JACK RYAN | January 15, 2016
Sci-fi mindbender Shockwave, Darkside orbits VOD January 5, 2016, from Uncork’d Entertainment. Starring Bill Sage, the mesh of visual effects and chair-gripping thrills was a ten-year labor of love for writer-director Jay Weisman.
“Shockwave, Darkside was originally a writing exercise which then developed into a short film. It kept expanding, and at a certain point I couldn’t for the life of me get the script down to under an hour.”
I believe Shockwave, Darkside has been a long-term project for you. Where did it all begin?
“Shockwave, Darkside was originally a writing exercise which then developed into a short film. It kept expanding, and at a certain point I couldn’t for the life of me get the script down to under an hour. I figured if I added a few more characters and an additional 30 pages I’d have a feature!
“The interesting thing about Shockwave was that early on there was no pressure to it. I was working on another project and Shockwave was something I was just playing around with to have fun. Eventually it occurred to me that I was onto something really special that was doable on an indie film budget. So…I switched gears.”
Was it always a given that you’d do a science fiction movie?
“Yeah, I’ve always been a science fiction fan. When I was younger, my dad used to read me the original ‘Planet of the Apes’ novel by Pierre Boulle and the Jack Kirby ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ comic book, so I guess it’s in my DNA. Some fathers and sons have baseball, we had classic Star Trek. We still do.
“To me, art direction, visual effects, sound design…all the things that make science fiction what it is, are endlessly fascinating. Every movie has its own aesthetic which has some kind of sociological resonance with respect to what’s going on in our culture. From the sleek techno-nirvana that is Star Trek to the diesel-apocalypse of Mad Max, it all means something. And to me, decoding of all that stuff is really fun.
“I’ve also been a lifelong movie fan, so the two naturally merged into Shockwave, I guess.”
“I’ve always been a VFX nerd. In fact, my first professional producing credit was doing visual effects for the Syfy Channel.”
Over those ten years how much did you see technology change? And did those changes actually help in getting the movie done?
“Originally the idea was to do most of the film through helmet cams, but then 3D became a real reality, so we pivoted. It took a fair amount of R&D, and we had to re-conceive how we would handle certain sequences, but at the end of the day it surprisingly wasn’t too big of a leap. We wanted Shockwave, Darkside to be an immersive experience, so from the moment we started considering 3D as the medium, I could see the potential and it just seemed like a natural fit.
“Of course operating on the budget we had, when that 3D workflow came in we were forced to come up with a fair amount of creative solutions to clear some roadblocks. It seemed like every technical opportunity came with issues that we had to work around, so the entire endeavor often felt like we were taking two steps forward and one step back. That all goes with the territory, I guess. During all this, I had a copy of The Making of Star Wars. They went through the same thing when they made that movie, so I felt like I was in good company.
“The other big advance going on at the time was in the arena of visual effects. We found that there was a growing amount of off-the-shelf software that we could use, but again, we wanted to push everything to the limit of what we could do, so it was all a great and really fun challenge.”
Did you have any background in visual effects?
“I’ve always been a VFX nerd. In fact, my first professional producing credit was doing visual effects for the Syfy Channel. After that, pretty much everything I did had some kind of VFX or digital component.”
Was Shockwave shot in 3D?
“Yep, it was shot in native 3D – which meant we had two cameras on location. That also meant every visual effect had to be animated or rendered twice. And then everything had to be composited and aligned after production. It was crazy! It almost felt like we were making two movies at the same time.”
Do you know why it’s not being released in 3D here in America?
“I think it has more to do with the adoption rate of 3D TVs than anything else. That said, if you look at what’s happening in virtual reality with Google Cardboard or Samsung Gear, I think of 3D as the first in a long line of innovations in an ever-changing home entertainment ecosystem. It is my sincere hope that we can release the 3D version – I’m sure we’ll figure it out eventually.”
How did you get so much done effects-wise on what one assumes would’ve been a limited budget?
“I got lucky! I think there are a lot of people out there with so much talent to give that are just waiting for the opportunity. Our producers, Dan De Filippo and Dave Marken, brought in VFX supervisor Wayne Johnson and designer Bambula. They read the script, saw some footage and some concept work that we were doing, and signed on.
“Wayne (who is based in Minnesota), was a VFX teacher; he brought in an entire crew of ex-students and enthusiasts. John DeMayo, who I met on location, did all of our particle effects and laser animations, and became really, really proficient over time. It was incredible – we were scattered all over the country, passing around files via Dropbox, and talking on Skype. I would do notes on screen shots in Power Point and send them out to the various teams pretty much nightly. It was quite the digital circus with Wayne as the ringleader.
“I think it’s a testament to Wayne’s leadership and everybody’s artistry that we did so much with so little. And that’s a really great, heartening story because people weren’t working for money – they were working on the film because they were passionate about what they do.
“As the director, it was basically about finding out what people wanted creatively out of the experience and then working with them to execute the vision as well as make sure that they were fulfilled by what they were doing. Most of us were working day jobs, so we had to keep morale up and the project moving.”
How much of what we see on screen is a special effect? Were the actors acting opposite anything?
“That depends on the shot. Our location was a huge industrial sandpit in Harwich, Massachusetts, so close-ups and medium shots were mostly on location. Wide shots, where we needed to show scale, we usually augmented with a digital set extension.
“We had a book of NASA lunar photographs on set that we used as a reference for lighting and landscape. I think that went a long way for the actors because it looked so good.
“The one area where the actors had to use a fair amount of imagination was when they had to interact with our head-up displays. Our characters engage with the HUDs in a very specific way, so we had to almost choreograph their actions in a manner that looked like they knew what they were doing, but also leave room for the graphics that would be dropped in later. I had rough storyboards that I did with G.I. Joe action figures, but we didn’t even know who would design those graphics much less have anything concrete for their reference. On top of that we didn’t have a lot of time, so it was very challenging to work through.”
Is it fair to say the film has sort of a Prometheus vibe about it?
“I would say thematically they ask similar questions, although my film doesn’t have any monsters, so there really isn’t the horror element that Prometheus has. Shockwave was written before Prometheus so it was interesting to see how a big studio movie with a master director like Ridley Scott balanced the needs of essentially rebooting a franchise while trying to delve into something deeper in a way that only good science fiction can.
“I think the two films explore these questions in a manner that harkens back to classic science fiction. If you look at the old Twilight Zone, Star Trek, or even the works of Ray Bradbury or Robert Heinlein, they understood the allegorical nature of science fiction which you can see in films like Prometheus, or more recently The Martian, Interstellar, and even Gravity. Shockwave certainly isn’t in the same category budget-wise as those films, but I think their roots and aspirations are similar.”
Did you intentionally stay away from making it too violent or gory?
“Absolutely, it isn’t just about that. Being a low-budget independent film, you have to really pick your battles in terms of time and money. In some ways those limitations help you define what you want because you can’t have everything! We were forced to ask hard questions about where we wanted to commit our limited resources and what we felt worked best for the story that we were trying to tell.
“Essentially, we have soldiers in battle armor fighting a war on the moon. That helped because a fair amount of blood and gore would just boil away. So…thanks for saving us money, physics!”
Are there any films that inspired its narrative?
“While we were making the film we’d say that Shockwave was ‘Saving Private Ryan on the moon,’ so obviously that movie had a tremendous influence on the dramatic backbone of the film. 2001: A Space Odyssey was also a huge inspiration for us. Truthfully, I think the collision of the chaotic humanity in Ryan and the austere, almost existential tension of 2001 were the two films that influenced us most.”
How important is sound to you?
“Sound is crucial! To me it’s literally half of the story – especially on a movie such as this. We worked for a long time on both sound design and music, going through many iterations to find the right elements to give the film a distinctive feel as well as push the story along.
“For a while, the soundscape was an evolving thing as we were simultaneously developing our visual effects, so our composer, Andreas Weidinger, and our sound designer, John Northcraft, had kind of a moving target. Andreas and John very patiently stayed on top of their audio concepting while the visual palette developed. In the end, it all coalesced.
“To me, sound and music give everything a reality and underpin the emotional resonance of a scene. Sound and music together is literally one of the main characters of the movie, especially in a film such as this where we are building a reality from the ground up. To be in the final mixing stage when everything was coming together was incredibly satisfying.”
If you could change anything about the movie what might it be?
“I heard a quote that the person starting the film is completely different than the person that finishes the film, and I think that’s very true. What I love about filmmaking is that it’s multidisciplinary. A movie employs people from just about every art form, so along the way you learn about music, photography, sculpture…even medieval armor as we experienced during Shockwave. You pick up all these little nuggets from your teammates along the way that invariably make you better. This is especially true on your first film. At the same time, I recognize that the final product represents a very specific moment in time. So, on one hand I wouldn’t change anything, and on the other, there are things that I would love to have tried.”
Would you like to do a sequel?
“One of the great things about making a science fiction movie is the tremendous amount of world building that you have to do. This informs not only where the story comes from, but also where it’s going. I have a pretty cool idea for the sequel, if the opportunity arises.”
Where can we find out more about you? Are you active on social networks?
“I would say check out the Shockwave, Darkside website or Facebook page for updates on all the lunar madness!”
Sci-fi mindbender Shockwave, Darkside orbits VOD January 5, 2016, from Uncork’d Entertainment. JACK RYAN | January 15, 2016 Sci-fi mindbender Shockwave, Darkside orbits VOD January 5, 2016, from Uncork’d Entertainment.
