Fede Alvarez on Filmmaking
How did you go from your stop-motion film roots to horror? How did you make that kind of a jump?
Fede Alvarez: Well, let me do a little bit of math, but there’s like 20 years between one and the other. Yeah, I was doing stop-motion stuff when I was 7 I think. Then, when I was a teenager, I was doing a lot of superhero stuff. It was just one of those things I was always doing, making films, and then one day I just realized I was a grown man and someone offered me money in exchange to keep doing that, and then I became a professional. It was never a career goal, like, “This is where I’m going.” I just liked telling stories with the camera and I was doing it for a long time, so I don’t really know how I get to the places I go. I just do the things I like to do and right now I like to do horror movies. I don’t think one is straight forward horror. It has horror elements for sure, but the structure and the style is more of a thriller and the imagery of some moments are more of a horror movie.
Silence and darkness were two of the film’s biggest assets as far as establishing atmosphere. How difficult was it juggling the cinematography and with the sound design to create that heightened atmosphere?
Fede Alvarez: Very difficult. I think if things come too easy then you’re probably not doing a good job.The challenge was that we had a script with very little dialogue. It was a movie that even if you don’t speak the language, and there were no subtitles, you would still understand what’s going on. That left a lot of room for the sound design, the music, and the camera work. When the actors are not talking, the camera is speaking for them. Because I also wrote it, I re-created it in a way so that I would have room to play. It was difficult, but I think when you have something that is a challenge, you have a better chance to succeed and give the audience something that is not just your everyday weekend movie that you could just watch and dismiss the next day.
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