Interview with the Producers of OUTPOST

It's a great privilege to have the producers of the film, Kieran and Arabella agree to do an interview for ALLTHINGSHORROR.

JOHNNY: OUTPOST has delighted many people in presenting a film that for once doesn’t take its audience for granted and actually makes you work for the scares. Where did the idea for the story come from and what background work did you do before you knew you had something pretty special on your hands?

K AND A: The original idea came from a short film that Kieran had written. This then morphed in to a feature film idea that was pitched as ‘The 6th Sense meets Platoon’ and was called ‘The Long Fall’. We sent that 6 page document to our long term collaborator Steve Barker (Director) and a young hot writer we knew called Rae Brunton (Writer) and we took it from there with a zen-like mission to make a film. Kieran brought the Nazi Zombies, Rae added the mercenaries and the Machine, and Steve brought the tension and shocks. Arabella (my partner and fellow producer) was our first set of eyes at each stage of the work we produced from idea to synopsis to treatment to eventually script! Concerning background work – we are all fans of this genre and so we had been researching it since we were 12!

JOHNNY: It has been well documented that you re-mortgaged your house to a tune of £300,000. With two small children, and the knowledge that even big Hollywood films can get into trouble during pre-production, why did you think that the risk was worth it?

K AND A: We still don’t quite believe what we did but we wanted to ‘break in’ to the industry so badly that we were prepared to back ourselves – it’s so difficult to get a film financed or get noticed as a bunch of new talent (remember all four of us had never produced, directed or written a feature despite a few years of trying) Years of production experience really doesn’t help – it’s all about proving yourself and we knew it was a great script and that we could do it. What mitigated our risk was the fact that we pre-sold the film in 13 territories from a teaser poster, mood book and script before we had even shot a frame of film.

JOHNNY: When you managed to secure the money for the film, what budget limitations did you put in place for script development, casting, area location etc? And did you manage to keep a tight lid on production without going over budget?

K AND A: Weirdly this project was ‘reverse engineered’ We knew we could raise £300k from our mortgage and family & friends and so that was the limitation we set for ourselves from day one - so we developed the script with this in mind – it had to be limited locations and limited number of artistes from the concept stage. For the bad guys, we just needed Nazi Uniforms (which there are loads of in the UK thanks to productions like ‘Saving Private Ryan’ and ‘Band of Brothers’) and great lighting! So we asked ourselves the question all the way through development of the script and if we couldn’t afford it at £300k then it wasn’t allowed! By the time we finished developing the script we had a film which we could shoot on DV for the money we knew we had. So when Arabella managed to raise the budget from £300,000 to £900,000 we were ecstatic and it we went from shooting in the cellar of a big old house to actually building the set on a sound stage, from shooting on DV to shooting on Super 35mm, from hiding the bad guys to actually still hiding them but just allowing the highlights of the FX make up to come through. We still had no time to shoot though – five weeks only – it was tough and pretty much all shots were used in the final cut!

JOHNNY: Both of you have been involved with the film industry in one way or another. Was producing a first for you both? And did you find that you had to make some stuff up as you went along or did it all go to plan?

K AND A: It was our first run as Feature Film Producers but we had both produced lots of shorts and Pop Promos before (we actually met on a short film Arabella was producing) And as Kieran had produced all of Steve’s work up until ‘Outpost’ so there was a very close relationship within the ‘creative end ‘ of the production. This, added to the fact that he (Kieran) was at film school with Gavin Struthers (DOP) and Richard Stoddard (Camera Operator) and these guys had done most, if not all of Steve’s previous work. This allowed us to have a team with one vision and one direction, so no, there were no surprises. Of course there were some terribly scary days – but someone once summed it up by saying “a low budget film is a crisis waiting to happen”.

JOHNNY: How involved were you both in the casting of the film? Did you know who you wanted to be your lead from the start?

K AND A: The truth behind the story is that Steve had such a strong idea about the cast that we just came along for the ride! Again, you could call it a budget thing but we knew we wanted character actors for the movie though as soon as we had the ‘real’ money we knew we could afford a couple of ‘names’ but we needed them to get behind the project and believe in it. When we were writing the script, the first series of Rome was on the BBC and in loving that series we wrote the script very much with Ray Stevenson in mind – we finished it and we sent it to his agent – Ray in turn then read the script and liked it enough to arrange a meeting with Steve - so we packed him off to London, and after several drinks, Steve phoned to say he’d landed our leading man!.

Another great story is that there is an episode from Rome where Titus Pullo is protecting Cleopatra and a Nubian assassin is sent to kill her – Steve said that the assassin had the perfect look for the role of ‘Cotter’ the African mercenary in the film - and believe it or not, unbeknown to us, Enoch Frost came in to read for the part – the same Enoch Frost who played the Nubian Assassin in that particular episode of Rome! So fate played a big role!

JOHNNY: Choosing the director can make or break a film. Why did you choose to go with Steve Barker who up until OUTPOST only had two projects under his belt? (Magic Hour- 2002 and Coming Up- 2005) What was it that he brought to the table that made you think that he was the right man for the job?

K AND A: Kieran has known Steve since they met at Art School in 1990 and had produced two short films with him ‘Sally Kerosene’ & ‘Magic Hour’ and also five pop videos, we have also been working on several feature film scripts with him. Steve directed Rae’s script for ‘Kharma Cowboys’ and that coupled with our historical relationship meant for Arabella and I there was never anyone else in the running. Low budget movies are all about keeping things simple and having Steve on board – in the same way we used a lot of crew we had worked with before – dispensed with the introductory phase and allowed us to concentrate on the job in hand. We have a good shorthand – it means everything and now after all these years of short films etc we are such a tight creative team. We are currently financing and packaging ‘Breathe’ as a Canadian/UK co-production which Steve has written and the action thriller ‘Blood Makes Noise’ which Steve has also written and will direct next.

JOHNNY: How was the location for the film (munitions factory near Castle Douglas) decided on? How many locations had you visited before deciding on this one?

K AND A: The Munitions factory was actually a mistake! – Mark Geddes (Dumfries Film Commissioner) showed us that location thinking we could use it for the actual Outpost but it was obviously wrong – it was however so good as the ‘War torn Eastern Europe’ that we had written in the opening of the film that we couldn’t possibly look elsewhere!- so we amended the script to suit that location. The actual exterior of the Outpost was shot on a private estate about 10 miles from Dalbeattie and we hadn’t actually been to that many locations before we decided on this one – we had permission to shoot on the land and so we found somewhere suitable within its boundaries.

The thing with locations is that even though primarily it has to work for the film there are an awful lot of logistical reasons as to how it needs to work for the production before it can be locked for shooting – can we get the vehicles in and out? Where can we put catering? Where can we park the unit base and house the artists/extras when they’re not working? Etc etc.

JOHNNY: When did shooting start? How long did it go on for and was it mainly a smooth shoot? What was the weather like for the duration of the filming?

K AND A: The film was scheduled to shoot in 28 days. We started filming on January 8th 2007 and we shot for 9 exterior days in the harsh (and very, very muddy) winter of Dumfries - though while the country was being ripped apart by storms, we hid in a little corner of the world and remained relatively untouched – truth be known, the only one time we had to stop filming due to the weather was when it was too sunny! When we had completed the exterior shoot, we wrapped the unit and moved up to Film City Glasgow for a further 19 days on the interior set of the Outpost. Once we had finished filming, and had come in under budget, we scheduled a further 2 days shooting for pickups (gore and an extra action sequence) and we shot those in March.

JOHNNY: The special effects in the film are top notch. Who did you get to do them? And how much of the budget was spent on them?

K AND A: As mentioned, we shot and completed the film for £900k, incorporated in to the shooting budget were the physical FX (bullet hits etc) and these were done by Artem, and the Make up FX – these were designed by Hybrid FX. We then took the film to Cannes where we sold it to Sony, at this point it was decided that we should raise some more funds to put in to the digital FX and the score. At this point we went to ‘The Look’ & ‘The Difference’ who did the digital FX (giving us extra Nazis, ‘upping’ the gore quota adding tracer fire from the guns and more bullet hits during the action sequences) and we paid for a seriously talented composer – James Brett – to do the score, which we recorded with a 40 strong Orchestra at Abbey road studios!

JOHNNY: The film was released first on DVD in the US. What were the reasons behind this? Surely the market over there is a tougher one to crack?

K AND A: Of course we were gunning for a theatrical release worldwide but at the end of the day it is only a little million pound movie! A theatrical release in the US is so tough to achieve and would need at the very least $10m of P&A spend – I guess for Sony it didn’t make financial sense. We were just so pleased they have given us a theatrical release here in the UK. It’s so important for the film and for the team here.

JOHNNY: Sony Pictures has bought the rights for a reported £1.2 million. Surely that means you can buy your house back! But in all seriousness, once the film started to garner favourable reviews was there a bidding war for your film or did Sony just come up with the first and best offer?

K AND A: Sony eventually bought the film in all English speaking territories from a ten minute promo we took to Cannes – we had no reviews for it at that point, it was just about Sony buying in to the pitch of ‘Titus Pullo versus Nazi Zombies!’ and being the first to put their hands in their pockets. We are seeing money back yes…not quite out yet though! All these sales agents take big premiums!

JOHNNY: Has the film had a premiere yet and when is the UK release date?

K AND A: The movie had its Worldwide Premiere as the Opening Film at the fantastic horror festival ‘Dead by Dawn’ Horror Festival in Edinburgh on April 24th – it is being released at the Cinemas across the UK on May 16th.

JOHNNY: Can you tell me anything about OUTPOST 2: The Red Zone? Where can you go with the premise after everyone was presumably wiped out at the end of the first one?

K AND A: Forget the Soldiers - it’s all about the technology!

JOHNNY: What advise can you give first time filmmakers wanting to try and break into the industry? Is it a case of who you know and not what you know?

K AND A: If you want to Direct, just Direct, if you want to Produce, just Produce – look at Robert Rodriguez – he shot dozens of films with his brothers and sisters ‘Bedhead’ etc, then he locked himself in a test tube and came out with El Mariachi, and now look at him! – No one is going to hand you a career so knowing people will help you get experience in commercial filmmaking but the reality of the situation is (and this is our mantra as a company) that this is an industry and it is all about the bottom line – good commercial scripts – of any genre, are the way to go.