Shark Night 3D Director David Ellis Q&A
- Details
- Category: Interviews
- Created: Wednesday, 31 August 2011 22:43
- Published: Wednesday, 31 August 2011 22:43
- Written by Lupe Haas
Director and former stuntman David Ellis knows what scares people. The Snakes on the Plane and Final Destination director has taken on snakes, death, and now sharks in his latest horror thriller SHARK KNIGHT 3D. The former stuntman played bait for the cameras in Deep Blue Sea (Samuel L. Jackson) and worked underwater in A Perfect Storm (George Clooney). In SHARK NIGHT 3D, David brings his knowledge of stunts, water, and shooting with 3D cameras which he is sharing with CineMovie in our Q&A with the director. David Ellis spoke to CineMovie by telephone from the Boston set of R.I.P.P. where he is currently working as the stunt/action director. David Ellis started his career at nineteen as a stuntman in movies such as Bound For Glory (1976) and Scarface (1983), eventually becoming a stunt coordinator and action director. He transitioned into the director's chair in 1995 with Homeward Bound 2: Lost in San Francisco and Final Destination 2 (2003). When not at the helm of a movie, David continues his work as a stunt director, "I love directing action."
Q: Having been a stuntman, do you know how far you can push your actors when it comes to stunts?
Yeah! Absolutely. For the kids in Shark Night, I put them in training with the Navy Seals to get them acclimated to water, breathing with air tanks, and being underwater for long periods of time. We had safety divers outside the shot. They would bring them air in between shots. So I try to train them on each film. On Cellular, I took Chris Evans to driving school. And then I get to understand what they can and can't do safely. And obviously I'll offset that with stunt doubles for anything that's too dangerous or risky for them to do. I definitely get what we can pull off with them. I love to do as much action as I can with the actors. Depending on who you are working with, different actors have different limitations on what they can do athletically. But these kids were all athletic, in great shape, and did about 90% of their own stunts.
Q: What were the challenges with the 3D cameras and water?
When you shoot in 3D, obviously you have two cameras; one for the left and one for the right eye. All the rigs are much bigger than any normal camera system. When you're putting those cameras, techno-cranes and stuff like that on a boat, there's a lot of electronics. And your running through the water in high speeds. You have to make sure everything is waterproof. Technically, it's challenging especially because we had a lot of stuff over water or underwater. And we had a tight schedule. 3D takes a little more time than shooting 2D, so we really had to have our act together. We had a great D.P. whose done a lot of underwater stuff, and he understood it. Great stunt coordinator. Great crew all the way around. We really prepped the movie right. We were prepared everyday to go out and get what we had to get. We had a little extra time in case we ran into problems which we did. But I shoot fast. I know what I want and don't waste a lot of time. And we had a lot of fun doing it.
Q: How much more time does 3D add to the schedule?
If it was a studio picture, they would add 25% to the budget and schedule. We were an independent film so we didn't have that luxury to do either. So we had a certain budget we had to stick to. We had to find the money within our budget to fund the cameras because they are a lot more expensive. Our budget was $20 million. If we were at a studio, this film would've cost $65 million. We really had to be prepared and make every moment count everyday to make a great, big-looking, awesome film for the money we had. And we definitely pulled it off.
Q: Having done two Final Destination films and Snakes on the Plane, did you bring the same approach to this movie but with 3D?
Yeah! The thing is the Final Destination movie uses the really gimmicky, in your face stuff where they're constantly throwing things at the audience. I didn't want to do that with this movie. What I wanted to do is have the depth of the 3D put the audience in the water with the sharks, making it an interactive experience where the audience feel like they are in the water with the kids, opposed to just having gimmicks. There's some stuff that comes into the audience but mainly so it makes it feel like you can touch them or they are going to eat you.
Q: Why go with animatronic sharks versus just relying on CGI?
I had done that before having worked on Deep Blue Sea and The Perfect Storm, so we used the same guy Walt Conti whose a genius with animatronics. And anytime you have a shark interacting with a person, trying to get into a cage, or biting sharks - you have to use animatronics for that. For all of the other stuff like swimming, character interaction, expressions of the shark, acceleration of speeds, and stuff like that... you go into the CG world. Since CG is so advanced, the sharks are photo real. They look like we're working with real sharks.
Q: Do you think the use of animatronics will eventually go away?
In the old days, the only way was with animatronics. In Jaws, which is a classic movie, they didn't show the shark too much because it didn't work. There still going to be practical uses for animatronics but you're not going to rely on them like they used to.
We're going to be compared to Jaws of course but you can't compare this movie to Jaws. Luckily our demographics 13 through 25 is really strong and 13- 18 have probably never seen Jaws. We're not trying to be Jaws. We're a different kind of movie.
Q: What kind of direction do you give actors to act scared?
Very early on we started working underwater so they got to see the animatronic sharks. Now I made sure everyone went down underwater to see how it worked and see what it looked like. These sharks move really fast on these rails and they're scary. They played off that. They brought it. They just acted. There all good actors so they pulled it off.
Q: Shark Night's young cast are mostly unknowns, except for American Idol alumni Katharine McPhee.
She actually read for the lead [Sara]in the film. She's a tremendous actress. I have not seen American Idol but I heard she was an amazing singer. I saw her purely as an actress. We read her for the lead and we also met with Sara Paxton who got the lead. The character of Beth, however, was a bit of a rebel and spunky so we thought Katherine would be better at that part.
I love going out and finding young actors that haven't had a lot of exposure especially if we can break them out. I did that when we made Cellular. I found Chris Evans. He had only done a couple of other things and a teen movie, and we were looking at bigger names. But we saw something in Chris that I thought was going to be the making of a star. And sure enough, he is Captain America. All these kids are going to break out from this movie. Hopefully, knock on wood, we do good at the box office and people come out and see our movie.
SHARK NIGHT 3D is in movie theaters September 2, 2011.