wise is I co-wrote a pilot for ABC called Flash Forward with Brannon Braga, Iâll be directing that in February and we just cast Joseph Fiennes and John Cho from Harold and Kumar, and Courtney Vance, and Jack Davenport, a couple of other guys. So weâll be shooting that in February and I think itâs a design for ABC at least as meant to be a companion to Lost. So weâll be shooting that in
Q: Do you have an actor in mind for that?
David: I do, but I donât want to say because weâre just in the midst of talking with this person.
Q: Is that why you put a clip of The Invisible Man in this?
David: Yes, it was, it was, just as a little fun homage, or maybe hopeful homage, I donât know.
Q: What was the hardest thing for you to shoot in this and that surprised you that it was that hard?
David: The scene with the dog and the upside down head. We shot that scene three times. The first time we shot it, the dog wouldnât do what it was told, Gary Oldman was saying (in an excellent Oldman impression), âDavid, how long are we going to be here,â And finally I just said, âScrew it, just take the dog out, weâll shoot it without the dog.â And then we came back to L.A. and we shot another dog, and that didnât work, the dog didnât do what it was supposed to, so we shot it a third time and then that worked. But I think it looks cool.
Q: That looked like the Budweiser dog
David: It is, Bud McKenzie itâs a bull terrier. Itâs actually the Target dog. It is the real Target dog.
Q: Any updates on Magneto?
David: Magneto, theyâre just waiting to see what happens with Wolverine, it was like sort of â they were deciding whether or not to do that one, Wolverine or Magneto first, and they decided to go with Wolverine, so I decided to do Unborn, and now they still want to make it and theyâre hoping Wolverine will be a big hit and that will open the way for Magneto.
Q: Could The Invisible Man possibly conflict with that?
David: Yeah, it could, but those are a rich manâs problems; not me specifically.
Q: What might be on the DVD, any extended footage deleted scenes?
David: There are a couple of deleted scenes, thereâs not like any amazing, itâs not like Jacobâs Ladder where there were just total, incredible sequences and scenes that didnât make it into the movie. Thereâs not that much â you know, thereâs going to be an extended version, itâs a couple of minutes longer, there are four or five deleted scenes that are kind of interesting.
Q: Iâm interested because the producers where in here saying they had to scale back for PG-13
David: Shockingly we did not have to scale back very much. We intended it to be PG-13 and so when they say scale back thereâs one shot where that womanâs back breaks, there was a third shot, so that was cut out, there was the shot where the boy in the dream reaches into the girlâs stomach which we had to trim eight frames, stuff like that. It was very minor. No scenes, no characters, nothing like that.
Q: So nothing your threw away as bait for the MPAA?
David: No. Well, my editor had also cut The Grudge, and Emily Rose, and so when I was shooting I relied on him a lot to say what do you think we can get away with and what canât we? I mean, I think we were riding the bleeding edge of PG-13, but I think it worked.
Q: How did the name Jumby come to you?
David: I just made it up and then freakishly I found out that Jumby is actually like Guianese for ghost or spirit of something like that.