More sci-fi shocks are waiting for FrightFest goers as Brian Hanson's superb movie The Bunker is having its International Premiere. We chatted with him about this stylish piece.
NYX: We last chatted a few years back when you were at FrightFest with The Black String, what have you been up to since then?
BH: I was at FrightFest in August 2019 with my first feature, The Black String. That was an amazing experience and got me excited about what 2020 might bring, but six months later the world went into COVID lockdown so just like everybody else, my aspirations were put on hold for a while. During that time, my wife and I walked around our Hollywood neighbourhood a lot, I worked on HBO’s Barry Season 3 and I earned a Masters Degree in Creative Writing. And of course… we made this new movie, The Bunker.
NYX: What lessons in directing to did you bring to this movie which you learned from directing The Black String?
BH: I learned two big lessons from The Black String. Number one — filming practical blood and special effects takes a long time — even the small inserts. Things don’t always work out as planned the first time and it takes a long time to clean up the blood, change costumes and reset everything for a second and third take. A few shots can take hours. While filming The Bunker, I was better able to identify what bloody special effects we could shoot as inserts on pick-up days instead of eating up the clock while actors are waiting. The second big lesson I learned was the beauty of limited locations. With The Black String we had 13 locations in 19 days. Those company moves were tough on our schedule and crew. With The Bunker we had three locations in twenty two days so we could get tons of focused work done and then walk away at the end of the day. No packing up and driving across town all the time.
NYX: You’ve co-written The Bunker alongside Charles L. Bunce, what was your writing process?
BH: Charles is the Film Department Chair at Mount St. Mary’s University (where I also teach) so we would sit in his office late at night and talk about what kind of movie we could make in one location with limited actors. The space we had access to was an austere office building with an almost Kubrick-esque sci-fi design. That motivated us to think about science fiction, a genre we both love. COVID rules were still in effect with SAG actors so we knew we could only work with one or two actors on set at a time. Excited to do science-fiction and knowing that we were limited to one or two actors per day necessitated an isolated story — so characters in a bunker became an obvious choice. After our parameters were set, we thought of all the fun Twilight Zones, Outer Limits and movies where humans try to figure out what mysterious aliens visitors are up to… peaceful communication or death and destruction? From there we wrote an outline and then I would write a scene and Charles would do a revision or vice-versa. I also improvised the whole movie on location while Charles filmed on an iPhone. That was hilarious but also led to some dialogue and action ideas. We might need to add that improv walk-thru video to our DVD special features.
NYX: Did you write it with a cast in mind?
BH: We knew The Bunker would have a clear protagonist (Dr. Riley), but we also wanted the film to have that ensemble feel like Alien or Event Horizon. We wanted that international crew aboard a spaceship feel and we could cast our talented friends to play those roles. The main character was originally a man, Dr. Michael Riley, but once we realized our talented friend Chelsea Edmundson was available, we thought it would be great to make her the lead because we fully trusted her to bring the heat for 18 days of filming. That’s how Mike Riley became Michelle Riley. Tony Todd and Tobin Bell were cast with the assistance of our awesome producing partners, Blood Oath and Paper Street Pictures. I never imagined Tony and Tobin would be in our little indie movie, but Tobin is exactly the type of dad we imagined and Tony nails the tough-love project leader we had written on the page.
NYX: Chelsea Edmundson is superb in the lead role of Dr. Michelle Riley, did she have much time to prepare for such an intense role?
BH: Chelsea is indeed superb in the role. She had about three weeks to prepare, but Charles and I were constantly sending revised scenes with new scientific jargon, so she was trying to keep up with all our updates. We did a table read with just Chelsea and then workshopped some scenes on set during the three prep weeks, but once Chelsea understood Michelle’s emotional arc, we stopped rehearsing so that she could keep it fresh for the cameras. Once principle photography started, Chelsea stayed busy studying the next day’s scenes which often included memorization and pronunciation of difficult scientific terms. Chelsea always wanted to do it right and was willing to throw herself against walls to make a scene more realistic and intense. There is some mystery around her character prep though, she has secrets to her method… you’ll have to ask her how she does it.
NYX: How involved were you with the design of the on-screen tech etc?
BH: I was more involved in graphic design than I ever thought I would be. Charles and I learned quickly that sci-fi movies require a ton of “on-screen tech” and other User Interface (UI) screens. We studied movies that do UI well, The Martian and Elysium were two movies that inspired our look. However, we had 1/100th of their budgets so we had to find stock graphics because we couldn’t afford to build these all from scratch. Charles subscribed to Envato, Storyblocks, Pond5 and bought graphic assets with DNA strands, data readings, radar screens, etc and he would cut them up, add text and create a new remix version for our movie. We still needed more custom graphics so our graphic design friend Sean Sallings built us some custom 3D graphics with nano-bots flying into oxygen tanks and alien ships scanning military bases. As the film editor, I would still need to make adjustments to Sean and Charles’ graphics to ensure everything was clearly visible and moved properly in the few seconds they might be on screen. It was a group effort and I now understand why The Martian hired a huge company to create all of the User Interface (UI).
NYX: The cast spend a lot of the time alone, did they share scenes much?
BH: Because of SAG’s COVID rules, we never had more than two actors on set at a time and usually we just had one actor on set per day. Most of our actors have never met each other even though they appear in dozens of scenes together. However, Chelsea did the bulk of the off-screen reading so Tony, Tobin, Chad and the rest of cast were reading with Chelsea who took on the persona of the other characters. I read off-camera for Chelsea when we filmed her scenes and I am no trained actor, so that’s further proof of how good she is.
NYX: There’s a lot of effects here, was it a tough movie to edit together?
BH: The movie was very difficult to edit due to all of the graphics, HUD’s, VFX, glitches, etc.. We originally conceived of this movie to be simple — one person on set at a time. What we didn’t realize is that every character requires a custom screen info and the story must be told through lots of on-screen graphics which we would have to create. I edited the movie on DaVinci Resolve which was a good experience, but we pushed Resolve to the limit. Producer Kelby Thwaits, Charles and I were constantly interacting with VFX artists to provide pre-viz decks and notes while also doing lots of VFX shots ourselves and keeping the Mac running as we stacked up to 30 video tracks in certain scenes. I learned that even 12 frame glitches need to be used thoughtfully and artistically. The more layers that are added to the edit timeline, the more complications the editor/director need to worth through. Science Fiction is a heavy lift in post-production, unless you make Primer or Her.. that’s a smart way to do sci-fi.
NYX: The movie looks and feels expensive, did you have much budget to play with?
BH: We didn’t have much budget to play with. This was a passion project accomplished through blood, sweat, tears and lots of caffeine. Cast was our biggest expense because talent on screen is invaluable, but our crew behind the camera worked for the love of filmmaking. Our investors believed in our vision and had the patience to let us achieve beyond the constraints of our small budget. As a filmmaker, if you don’t have much money… you need time to get it right. We also had the kind support of Mount St. Mary’s University which donated equipment and locations, which was a blessing. Just to put our small scale into perspective, our camera, grip and electric team consisted of two people — our DP Roman Zenz and his Camera AC/Gaffer — Lucky Atkare. The two of them shot, lit and gripped the whole film… and it looks amazing.
NYX: What’s it like working with icons such as Tobin Bell and Tony Todd?
BH: Working with icons like Tobin and Tony was awesome and made life easy. They are so experienced that they instinctively know how to play a scene, where to stand, when to emphasize a moment. Tobin was relaxed and really enjoyed playing a wise and caring father. Tony was always excited to try new ideas on how to give Major Lawerence a unique prop to play with or where and when to modulate his intensity. As the director, I still had to give practical direction so that they didn’t lean out of frame or pick something up with the wrong hand, but creatively, it feels like all adjustments I made for the the next take were just adding more good options for the edit room. And to hear their legendary voices on our set… that was unbelievable. Even in the edit I couldn’t believe that Tobin and Tony were bringing our script pages to life. Candyman and Jigsaw?
NYX: Will you be nervous when the movie has its International Premiere at FrightFest 2024?
BH: I’ve watched the movie once with the audience at Popcorn Frights Festival and they enjoyed it so I’m not quite as nervous as I was last week. But even with one screening in the bag, I’ll still have some butterflies sitting there with the legendary FrightFest fans. They know horror and have high expectations! I feel that Tony, Tobin, Chelsea and or cast will take them on a fun and unpredictable 90min sci-fi ride into the dark depths of Discovery Screen 1.
NYX: Do you believe there’s intelligent life somewhere far, far away?
BH: I do. The universe is so vast that it seems mathematically impossible that there isn’t intelligent life somewhere out there. Are they close enough to contact us? Perhaps not, but then again, maybe they’ve been watching us and they don’t want to be discovered. Or maybe they exist on another level of physics and we can’t see them. Then there’s the whole Fermi Paradox to consider. We can discuss that over a beer at The Imperial.
NYX: So, what are you working on at the moment?
BH: Charles Bunce and I are currently working on a feature documentary about Cosmic Horror in film and television. “From Lovecraft to Stranger Things and everything in between” is the tagline that sums it up. We’ve found that people love cosmic horror, yet they often struggle to define it or understand it’s definitive traits. So we have set out to interview fans, critics and filmmakers to get their opinion on cosmic horror. We’ve interviewed epic Lovecraftian/Cosmic filmmakers like Brian Yuzna, Mick Garris, Joe Lynch, Barbara Crampton, Benson and Moorehead and many others. Hopefully our next trip to FrightFest will be to premiere Cosmic Horror: The Documentary.
NYX: Brian Hanson, thank you very much.
