| Gil Kenan Creates a Monster-ous "House" - Page 2 |
| Written by Brad Balfour | ||||
| Friday, 23 February 2007 08:36 | ||||
Page 2 of 2
Q: The film is mostly grounded in realism, though for instance there is an amazing shot in the film when an ambulance pulls away which is more fantastical...
Kenan insisted upon as many non-CG movie makers as possible to give his film a realistic feel.
The house in question is named Constance, and voice by vet actress Kathleen Turner.
I had a hat of reality on, but I'm glad you like that shot because that's one of those times when I kind of peeled away the fabric of reality a little bit and that's something that wouldn't have been possible in live action. Part of the way I assembled my crew was picking people who hadn't done CG work before. [I picked] DP Xavier Pérez Grobet because he shot "Before Night Falls", one of most beautifully shot films in the last 15 years, because it's real emotional filmmaking, not technical. I knew the technical side would be in place because of the machine it takes to make a film like this. Every place I could chip away at the CG-ness of what I was doing I would take advantage of that. Q: But you're shooting them on a motion-capture stage. GK: The process here is slightly dissected. The mo-cap shoot is purely about performance. His job on the mocap stage was strictly to capture performances—to have coverage on actors without any sense of my camera placement in the cinema phase of this film. Q: What do you think sold these producers on you. Your career had been up to that time... GK: Non-existent? My film got me into that meeting, but I knew going into that room it was my one shot, one chance to sell them. I was the right man to make this movie. Partly that was done in spite of myself. When I read the script I started going into convulsions. I was kind of panicked by the amount of imagery and ideas it forced into my head, so I stayed up and drew a bunch of pictures I brought with me and ideas I jotted down. In the meeting it was more me, more spilling forth all the things that had attacked me. Q: Are you always thinking about making films? GK: I always watched films—I never had video cameras. I expressed myself through drawing, storybooks, wrote stories. I ended up in theater in high school. I thought I was going to be a theater director. Then the Northridge earthquake happened the night before my first directed play in my senior year, and the auditorium was eaten up by the earth. That was the end of my theater career and I went into film. Q: What are your plans for "The City of Ember?" GK: [To explore] the further idea of relationship between humans and their environs, but instead of a house it's a city. It's based on a novel about the last city with light on it after all lights have gone off in world. Q: What insights will you carry from "Monster House" to "The City of Ember"? GK: I'm still working it out. We'll have to ask that in a couple of movies. Obviously a sense of place is really important to me. There really is such a strong bond with every house that I've lived in. When I have dreams at night they usually take place in my childhood home in a Nightmare on Elm St. kind of way. There's just something I'm always figuring out. The 79th Annual Academy Awards will be broadcast on Feb. 25 on ABC. |
