Hello horror fans! Slayer here and today I'm going to be talking with the director and the cast of the upcoming fantasy/horror film, Fading of the Cries. The director Brian Metcalf and the actors Brad Dourif, Thomas Ian Nicolas, Elaine Hendrix, Jordan Matthews and Jessica Morris all join me in this exclusive interview.



Now Brian I want to start off with you, Fading of the Cries sounds like a very unique idea for a movie. How did you come up with the idea for it?

Brian: Well I was hit on the head as a little kid so that's pretty much it (laughs)

Thomas: That’s when he came up with the flux capacitor!

(laughter)

Brian: No I have always been fascinated with horror films and action movies so I thought a way to combine the two was a fascinating thing. I always liked the old zombie movies and movies with warlocks and all that stuff and super heroes so I thought it would be great to combine everything in one film. Roughly that's it in a nutshell.

And I also noticed that you take on a lot of different roles on the film. You're the writer, the director, a producer and visual effects supervisor. Why did you take on so many roles?

Brian: Well it wasn't by choice it was just umm having to do with budget constraints, no actually don’t write that (laughter) No but you know in order to have absolute control over the vision that I wanted, I really needed to show what I could do. You know they say you write a film three times, in writing stage, in the directing stage and in the editing stage, so in order for me to really get my vision across I felt I had to take on all those roles. In order to properly do it in my sense.

What was it like working with the cast you have sitting around you right now?

Brian: OH THEY WERE HORRIBLE!

Brad: And we hated each other

(Laughter)

Brian: No they were amazing, they are all fantastic people and because they are all sitting around me and can hit me over the head right now...but really they have all been amazing. I'm actually extremely honored to have such a talent group of actors who really know how to act and really know how to fit their roles and understand their characters really well.

I just want to go into the characters now so I guess I'll start off with you Brad. Can you tell us a little bit about your character Mathias?

Brad: yeah....he's mean. But really he is this guy who had a horrible thing happen to his family and he snapped. He is eternally furious and wants revenge, in a very bad way.



On a scale from 1-10 how badass do you think he is?

Brad: 10

A perfect 10?

Brad: I really don't think that there is any place where this guy feels any moral obligation to being anything at all other than mean, how’s that?

He sounds perfect actually, haha.

Brad: I mean if he could rule a country he would put everyone to death and cause the end of time and man. He would take it as far as he could take it, there really is nothing he wouldn't do.

I'll go back to Brian, can you explain a little bit or really anyone can explain, why is the movie getting a hard R rating?

Elaine: A lot of tits and a lot of dick get shown, Thomas you take that one.

(laughter)

Thomas: I think really the R rating comes from some of the moments that are a little graphic, which you really wouldn't see in a fantasy film so that's sort of how we are tingeing from fantasy and dipping our toes in the pond of horror.

And Thomas you are also a producer and you also tackle the role of Michael. What made you take on those dual roles?

Thomas: Brian made me do it. I mean again Brian and I have been working on getting this project made. I've been on board for about 6 years, Brian I'm not sure he probably started writing this when he was in the womb. You know it was one of those things when I came in initially I came in just to kind of help with getting the cast, being that I have been an actor for a long time. Then because of the smaller budget, you just have to pick up the slack where the slack is. It was definitely a worthwhile challenge to produce and act in this film.



And now I heard there is a lot of special effects in this film, did you guys do a lot of green screen work?

Thomas: Yeah we shot uh what was it 4 days? How many days did we shoot on green screen?

Jordan: I think it was 8. We also had a green screen on set and most of the time even though we were shooting on location there were often times when they would set up a green screen in the background.

Elaine: We heard probably at least 100 times a day or more "We'll fix it in post" "We'll create it in post" I mean whether there was a green screen there or not there are so many elements and just little details that are being done through special effects. For instance we had maybe 20 extras sprawled across the lawn, well when you see the film they'll be hundreds of people sprawled across the lawn and down the street.

Thomas: And set extensions. A lot of the things that we saw in person we wont even recognize when the film is done because of the work that Brian and his team will be doing to make everything look even more immense and expansive.

Jordan: Brian was even talking about how they have removed a lot of different things and put in all these beautiful paintings but there is also a couple scenes where they are not only adding like hundreds or even thousands of people to different scenes but they're changing up their look; their hair and their clothing and it looks just like this massive scene that takes place. Pretty much every single scene that their doing right Brian?

Brian: We're doing a lot. Definitely. We have over a thousand effects shots in this film which is normally a very high end visual effects based film.

Their looks to be a fair amount of sword play in the movie, did you guys have to do any special training?

Jordan: Brad and I actually did a lot of training. I did about 5 weeks of prior training, we had about 3-4 days a week for a couple hours a day and even once we got on the set it was a constant learning process. They were putting together different choreography for different scenes and all that stuff and it was a pretty intense process throughout the entire shooting.



Ok and Jordan, I read that prior to this movie you didn’t have any experience in a feature film -- what did Brian and the producers see in you that got you the role?

Jordan: Well it was interesting, because I had the opportunity to meet Brian shortly after I moved out here and we had stayed in touch a little bit. I had to go through a pretty intense testing process which was interesting, you go through interview processes and screen testing and then they bring you back in; Brian even had me come back in and read for all the roles. So a lot of time I had no idea what was really going on. You also have weeks in between where you're not really getting a call so you’re not really sure what’s going on.

I absolutely loved the character and sitting down with Brian, he'd written something that had this piece of him that is tremendously interesting to me and I feel incredibly honored to have the opportunity to hopefully to do justice to it in terms of bringing it to the screen, which is also due to working with some incredible actors who really show up and are really present and really give a tremendous amount for you to work with. All in all it was, it still is a very surreal process.

When can the general audience get to see the finished product? Can we expect a certain release date?

Brian: Well the general audience will be able to see this in 2010. That trailer you saw was a very early stage level. We have so many visual effects to work on this film, it's not even funny. We are only a quarter of the way through. So it takes time and we have all these digital sets. About a 4th of the movie is shot on green screen and so we have to build all those backgrounds for the actors to be in and create massive amounts of creatures, crows and bats and people turning into crows. It's going to be a while so I would say in 2010 it should be ready.

Jordan: Brian was also talking about the fact that a lot of big digital effects movies actually go through at least a year, if not even more, of post production. So this is a pretty big production they are putting together. So we're all really highly anticipating seeing this ourselves.

Now for the final question, you guys can just go around, tell me about your favorite experience while one the set.

Brian: My favorite experience was honestly wrapping up. (laughter) And the reason for that is because I could take a deep breath cause I was on adrenaline the entire time, not to mention that I have severe A.D.D. I could finally take a deep breath and finally relax and I think it was the first night that I got some sleep in months. It was just a great experience to say 'we finished it we got it done, it wasn't another disaster movie where we couldn't finish it for some reasons' I was just really happy everything worked out. My other fear was that maybe the film camera didn't capture all the film or something or who knows haha.

Brad: It was a whirlwind, it was very fast shooting and the problem was that a lot of it was action and where you have action, it’s very hard to do it quickly. Also, a lot of the scenes were more than 2 people which again is a traffic problem and it's very difficult to get the scenes to the point where they are working. My experience was that you would start the day and you would be conscious sometimes towards the end of the day and you would look back at it but it was such a whirlwind that it demanded so much concentration and attention that you didn't stop and smell the roses. There was no moment to relish, then you look back and see you got away with it and you say "how did we do that?" There was a couple of scenes with the swords where we were doing a scene and I was thinking "wow this is going by quick and its working" and I enjoyed that.

Thomas: well I was on the project for 4 weeks in pre-production, 4 weeks of principle, and then I escaped post...

Brian: not yet!

Thomas: oh damn..I spoke too soon.

Elaine: Well I played Maggie and I spent most of the time running and hiding and trying to figure out what’s going on and protecting and saving my daughters. I think one of the most standout moments was the scene where we were running from these zombie, evil, creatures and I got a real sense of what it would be like to be chased by these things. Where my adrenaline actually just shot through the roof and my body, and my heart was going 90 miles a minute. I thought 'if this was real life, all I would do is just shit my pants!' (laughter) Like I would be so scared if this was really happening because at that moment it just became so real to me and I thought that was pretty cool, haha.



Jessica: Oh yeah, I've been very quiet sorry I didn't have anything to say until now. So my favorite part of playing my character, Malyhne, was probably taking my make-up off (laughter) I mean it was really cool and it was such a transformation that I loved that I did it. It was like a 4 hour process and about an hour to take it off. But it was a little bit uncomfortable and when they scraped all the glue off my head that was my favorite part because I was myself again and no longer a demon.

Jordan: I guess there were a lot of really great parts, in general it was interesting because we were working at such a fast pace like Brad said and doing all these action scenes and learning them so quickly. I ended up with a lot of the make-up on me, which was blood and some of it my own. We did a lot of crazy cool fights and things where you look down at the end and your hands are messed up, which puts you in character. Also, I think like Elaine was saying there were a lot of moments where you're actually really feeling like you're there. I think the intensity of the movement and all the stuff that was going on really quickly gave you a great sense of that. There were moments that didn't feel like acting at all, just really felt like you were getting killed and beaten the crap out of. Which was definitely cool.

So it sounds like everyone had a great time working on this film

Elaine: Yeah we all had fun and you know independent films are really sink or swim and you’re in the trenches together and if you don't get along and if you’re not enjoying yourself you're just going to be miserable. So you kinda just do get along to get through the situation but we were lucky enough to have that natural chemistry.

Thomas: That was sort of my favorite moment, ultimately with all the hardships and challenges and work and this and that, my favorite part was just getting to make the movie. It's such a blessing when you can have a job. And we worked so long, and Brian especially. From writing it to us doing the concept trailer to Brian raising the financing, we worked so long so my favorite moment was when Brian called and said "WE GET TO MAKE THE MOVIE!"

Brian: And I just wanted to add that a lot of independent film sets that I've been on are really different. They normally focus on maybe 1 or 2 locations and smaller areas, we were all over the place. It was so visual effects intensive and it was just as complex as any major movie set I've been on. Also, since we were moving so fast I was very impressed at how the actors were extremely professional and just knew their lines, knew what they were doing, could repeat themselves and their mannerisms so well that in the editing process it just cut like butter.

So I just wanted to thank all of you for taking the time out of your day to talk to me and I also just wanted to say I can’t wait to see all of you in the finished product. We will definitely be keeping a lot of coverage on UHM and I hope to talk to you guys later.

UHM would like to thank Brian and the rest of the Fading of the Cries crew for giving us this great interview.