![]() She now lives in an apartment on her own, far away from her mother Sophie ( Maria Bello) and half-brother Martin ( Gabriel Bateman). Rebecca ( Teresa Palmer) left the family home a long time ago. ![]() On the whole it is a very effective horror movie, utilising old-fashioned fears and old-fashioned scares to great effect. If they’d also included spiders I probably would have walked out… Anyway ‘Lights Out’ is a feature film adaptation of a rather successful short film ( ). If, like me, you are afraid of both the dark and mannequins you will pretty much be done in by the opening sequence. I wanted to light him with just the candle but was told that, "No, we can’t do that, we have to light the scene!" On the day that we were shooting that scene, James came by the set and said, "You know, you should shoot that scene with just candle light.Be aware of things that lurk in the dark… There's this scene in the film where Martin, played by Gabriel Bateman, walks through a dark house with a candle. He certainly knows the genre and that came in handy. It made the film a bitch to light, though!Īnd you got to work with one of the horror greats, James Wan. Since the short was just a fun little thing we didn't care about breaking the rule about her not existing in light but for the feature I felt that was very important to adhere to. In the last shot of the short, the creature is in light and turns of the lamp herself. We actually stick closer to the rules in the feature than in the short. I wrote these backstories for them and there are details in the film that I'm not sure if people will consciously pick up on, but subconsciously, I think it makes the characters feel real.Īnd you had to follow scary movie rules more closely. I really liked fleshing out the characters in a way that a three-minute short doesn't have time for. When adapting it into a feature, the fact that the short didn’t have much of a story was beneficial because as long as we kept the concept, the story could be anything. With a big film crew, you have to somehow communicate exactly what you want so that they can go do it. When it's just me and Lotta making a short, or I'm animating something, I'll have an idea and just go and do it. But even for live action, I'll make storyboards and animatics to convey my vision. The downside is that you have to do everything! You have to draw or create every little thing you see. The advantage of animation is the level of control you have-you can do pretty much everything. Ha! That must have been strange, especially since you come from an animation background. I told the line producer that I could digitally erase or replace the sign on the school using my laptop in five minutes, but no, ‘That's a visual effects shot that has to go through the VFX house and we don't have the budget for that.’ The production designer had to create an actual sign and place it on top of the real sign instead. and weren't allowed to show the name of the school. Well, for example, we were shooting a school exterior here in L.A. ![]() In some ways, there are limitations that you don't have with a no-budget production. ![]() The truth is though, that in Hollywood, $5 million is nothing. Yeah, going from no budget to $5 million seemed like we could do anything we wanted. The first thing that comes to mind is: bigger budget. So then you went from making a film in your home with Lotta, to creating a full-length feature in sunny L.A. I had to create a spreadsheet to keep track of everyone I'd talked to and what was said last! It was insane how a mere two-and-a-half-minute short could generate that much attention. I started getting emails from people in Hollywood-agents, managers, producers, and studios. Before, the film had maybe a 1,000 views, and then suddenly we were sitting in front of the computer refreshing the page to see the moment when it got to over a million. ![]() A couple of months after the contest, it suddenly blew up online. Was that the plan all along?ĭavid Sandberg: When we made the short, we had no intention of ever turning it into a feature. The Creators Project: Hi David! You’re living every filmmaker’s dream-make a short go viral and sign up with Hollywood. ![]()
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