CraveOnline: Where did you hide the cuts? I knew you were because I know how filmmaking works, but I was trying to spot them.
Derek Lee: So in the case of the SWAT scene again, that scene which is about four minutes, we think there’s 26-27 separate shots in there. Basically, you can go through it and every time there’s a fast camera movement, it’s all in the wipe. It’s cut, wipe, cut, wipe. Originally when we started making this movie, we tried to do multiple gags in the same shot and it just became nightmarish, so we’re like no, just cut it on the wipe and hide all the devils in those wipes.
Was the movie Chronicle a concern?
Clif Prowse: We actually started this movie before Chronicle came out and we had a cut and then I remember our editor sending us a trailer for Chronicle and we’re like, “Oh my God, they scooped our idea.” But, it actually has also worked to our advantage because the movie Chronicle was very successful and people loved it so when people see our movie, they’ve been excited to see it because they’re like, “Oh, this is kind of Chronicle-esque.”
Derek Lee: Found footage was pretty quiet for a while and then Chronicle came out right when we were trying to sell talking to companies about our film. Because of that success, I think they opened doors for us, not closed them. Having said that, to answer your question directly, we lost a specific scene that we loved. I won’t talk about which one but we lost one because of its similarity.
Even at the time you were developing Afflicted, when you’re starting to conceive of a found footage movie, do you have to step it up because there’s already been so many?
Clif Prowse: What we wanted to do specifically was that this isn’t found footage. It’s not a camera and a tape that basically falls down and is just sort of presented as is. It’s an edited piece and it’s specifically edited. At the beginning, you can tell it’s edited by the filmmaker character but what we wanted to do was have the film itself [seem like] it was edited with a very specific purpose by the characters in the movie and that’s also what I think is different about it. It’s not found. It’s edited for a very specific purpose by the characters.
Derek Lee: It’s a good line.
We might have to adjust the descriptor. It’s still footage. It’s first person footage but it’s not found. It’s professionally constructed.
Clif Prowse: Mm-hmm.
Is this a classic two hander between Derek and Cliff?
Derek Lee: For sure. Again, the easiest thing to do was to base it on who we were in real life and that history in the movie is essentially our history in real life as well. Having said that, it’s actually quite a challenge to play a hyper real version of yourself because I know who I am when I’m having a burger. I don’t really know who I am when I’m trying to dodge cops and punch through rocks. That’s not something you can draw on.
With breaking the rocks and going back to the idea that they have some fun with this, a lot of horror movies are losing that fun element because they want to be so intense. It reminded me of Poltergeist where at the beginning, these things are kind of fun. She’s letting her kid slide across the floor. Were you thinking about bringing a little bit of fun back to horror?
Derek Lee: I think it’s a result of having a film we wanted to evolve from act to act. So in the beginning, when it’s the sort of MTV “Departures” style travel show and you just wanted to get to know the characters that you empathize with them enough so when the shit goes wrong in the end, you care about the characters but by the middle frame, it’s got to start feeling more body horror, more like The Fly. Then in the third act, it’s this psychological, desperate action chase sequence almost. So through that evolution, we tried to keep the fun for as long as we could and actually I think for the most part, at the point in which the film can no longer be comedic, we actually lamented that. We were like, “Oh, man, it’d be great to get a little bit of levity throughout” because we know the value of contrasting really, really dark moments with really, really light moments so that the dark moments feel that much darker.
Who did the VFX for Afflicted?
Derek Lee: Originally Image Engine. They were very, very good to us and came on the project really, really early and essentially gave us six shots to play with. Once CBS got on board, we had a little bit more freedom to expand, to get a few more shots.
Clif Prowse: The other companies were Encore, Leviathan.
So these were professional houses, not homemade.
Clif Prowse: No, the visual effects were not homemade.
Derek Lee: And at that time we were extremely, extremely indie. We hadn’t been picked up, we hadn’t talked to anybody so for someone like Image Engine who had done District 9, huge projects, for them to donate their time in between cycles of huge projects to come on board and help us was a huge boon for first time filmmakers.
Clif Prowse: We knew that we would have those six shots. In documentary style stuff you can get away with having some stuff offscreen and implied but we knew we needed very specific, iconic visuals that we wanted that would really hammer stuff home. We had the rock break, lifting the car, the scooter and the shotgun. So all those things, the shotgun in particular is probably the most iconic image in the movie.
Derek Lee: Some poor guy passed out last night at that shot.
Clif Prowse: Did you hear about that?
I did not hear that someone passed out.
Clif Prowse: Yeah, they had to walk out of the screening and passed out.
So he got up and left but didn’t make it?
Clif Prowse: Yeah.
Derek Lee: Yeah, and then somebody tweet a photo of the poor guy.
Clif Prowse: You know what, as long as the guy’s okay…
No, use that phone to call someone to help him.
Clif Prowse: As long as he’s okay, apparently he was okay. He kind of stumbled out, grabbed ahold, sat down, calmed down but as long as the guy’s okay, that is a story that makes you think man, we did our jobs.
Derek Lee: We must’ve done something.
Did you shoot the whole movie in Europe?
Clif Prowse: We shot in Cinque Terre, Italy. That was all the Italian stuff and that was where the bulk of shooting was, and then we did go to Paris and Barcelona. That was the luxury afforded to us by being able to shoot with a very small crew. If you were shooting a conventional movie, you’d need so much more money to do that, but if you’re shooting a documentary style movie, everything was traveling with us in backpacks and small suitcases so we could be very mobile. We could shoot in train stations and on trains and in public places.
Derek Lee: Paris was harder than, say, rural Italy. Rural Italy, they weren’t jaded. They were excited to have us so putting up a 110 foot crane in the middle of a beautiful piazza was less of an issue, far less costly. Paris was prohibitively costly so we needed to limit just how much we were doing there. Barcelona was just fun.
Clif Prowse: Barcelona’s great. They embrace filmmaking there.
Derek Lee: We love Paris too but it’s not as easy.
What will your next film be?
Clif Prowse: We really admire filmmakers like Danny Boyle, people who can make very different movies across a variety of genres. For us, this movie was a lot of fun and in the concept obviously is the documentary style, but we’d like to do something a large departure visually. A lot of our short films are action based and highly visually stylized and that’s kind of where we want to go to next, so that when you see, “Oh, these guys directed Afflicted and they made this movie, wow, I can’t believe it’s the same two guys that made this movie.” So we’re working on a couple things. One is this dark international action thriller that takes place in the world of illegal immigration. Then we’re also working on a contained sci-fi horror script.
And you’re writing your own scripts?
Clif Prowse: Yeah. We will not be starring as ourselves.
So you’re going to move entirely behind the camera?
Derek Lee: We started behind the camera. We only moved in front of the camera because we had to.
Clif Prowse: I don’t know, there’s a possibility you might continue to be in front of the camera.
Derek Lee: We’ll see how it goes.
Clif Prowse: He’s been in all our other films as a lead actor so he’s a good actor. He can play more than himself, unlike me.
What have we not seen in the action genre yet?
Derek Lee: For us, it’s not about the action itself. We grew up loving things like Oldboy, The Professional and really character-driven, story-driven action movies. So for us it’s about becoming the best storytellers we can and the action has to service that. So we’re less concerned with blowing up a bigger building and throwing a bigger car off of a bridge, which don’t get me wrong, that’s the funnest stuff you can possibly film. But, if that’s not serving what we tend to gravitate towards, which is darker character stuff, people getting put through extreme situations, if it’s not servicing that then we don’t really care. So doing Kung Fu fights in a movie for the sake of Kung Fu fights, that’s not really our thing.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
