Director, Writer, Producer, and Cinematographer Scott B. Hansen – Interview

iHorror: I watched the movie just the other day, and I absolutely enjoyed it! I try and watch a film first before I begin looking at other reviews on the internet. I kind of read a lot of people hitting hard with the first have not meshed with the second half and all that. I really did not see that at all. I felt as though myself and the other reviewers were watching two completely different films; I didn’t see any of that stuff. I really enjoyed how you brought the tech world into it.

Scott B. Hansen: That is all you see nowadays. We were an ultra low budget film; we had as much as James Wan did on one day to pay for his food on The Conjuring. [Laughs}

iH: The whole film itself looked very professional; I did not get that low budget vibe that you sometimes get when watching these flicks. The cinematography I thought was beautiful, where did you guys shoot at?

SBH: We shot in Virginia. All the sets and the basement were built out of foam to save money. We found the house; I love the house it was a great find. Some of the elements were just so hard to find in other parts of the country, but in Northern Virginia, we found this creepy house that kind of became sort of the character.

iH: Oh yeah, definitely.The Ouija Board that you guys used, that was pretty intense I had never seen one like that before.

SBH: Yeah, we did a contest between our two special effects guys, and they were battling out which Ouija Board they could make better. We had two of them. We had one that was a more blockaded letter, creepy, and old. The other one was just straight up like a demon made it, just crazy; it was the one that ended up in the film. It is pretty burnt out and bad, I actually still have it. I had to keep that one.

iH: [Laughs] Yeah that was pretty cool, I had never seen one like that before. Usually, in film like this you get the standard “Parker Brothers” look.

SBH: Making a couple of them was fun, and it allowed for us to put a little bit more love into the story

iH: When you wrote this film did you specifically write the role for Bill as the priest?

SBH: It is funny how Bill got that. I’m a huge fan of Bill’s. I was one of the camera operators on Texas Chainsaw 3D four or five years ago. I had known Bill because I was trying to raise money to do my first horror film, you know I had always worked other roles to try and work up. I knew him barely, but I was friends with the director John Luessenhop who directed Texas Chainsaw 3D. I randomly called him up and said, “Hey John I am looking for someone to be a priest, I really want to ask Bill, but I don’t know him like that.” So he calls Bill, he read the script and said yeah “Bill would totally be interested.”He called Bill, and he is like at his daughter’s softball game, and John told him about the role of the priest, “so, yeah do you wanted to be like raped by a demonic girl in the film?” and he goes “fuck yeah!”

iH: [Laughs Hysterically] That is awesome!

SBH: At a softball game for his daughter, that is kind of hilarious. He is very family oriented, but the guy is awesome man. We had gone out afterward and watched a movie Godzilla; this was shot a few years ago. He hung out with the crew it was really nice, it was a great experience, I love that guy.

iH: He fit the part, I was shocked to see him in this type of role, he played it off.It was like 110 degrees when we shot that. So all that sweat is real, we had no air conditioning, and we were sweating buckets in there. The girl Kt Fanelli that played the possessed was a trooper with all that stuff on.

SBH: It was like 110 degrees when we shot that. So all that sweat is real, we had no air conditioning, and we were sweating buckets in there. The girl Kt Fanelli that played the possessed was a trooper with all that stuff on.

iH: The makeup was really good.

SBH: Yeah, I tried to go minimal on the makeup, not too over the top and not too crazy. Simple but effective.

iH: It was enjoyable. Starting off the film with that type of build up and climax immediately really kept me interested in what was going to happen next and it was a nice change.

SBH: Yeah, I appreciate that. There are a lot of different opinions out there, but at the end of the day, we made it a fun film. Added a little throw back to Wes Craven in there since he had passed away. It was what we kind of set out to do and I am hoping that it gets out there.

iH: Yeah, it seems like it is so hard nowadays to do that. Even though there are so many outlets now with the internet, it seems like it is difficult to get that product out there.

SBH: It is crazy now because you can do it right on Facebook. It is just like “hey I am trying to make a movie, here is my card.”

iH: Did you do any research for this at all or did you just go with it?

SBH: Actually yeah, I had a lot of research done on it. I have done a lot of documentaries. I have been camera ops on real life possessions in Brazil. I have all this other footage I was going to use for sequel/prequel type of thing, I didn’t want to use it in this movie. I had just a lot of inspiration from just being there. There was a documentary that came out a couple of years ago that I did a lot of work on. I saw two that were just mind blowing to me. Just to see that kind of stuff in real life. When you go into a country it is a whole different ball game when you talk about possession. When you are in America it is like, [sarcastically] “Oh yeah, that’s great The Exorcist.” But when you go into another country, these people live that stuff everyday. Religion is huge. I was just blown away by the scale of belief in other countries compared to here [America].

iH: Are those documentaries available to watch? One is still being edited actually. And another one is

SBH: One is still being edited actually. And another one is a special; the director is another guy named Craig. He took me to a bunch of places, and it was just crazy, some of the stuff I saw was just some nasty stuff [speechless]. Great for research.

iH: Do you have anything else coming up that you can talk about?

SBH: We are working on another movie with Sid Haig and Bill Mosely, and the film is kind of like a throw back to Tales of The Crypt.

iH: Nice

SBH: We haven’t announced that project officially yet but we are going to shoot that in the middle of next year [2017].

iH: I am sure that will be one worth watching. Thank you so much for speaking with me today it was a pleasure, the film was great, keep it up, I really cannot wait to see what is next.

 

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