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Fans of modern comics and modern horror are about to witness the two mediums collide, as the short film Room Service is uniting top talent for a brand new Kickstarter.
After his meteoric rise to the heights of the horror genre, writer James Tynion IV (Something is Killing The Children) is teaming with writer/director PK Colinet (The Infinite Loop) and artist Elsa Charretier (Love Everlasting) to bring a nightmare to life in live-action. The project began with Colinet and Charretier’s desire to direct and storyboard, respectively, before recruiting Tynion to help shape the dark, ominous, and socially relevant commentary. The result is Room Service, a project now live on Kickstarter, and blessed with a poster boy dubbed ‘The Caretaker’ designed with help from Tonči Zonjić (Skulldigger). Screen Rant got the chance to speak with the trio about this new endeavor, and what nightmares await those fortunate enough to see Room Service when it’s complete.
Screen Rant: To start at the beginning, the first question is the most obvious: how did you three come together on a project? How did ‘a short horror film’ become the idea, even before it became a Kickstarter?
PK Colinet: Well, it started when we were shooting the second video for our Kickstarter, I realized that I missed doing movies so, so much. Because for years I was just writing comics, although I had a camera in my hand all my childhood. It was just like having an itch that couldn’t go. So I asked Elsa if she wanted to start a YouTube channel with me to see if it could just appease this [laughs]. And it was the country, actually. The feeling was just growing more and more, I just needed to do a short movie. So, I need a writer.
Elsa Charretier: Yeah, I guess the loaded question is ‘how and why the heck three comic book creators would make a movie?’ You just got that from from PK, he was always into movies. I think the plan was to become a director, but sometimes life throws things at you, throws a career you had not planned for. But he and I sort of made a huge detour via comics. And when his need to go back to movies became really pressing, he just asked me, ‘I want to make a short movie, how do we do this?’ So I was immediately on board, naturally. Because PK and I, everything that we do, we do together.
I’m always excited about these new ideas, whether it’s for Kickstarter, or for our YouTube channel, I’m just always in. We did realize very early on that, contrary to most of the things that we had done so far, this was not a two person job. This was at least a three person job. We needed a third person, someone that would not only be an excellent writer, but someone that would be willing to enter this as a very active partner. That’s why we reached out to James, and he was just in. Instantly, almost.
James Tynion IV: Yeah. Because honestly, I loved Elsa’s work for for so long. To the point that we actually worked together on the first fill-in issue of THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH, Issue #6 of that series. That that process had just been such a wonderful experience, I knew that I wanted to do something together in a longer form at some point in the future. So when I got an email saying, ‘Hey, this is Elsa and PK, we have this crazy idea. Do you want to do a short film?’ At first, I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? I’m working on a million things! I’m working on all this.’ Thankfully, it was in the middle of a long drive when I got the email, so by the time I arrived back home I was like, ‘Alright, I think I want to do a short film.’
I think part of why the three of us really connect is we’re all the sort of creator that once we get an idea in our head, we need to go and put that idea out into the world. From the moment that we started talking about the sorts of touchstones and the films that mattered to us, and what we would want to accomplish in a project like this, we were all on the same page. Once I started throwing ideas over, we were all very excited. We’re going about this on our own terms, which is how I think all of us like to work, and it’s just been an incredible, incredible experience.
SR: So you have a writer, an artist, a director, and say, ‘Okay, make something. Come up with an idea.’ What did that process look like? What were the ideas that were thrown around that you could eventually track to becoming ROOM SERVICE?
PK: It was more feelings, and moods, and inspiration. I talked with James, and after that it was like ‘carte blanche,’ as we say in French.
JT: There were a bunch of themes that have been playing around in the back of my head for the last few years. You can see some of them poking their heads out in series like THE NICE HOUSE ON THE LAKE. But the real thing that’s guiding a lot of my nonfiction reading is the whole secret economy that exists for the ultra-wealthy in the world, and how scary that is. I wanted to do a horror story that just tapped right into the vein of my deepest fears about all of that, and try to really exorcise them out onto the page. So the second that we kind of had the core pieces, and we were all on the same page of what we wanted to build, the actual scriptwriting process happened pretty fluidly. It’s been just a wonderful experience.
SR: For you Elsa, it’s not often that you see a comic book artist so openly and expertly translating and stepping between art, storyboarding, and film blocking, as you do on your YouTube channel. Was that, as you said before, something you were doing in response to that ‘detour’?
EC: Well, to to be clear: I am still drawing comics, that is still going to be what I do with most of my time[ laughs]. I’m just happy to get on board with this new thing, and try and pick up new skills. To actually be completely honest, I went into this completely blind. I had no idea how to draw camera movement on a storyboard. All I’ve been doing for the past almost 10 years is thinking in panels, so thinking in the shortest amount, smallest amount of panels that you can use to tell the story. Obviously, breaking down a movie is very different. You have to think in movements rather than just cut away. So I was sort of unclear how to do that at first, but the good thing is that PK had a very, very precise idea of how he wanted the movie to feel, the camera to move with the actors, and with the blocking, and all of that.
The way we went about it is we talked a lot about how each sequence would play out, he would sometimes play act the things, and I would try and translate his rough sketches and his feelings into my storyboards. It has been a very steep learning curve, but I’m ecstatic. I think it was very fantastic experience. I learned a lot, and I think some some of it I’m going to take back to my comics work. But yeah, I’m just thrilled that I was able to do that very, very different thing for a while.
SR: I was going to ask if there is any way you could possibly do that process, and NOT have that in your mind now, when you next work with a writer.
EC: Maybe, yeah. I’m going to become a bigger pain for writers that I work with.
SR: For you PK, I assume that wanting to get your hands dirty in directing like this is never going to be the same as actually doing it. Maybe even realizing exactly what you have gotten yourself into. Has your enthusiasm and excitement remained intact?
PK: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And it’s way better now because of experience. We are more mature, obviously. From the beginning of this project, we’ve hired so many talented people, and every step of the way we got so many surprises, and so much incredible stuff. For example, we have Tonči Zonjić, who did the design of The Caretaker. That’s something I could have never afforded when I was a teenager doing movies [laughs]. And just the gear we have now, all those things. I don’t want to jinx it, but it was so easy. Every step of the way was just perfect. I am just ecstatic to do the next step of this.
SR: That perfectly sets up the question so many people will have when learning of ROOM SERVICE, and especially when they see the first artwork: who is The Caretaker?
JT: Oh, boy.
EC: Oh, boy.
JT: Something that I always think about when creating a new comic, and this is something that I’m trying to translate over into my work in film now, is that I always like thinking a lot about… ‘What is the key visual element?’ What is the thing, the character, or the feature that distills all of the themes and concepts behind it into a singular image? In a comic, you know, that’s what you put on the cover. But here, I still wanted to bring that approach to creating an iconic horror character. So The Caretaker is this sort of faceless embodiment of the services industry that preys on both the ultra-wealthy and the not-ultra-wealthy, in service of fulfilling the darkest desires of the the ultra-wealthy. Those ideas sort of all came together into this caretaker character. And, yeah, no, he’s real scary. I’m excited for people to meet him.
EC: I think comic book fans–movie fans as well, but comic book fans will respond really well to the design that Tonči came up with. Also to what James said about the fact that comic readers are used to these big, iconic characters, but there are so many iconic antagonists, I was really impressed that James found a way to create a new angle for The Caretaker. That just blew my mind that we could have done something so iconic and so new, and it’s going to be amazing.
Room Service is available to backers now through its official Kickstarter page.
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