Interview with STEVE BARKER

STEVE: I’d been working with Kieran and Arabella on developing a different movie, a thriller called ‘Breathe’. That was in the process of being set up with a group of financiers, but like most films it was taking a long time to come together and we were all getting very frustrated, sitting around waiting for people to make their minds up and for things to get greenlit. Then one day I was having lunch with Kieran and he said that he and Bella had been discussing the idea of doing a micro-budget horror movie and would I be interested in directing?

I’m very much part of the first video generation, I grew up watching ‘Alien’, ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ and all the early John Carpenter movies like ‘Halloween’ and ‘The Fog’ during the pre-certification VHS explosion so, of course, I was totally in.

Kieran already had a one page outline that played like ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’ (Ambrose Bierce short story) with a group of soldiers fighting a battle with warriors from throughout time. I thought it was fun but I didn’t really want to do another version of that story - I thought we’d struggle to get noticed next to ‘Carnival of Souls’ or ‘Jacobs Ladder’ – But there was a scene where the soldiers fought undead Nazi’s and my ears pricked up instantly. All I could think of was the cover of the old Italian exploitation movie ‘Shockwaves’ – I say the cover because I have to admit that at the time I’d never seen the film – But in that one scene I thought we had a whole movie. Thankfully Kieran agreed and we were off.

STEVE: I had a very lucky start in the industry. My graduation film ‘Sally Kerosene’ got picked up by Channel 4 and that in turn got me an agent. From there I spent a long time writing for other people, making shorts and pop promos. All of it was about keeping the wolves from the door so I could build up a CV and keep writing features, hoping that something would land.

Kieran and I had met on are first day of art school in Blackpool when we were kids. We’d never stopped working together on stuff, so it’s no surprise that when the opportunity came to make the step up into features it came with us doing it together.

STEVE: The film came together incredibly fast – from sending the script out to financiers to us shooting was only about four months – So the amount of prep we could feasibly pull off was a bit limited. We’d tried to limit ourselves and our imaginations within the script to things we thought we could achieve well on the money and I storyboarded as much as possible, but we were working on such a tight schedule that a lot of things had to go out of the window and a lot of times we found ourselves making it up as we went.  

STEVE: I absolutely cannot say enough about either that cast or the crew. The effort and commitment shown by everybody; the skill that they displayed in such trying circumstances was almost unbelievable.

Some of the crew, the DOP, Camera Operator and one of the Editors were people that came with me off other projects, and I always knew that they would show up and give it everything, but I think we’ve unearthed some amazing talents in other departments. Ali’s costumes, Max and Gordon’s production design, Niamh’s make-up and James’s score, I think everybody delivered something way above the level you expect for a film of this budget.

The cast made it so easy for me that I’m not sure how much credit I can take for the performances, beyond the initial casting of that specific bunch of actors. I knew that I needed solid character actors because I wouldn’t have a lot of time with them on set. We talked a lot about the characters once they were cast, and I tried to give all of them as much back-story as possible to work with, which we then worked into the costume design and little moments here and there. But most credit needs to go to the actors themselves, they really invested in the film and gave it everything they could.

Ray Stevenson, coming right off the 100 million budget of ‘Rome’ was well within his rights to look down a little on our whole operation, but he was a an absolute gem. He really threw himself into it.

JOHNNY: All in all are you happy with the way that shooting went? Were there any sticky moments?

STEVE: Shooting is a weirdly schizophrenic experience. Half the time it feels like this whirlwind blur of trying to get everything done and not fuck it up too badly. The other half of the time you manage to pause and realize that they are actually letting you make a whole movie, those days are some of the best days you’ll ever experience.

There were definitely plenty of sticky moments. You get lots of them in different ways, every day. I’d say 70% of the job when you’re directing a low budget feature is dealing with sticky moments and putting out potential fires so that you’ve got a prayer at shooting what it was that you had in your head in the first place. Low budget features really are a testament to that old saying “Man proposes and God disposes”. Ultimately, I really don’t think that there is much more that we could have achieved in the shoot, given the time and money that we had.

JOHNNY: Is this your first full length feature film? Did you have a feeling of being thrown in the deep end or were you confident that you would be able to handle everything that was thrown at you?

STEVE: Yeah, this was my first feature. Again, the film happening so fast meant that I never really had a chance to feel like I was being thrown in at the deep end. Then again, on the first set-up of the first day it really hit me. I suddenly looked round at the cast and crew realized that I was making a full feature and my mind went completely blank, I couldn’t have told you my name! It was only for a few seconds but at the time it felt like an eternity. Then it kicked in that they were actually going to let me run around having fun with Undead Nazis and I was away.

JOHNNY: Stylistically, the film is very well paced and slick. Were there any films that influenced you in the way that you shot this? Or did you try to go for a style that you had never seen before?

STEVE: I think when you start to put a film together in your head, before you shoot, you are always looking for ways to serve the movie and make it be as effective as possible for an audience whilst also dialing in your own personality as a director. With this film there was a very definite sense that I wanted to make something that was a throwback to the kind of horror movie I was watching when I was in my early teens. I wanted to move away from the ‘Torture Porn’ style that is so prevalent at the moment and make something that was based more in suspense and atmosphere. But I was also aware that there was a lot of action in the film and I didn’t want one element of the movie to prohibitively effect of the other. So what I ended up trying to do was learn lessons from films like ‘Alien’, Carpenter’s version of ‘The Thing’ or ‘The Fog’ and tried to fuse techniques from those types of film with the energy of modern combat films like ‘Saving Private Ryan’ or ‘Black Hawk Down’, all the while trying to get as much of me in there as I could.  

JOHNNY: What do you think of the film as a whole? Can you watch the film as a viewer or do you always have your directors head on and see things that could have been done/tweaked differently?

STEVE: The great irony of being a director is that you make something because it’s a film you really want to see and then once it’s done you’re the one person who can never get that enjoyment from it. When I watch ‘Outpost’ all I see is everything I think I got wrong, or would do differently next time. The best way I can describe watching your own film is that it’s kinda like watching your favorite scene from your favorite movie but instead of taking the scene in, you can only focus on an extra in the background. It’s really distant and frustrating, but that never seems to stop you from wanting to do it all over again.