Following its screening at the 'Dead By Dawn' Horror Film Festival 2006, Adam Mason's 'Broken' has steadily been garnering a deserved cult following amongst the genre community as one of the finest horror movies produced in years (a sentiment wholly agreed by all of the team here at SGM who have seen the movie, it's a classic). So to celebrate the horrific goodness that is 'Broken' our very own Stuart Willis has chained the films key protagonists to a tree to get the full bloody faced lowdown on this years big event horror experience…
Stu: Talk us through some of the financial obstacles you were up against when preparing for BROKEN.
Adam Mason (Writer/Director/Producer) : Well I'd been trying to get various movies off the ground for years! In actual fact, Broken was made purely as a reaction to the endless struggle to gain funding in the rat filled sewer that is the British film industry. The idea to do it actually arose IN the offices of Screen East in Norwich. I was with Simon. I had just driven 90 mins to Norwich to meet this guy called Bender (put it this way, the name was apt), and then they kept us waiting for about an hour in their poncy fucking office with a load of posters for big films they had next to nothing to do with. We'd sent them about seven or eight treatments for various scripts we'd written - all of which were, I'd say, commercial genre driven stuff. Deep down - I knew that nothing would come from it - so I started talking to Simon about how, if we walked out of this meeting with nothing - I was going to fund our own film, do it for nothing, just to show them, just to fucking show them.
Anyway - so we meet Bender and the meeting goes exactly as I'd expected. He went through the treatments one by one - 'not interested, not commercial, not commercial, not what we're looking for' - slapping them down on the table one after the other like a twat. It later became blatant that he hadn't even read them! Frankly I doubt he could read.... Eventually he got to one called 'until death do us part'. 'Until Death Do Us Part' was something Simon and I had written as a piss take of the kind of thing those organisations 'produce'.. It was purposefully bad.. a total piece of shit.
And, of course, that was the one for them.. He was like 'now this one....'
And my heart just sunk. What he meant was us getting some poultry amount of money to do a draft which would have barely covered my fuel budget, heading back and forth to Norwich, to useless script 'meeting' after useless script 'meeting'. How do I know this, I hear you ask??? Because I worked with The Film Council for about a year on a South African road movie called 'GOLD' - and it was the WORST experience of my life - worse that people around me dying and girlfriends cheating on me. In all honesty, I would rather contract syphilis than work with The Film Council again.
So - on the drive back from Screen East - having realised that I'd wasted more of my own life and money having a 'meeting' that was about as useful as pissing my own pants, I realised it was time to do what I'd always said I'd do anyway. Fund the fucking thing myself and be done with it. I remember smiling at Simon on the way home and saying 'well that's that then'. I told Nadya when I got in. 'We're doing it'.. and me and Simon started writing that day.
Nadja Brand (Producer/'Hope'): Well, we didn't have to go the route we took on the last two films by approaching private investors. This time we were going to pay for it ourselves. It was scary and liberating at the same time. We were going to pay for the film by making music videos in between shooting and from that fund the film. We were very lucky that our cast and crew were backing us all the way. They all accepted the terms of deferred payment. On such a low budget the luxuries just fly out the window and the comfort level drops. And with that comes frayed tempers and I already have a short fuse. We suffered, but I wouldn't change it for the world. Tesco value food was as posh as the catering got. Millions of buy one, get one free offers saved the day. We had so many people staying at our house, and it's a tiny house at that. By day two, I already needed my space. So as you can see I was pretty miserable and bitchy throughout the shoot. And that didn't help Adam at all. While I was bitching and moaning about crumbs on the counter he was worried about the first half of the film being cut. It was tough. But we did it. I am very proud…
Simon Boyes (Writer/Director) : The original idea of making Broken was that we wanted to go out and make something without any outside influence or financial investment so we could make something we wanted to make without anybody there to tell us what we could and couldn't do. Obviously after that decision was made it meant we would be dealing with a very low budget and that provided plenty of obstacles of its own, but the principle of not having to answer to anyone and not having to fight tooth and nail for a money man's approval was a bonus.
Obviously the downsides are having less money to make certain practicalities of shooting the movie a little easier. If something went wrong or if an unexpected problem occurred it could throw the movie into jeopardy.
Stu: How much did the film end up costing and how were those costs met?
Adam: Long story short, my wife Nadya and I run a pretty successful music video production company, and we funded Broken off the back of that. Actually initially off the back of four or five music videos.
We shot one a week during the first part of the shoot. I'd pay the (tiny) crew for one day full rate on the promo and they'd work for the rest of the week on Broken (or Day 41 as it was pathetically called back then). Everyone stayed at mine, or Simons house. Nadya - as well as acting did most of the catering. I was the AD, producer.. It was rough for us, as, in the beginning especially, it felt like we were just pissing in the wind, trying to do this thing that was just impossible.
It took a lot of, um, persuasive techniques... to put it frankly.. People were into it in the beginning, but slowly the reality of the situation dawned on us all, and we realised that this wasn't going to be a walk in the park! It was so brutal... so cold. Just miserable. It hit us pretty hard financially. We took everything we had from the music videos and chucked it into the production. The actual cost of the film is hard to gauge... It was very little in the scheme of things, put it that way - but for us it was a hell of a lot! We put everything we had into it! Initially me and Nadya took out a loan for £10,000 and bought the camera we shot it on and some other bits... But as the shoot progressed things added up... Going to Cannes to sell the film, feeding people for weeks and weeks, the FX, replacement bulbs, a mic we broke.. things add up and when you've got nothing.. it kind of hurts. Put it this way - 2005 wasn't a great year in the Mason household.... But we put our money where our mouth was! Which is more than I can say for the people and companies I'd been dealing with in the years prior to Broken.
Stu: Despite the budget pressures, what were the advantages of working totally independently?
Simon: The obvious advantages are total creative freedom. We could pretty much do what we wanted to do and as long as Adam and I agreed there was no-one else we had to run ideas and changes by. In terms of Broken, one of the major advantages was the ability to go back and re-shoot. After we finished the initial 30 day 'shoot from hell' we realised a lot of the things we had tried to do were not working with the resources we had. On a film with a bigger budget and with time constraints and deadlines we would have had to have made do but because we had no such pressures we were able to do an extensive rewrite and then go out and film new scenes that improved the finished film immeasurably. We pretty much discarded about 40 percent of the original cut and replaced it with all new scenes. This is something we never could have done if an outside investor had been pulling the strings. To be honest, it's probably the way all films should be made. Being able to watch a whole cut and then throw half of it away helped us out loads!
Nadja: There is a huge freedom that comes from funding your own stuff. At the same time it was my and Adams money and our risk and that caused a few domestics. I am a shrewd "business bitch" and when it comes to my own money being spent, I turned sour. It was a big lesson for me. I was trying to reign the money in while I completely understood why it had to be spent. Like a tug of war with myself. I learnt how to be more free with money. I think Adam loved the fact that there was no one to answer to. He was at the top. He had the ultimate say.
Adam: I'm a pretty sick guy. Most of my ideas go over people's heads. Dealing with the film council and Sky and those kinds of 'organisations'... they'd tend to love my initial ideas, then hate the details.. Because it's always just too dark for them... They'd be like 'you can't have a guy inject horse tranquilizer into his own cock' and I'd think 'why the fuck not'??
I mean - why are these people censoring themselves?? For what? It's pathetic. When people tell me I can't do something, I just get really angry. It was so great making BROKEN - creatively at least. We just did whatever the fuck we wanted/could afford. And that's what makes the film good. If you took away that hard edge it would just be shit. It was liberating. I can't speak for Simon - but for me it felt like I was expressing myself, the way I feel about things, the way I see people, the way I see the world. Most films are so dumb and fake. The real world is brutal and unforgiving and shows no mercy. The good guys never win. Personally I think that when you show audiences the real world, they respond. I mean - imagine Tom Cruise got his hands cut off in MI:3, or Kiera Knightly was beheaded in Pirates.. Its maybe not the thing most people would want to see.. but when I go to see a movie, I want to feel something. Most people aren't the idiots Hollywood take them for. I mean - look at Big Brother or shit like that. It's rubbish, but it's real. And people respond to that. It's the reason readers wives is so popular in porn. Guys know they'll never fuck Pamela Anderson... but the average looking girl in the local pub... maybe.. It's the same with violence. Just keep it real. And that's what I tried to do.
Stu: We know very little about you Simon. What experience did you bring to the production?
Simon: I met Adam straight after I came out of university and pretty soon after that we started writing together. When the idea of going out there and just making something for 'no money' came up Adam suggested that I directed the film with him. It was an amazing opportunity to be able to work with an experienced director like Adam and I learnt a huge amount as I went along.
I think Adam's one of very few people who would allow a guy with relatively little experience to co write and direct a movie with him and I'll always be immensely grateful.
Nadja: Simon was my best friend on this shoot, and boy did I need friends. I was bitchy, complained a lot and was a nightmare to have around, but somehow Simon could always make me smile. Being married to the director is a blessing as well as a curse. But in the end the experience brought everyone closer together. Friends for life!
Adam: Simon was like a godsend to me. I met him when he was about 20, four or five years ago. He was a runner on a lot of my early music videos. He was kind of quiet back then, but it struck me early on that he was super intelligent and had the exact same sense of humour as me. Simon's way beyond his years. Unlike me, he's really grounded. My ideas are all over the place. I'm frequently off my face, drunk. I'm like 'yeah - he'll mainline the tranq into his cock', and Simon will say 'well I like it, but how about if....' and it goes on like that. We riff off one another. It's exciting when we write stuff. We're like little kids. It's always the happiest time for me, the two of us sat around my kitchen table, grinning away.. coming up with stuff.
Simon's a bit more high brow than me.. He's got some 'proper' films in him. I'm locked in this cycle of wanting to shock people and Simon's with me for the ride for the time being. In the future, if we ever get a break, I think Simon will make a really intelligent Usual Suspects style Tarantino thing... I'll be trying to outdo Zombie Flesh Eaters or something!
Stu: And yourself Adam, what had you learnt from your previous directorial efforts? Which lesson benefited you the most on BROKEN?
Adam: I remember at film school back in '97 reading Rodriguez's book 'Rebel Without A Crew'. There's a bit in there where he explains his plan for after he'd finished El Mariachi... Basically he was going to keep making movies like, for fuck all, until he got noticed in Hollywood.. The thing with him was that he made a really good fucking movie straight off the bat and that was his ticket... For me, and for most directors, I wasn't that talented! I think that directing is like learning the guitar or something.. You've got to learn a load of different skills and it's really tough like that.. You're never going to pick up the guitar for the first time and play Stairway To Heaven on your first attempt. I think the idea of this maverick auteur, Tarantino or whoever has been kind of exaggerated.. If you look at the greats who emerged in the 70's - loads of then came from Roger Corman's stable.. doing cheap horror movies.. loads of TV. Spielberg, Coppola, Scorsese... It's vital to have that background, that core understanding. I don't think I'm even close to that yet, and I've done 4 features and 55 music videos now... I'm still learning... getting better. Or trying to at least.
Nadja: I think this was Adam's coming of age film. He suddenly had the confidence to believe he could do it. His previous films were like illegitimate children, created out of accidental fuck ups, but this one he is really proud of, its his baby.
Stu: And for the role of Hope. how did Nadja prepare for the role? Was any physical training required?
Adam: As far as the shoot was concerned, Nadja had it harder than anyone. I mean - she was chained to a fucking tree in December at night for most of it! It was truly brutal for her. Plus what makes it worse was that I'm a total asshole when I'm directing. For me - there's nothing more important than the film, and as far as I'm concerned - if you've committed to the film then that's it! Buckle up baby! And that was tough, because as a husband I'm not like that at all. Its two hats... But she got through it and did the best work she's ever done by a mile. I think she had something to prove there as well... just like me and Simon did. We just wanted to do good work and try to carve out a career for each of us..
Nadja: I didn't do any physical preparation for the part, but mentally I was geared up. I had to go through some pretty horrible stuff and to get the emotions on screen, sometimes had to make myself think terrible things. It was so hard shooting in the freezing cold. I am sunny person, I hate the cold. There we were in the middle of winter, freezing our asses off and I am chained to a tree for hours on end, not being able to get up, on the wet ground with not much on. Luckily for Colvin he was wearing, sheepskins, long johns, and a Drizabone coat! I think being miserable really helped me express my character and I hope it translated on screen. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. Mentally and physically, and I've been to Norway…
Stu: Nadja has worked with Eric Colvin (the kidnapper in BROKEN) in DUST and THE 13TH SIGN. Was it important to have an actor with a certain amount of familiarity, trust, to fill such a hostile role?
Simon: You could say that familiarity breeds contempt but I never would. I think they'd be the first to say that there was some tension between the two actors on set but looking back at it I think it was like that because of the roles they were playing. The relationship between the characters of the Man and Hope are so extreme and I think some resentment got carried over into the real world, which is understandable. The fact that they knew each other helped a lot though and at the end of the day it was mostly all smiles.
It was interesting to see how distant these two people who have known each other for so long became because they were caught up in the world's of their characters. Of course that's all over now and I think it helped their performances a lot.
Nadja: I think it may have been better to not have known each other. These is always a sense of respect you have when working with someone for the first time. A sense of keeping the peace and always putting your best foot forward. This was not the case on Broken. We had lots of conflict on set. It did help the characters, but not the general mood during the shoot. We have such different styles of working. I am methodical and precise, Eric was free and experimental. I think the worst part for both of us was when Eric accidentally dropped a huge log on my face during a take and cracked my top lip and front tooth. We had to stop filming for four days while the swelling went down. That was one of my lowest points. But in the end we worked it out and we made it work. I respect his sense of freedom and expression. I learned a lot from him.
Adam: I think it was tough on both of them. In a sense I think it would have been easier if they didn't know each other before the shoot, to keep that professional distance... because it was so tough, so brutal. Sometimes the line between reality and the film would blur.. I mean - Nadya would be chained to that tree most of the time, and it was tough for Eric to break out of character sometimes... We were working with stereotypes like that... The roles that are played out in society. But Nadya is feisty as fuck, and Eric was totally committed to his role. Any tensions only made the film better. It wasn't like we were trying to make a romantic comedy.
Nadja and Eric are fucking professionals. They turned up each day, over a period of 18 months and they did it. I've worked with a lot of 'professional' actors over the years, people like Billy Zane and Brad Douriff, and Nadja and Eric delivered time and time again. As a film, Broken's got nothing to hide behind. If the performances were shit, we'd have been buried. So many horror movies die because of weak performances. But Broken seems to work, and for me that's down to three things : Erik Wilson's lighting, me and Simons script, and Nadya and Eric's performances.
Stu: Abbey Stirling, the schoolgirl in the film, is a find. She looks familiar, but I could find no information on her. Can you enlighten us as to her background and how she became involved?
Simon: Abbey original auditioned for a part in another film Adam and I were going to do which was called Hearteater. She met us in a pub in London and read for the part and she was great. She was one of only a few people who liked the Hearteater script which massaged our egos so we cast her in Broken when we got it up and running. It's a really difficult part because her character comes into the story so late on and the relationship between Hope and the Man is so well established at that point but she did an amazing job of penetrating that setup. An incredible job considering she has no lines.
Nadja: We met Abbey while audition for what was originally The Hearteater and she was great. She was always up for anything and very professional. And she had the most annoying cry. I think she is fantastic!
Adam: Yeah - Abbey was totally cool. She had the most thankless role, but never seemed to complain, and I think she made the part her own.. I was well impressed with her from day one.
Stu: It looks like BROKEN could have been grueling on the actors. There's a lot of emotional intensity - and the film rarely shifts from a pitch-black tone. Was it as grueling as it looked out there? What efforts were made to lighten the tone while shooting?
Simon: It was seriously grueling. The actors will testify to that. They told Adam and I many times. It was a freezing cold English winter and we were in a forest late at night surrounded by dead pheasants. It stank. The actors were freezing because the costumes weren't exactly winter wear and the whole experience on a comfort level was pretty miserable. In terms of the intensity of the subject matter it did definitely get pretty bleak at times. There aren't many light moments in the film and the weather and location conditions really piled on the misery. It was a great group of people though so we got through it okay. If there were any attempts to lighten the tone I don't remember them. I guess they all failed.
Nadja: As I have said before, Simon was my knight in North Face armour. I am quite a needy actor and he made me feel a sense of worth. The conditions were extreme. I even had to ask to be unchained to go for a pee! The character had to go through a process of being broken down. And I was. It was a dark time. I don't think any words will ever bring justice to how awful it was.
Adam: It was hellish. I've shot a lot of stuff, and it was the worst experience of my life. We shot the bulk of it during four weeks in November/December 2004, in a wood with no toilets.. no heating.. no where to go except bail out if it rained. There was zero comfort. I've shot in -25 degrees in Norway and that was easy compared to Broken. We had the Canon XL2 that I shoot a lot of music videos on, three lights and my friend (director) Jakes West's 416 mic (that we broke three weeks in).
It was miserable... truly miserable. At lot of things went terribly wrong, which I won't go into here.. but looking back, in spite of that (or probably because of that) - I have never done anything I am more proud of. Because we did it despite all the odds, with everyone against us, after years of being generally fucked about by a bunch of useless, SoHo House drinking cunts, who wouldn't know a commercial film if it came on their ugly faces.
Stu: The film claims to be based on a true story. Is there any truth in this? If so, please provide more information on the source material.
Simon: It's true in so far as sometimes men kidnap women. And forests exist. And some men think a woman's place is in the kitchen. But not me of course.
Nadja: Of course it's true! It happened. Somewhere…We just don't know about it.
Adam: As I said before.... the world's a cruel place.. and some fucked up shit goes on out there.
Stu: The version of BROKEN that's currently being shown at festivals (Dead By Dawn, Fright Fest etc) - is that likely to be the final cut? I ask because I'd hate to see it compromised by a potential distributor who wanted to "lessen" it's darker elements. Where do you all stand on this?
Simon: That is the final cut. It won't be compromised or watered down. From a personal point of view I'd rather it didn't get released than get released in some watered down softer version. Maybe that's not the smart, commercially driven answer, I don't know. On the other hand, I think the audience we're trying to reach will love the dark tone. There's too much soft shit around these days but it looks like darker movies are starting to come back in at last after this terrible 12A horror phase we've had to endure. I guess movies like Hills Have Eyes and Wolf Creek are making dark, violent horror cool in the mainstream again and that's great news for everyone.
The darkness in Broken is crucial to the story and any attempt to lessen the intensity would be to the detriment of the film without a doubt. The great thing about the response we've had to the movie is that people seem to get that the gore and the violence and the dark subject matter aren't simply gratuitous. They're essential to the story and so far people seem to get that.
Nadja: I love Adams quote "this isn't Horror Lite". We made a film that we would want to see. Extreme, real, hardcore!
Adam: Yeah - I heard they had to cut the end of The Descent... Well I guess they had a bigger budget and more to lose. Broken's our film. If you fuck with it... you will die.
Stu: The violence in BROKEN is brutal and unflinching, yet never gratuitous. How much of this was a conscious effort. Can you elaborate on your attitudes towards screen violence?
Adam: Personally I think that human beings are stimulated by violence, angst, pain... preferably other peoples. Nothing makes you feel more alive than seeing someone else suffer. It's the reason the news is on fifty times a day... Just to remind you that other people are suffering more than you.. so you're comparatively better off!
Personally I hate violence.. I've seen enough of it in my own life, and I know violence feels like from a victims POV. When you've gone through stuff like that, many films seem obsolete in their approach. It pisses me off when I see most horror films, because I know what it's like to be truly horrified. Those emotions you feel, that feeling of abject terror - films like Cabin Fever or House On Haunted Hill or whatever - they don't even come into play... I don't mean films like Braindead or Evil Aliens because they take violence to a different level, where it plays out like slapstick, for gross out reasons. I love that kind of thing. But true violence is very different. Most people will do anything to avoid it. It's rooted deep within us, that fear. And I like playing with that. There's no greater horror than seeing you wife or mother or sister or child hurt... Men can deal with their own shit as far as I'm concerned. But women and children... there's just no excuse. But open the newspaper today and you'll read ten stories as disturbing as Broken.. Violence is never far away from us. And it's not going to go away. When you see something like the original Texas Chainsaw, or Jacobs Ladder, Seven, or recently Wolf Creek - those films grab you by the throat.
For me, there's nothing more scary than reality, and all the best horror films are played totally straight, and without happy endings.
Nadja: As with anything, it is your choice to watch it (violence on screen) or not. I don't think the violence in Broken is as much intentional for a shock value as it is real. For me it was all about making it believable and real. I love the fact that films can affect the audience. I cried like a bitch during Wolf Creek at some of the scenes of violence, and that was pretty embarrassing as I was sitting next to the director at the screening at Fright Fest! I'm not sure how I would feel if someone in my family had gone through something similar. I am a softy at heart.
Simon: I have a pretty open attitude to screen violence. I think an adult can pretty much sit through anything, as long as it's simulated, and they should certainly be given the choice to. There are movies where the gore is just thrown up there on screen and it's to thrill and entertain and shock and I have no problem with that. Is the gore in Evil Dead gratuitous? Sure, but it's great fun and a great movie so what's the big deal? In Broken the violence is, I think, pretty hard hitting, but it serves a purpose. It comes at certain key story points and it's symbolic in the changing dynamic of the relationship between Hope and the Man. When Hope's leg is broken it comes immediately after the Man divulges the most crushing blow emotionally by telling Hope about her daughter's fate. Hope's at her lowest point and literally breaks. Other violent moments have pretty strong symbolic leanings too, such as the tongue cut which I guess works on that basic old fashioned principle of 'being seen and not heard'. It was very much a conscious effort. We could have chucked a ton more gore in there but it has to serve the story because that's key to a film like this. That's not to say that fans of straight out gore won't love it. The violence in this movie is for everyone.
Stu: The film was originally going to be called THE HEARTEATER. How important is a title? Is it something that is agonised upon throughout production?
Simon: There were so many titles that we went through for this movie. As I said the Hearteater was actually a different script altogether and there's been some confusion about that but they were totally different ideas. Broken started out as 'The Forest.' Then it became 'The Garden,' then 'Eden,' then 'Day 41.' The idea behind that last one was that if you knew you were watching Day 41 and then you saw the day title cards coming up, you would know that when it reached Day 41 on the title cards all hell was going to break loose. Me and Adam came up with that whilst stuck in a traffic jam on the way to buying a computer from an eBay seller. Random but true. In the end we just thought it was too sci-fi sounding, and it also gave us no future option to take out the day cards.
Eventually it came down to Adam and I sitting in our respective houses going through the Thesaurus and texting lists of possible words to each other. Broken just seemed to fit really well with the themes of the movie so it stuck for good.
Titles are important of course. For many people approaching a movie it's the first thing they see and it has to sum up the movie and seem appealing at the same time. Broken just seemed punchy and fit well with the subject. It took us a while to get to it but I'm glad it stuck.
Stu: Where in Cambridgeshire was BROKEN shot? Presumably it was all done guerilla-style, without permission. Can you describe any difficulties encountered?
Simon: This story would be cooler if we hadn't gotten permission but we did. The people who owned the land were really good about us filming there and we've been back a lot of times since reshooting and never had a problem. The biggest difficulty was that it happened to be directly under the flight path of a light aircraft flight school and the noise from the planes was a constant problem.
The forest's really close to where Adam and Nadya live which was convenient but I can't give away the exact location because I'd hate someone else to go there and experience the same misery we did.
Nadja: Yes, it was mostly shot in Cambs. We live really close by and one day Adam and I just drove around looking for locations and came across the perfect spot. We were able to get electricity and an actress to play Jennifer. Bonus! Some shots were done in Leicester Square and at another director friend of ours house in Camden.
Stu: Does anyone have any particular anecdotes from the shoot they'd care to share? Is it a shoot that will be looked back upon with fond memories?
Simon: Now that the film's finished and we're really happy with how it turned out it's easier to look back with 'fondish' memories. There was lots to be positive about but it didn't often feel like it at the time. If you'd asked me while we were doing it I'd have said it was hell but now I'm just glad we did it. Also it was my first film so I'll always look back on it fondly from that perspective.
Nadja: As for things going wrong where do you start! It was freezing, shit food, no loos, a mic broke, my face broke we all hated each other and we re-shot the whole first half of the film. As horrible as it was, it is a bit like getting a tattoo, once the initial excruciating pain has gone, you look at it as a beautiful, artistic creation.
Adam: I don't look back at any of it fondly. It was a horrible, horrible experience that hurt me badly financially. I remember halfway through the initial shoot phoning Jake West and having a long chat with him. I was going to throw the towel in. I was just sick of it.. it seemed impossible what we were trying to do! But Jake talked me round. He was like 'listen man - Its a couple more weeks. What do you have to lose!'.... Its hard to explain now - how miserable an experience it was. I just fucking hated it.
But getting the response we've had from audiences - well that's better than anything I've experienced in my life! Its bewildering... Just fantastic.. It makes it all worthwhile.
Stu: Tell us a little about the very impressive FX work. Who are the guys responsible?
Simon: Two different people worked on the FX side. One of them, Nathan, was on board for the original shoot and then Tristan Versluis, who worked on Adam's previous feature Dust, came onboard for the re-shoots.
Adam: Tristan's like my little brother. I've worked with him since he was 17.. And he's a total genius. I'm really happy with all the FX in BROKEN. Both guys did a great job.
Stu: What happens now for BROKEN? The word-of-mouth surrounding the film appears to be picking up momentum by the week. What plans do you have in place to capitalise on this?
Simon: It's great that people are responding to the film and enjoying watching it. That's really the goal of any film and I'm glad it's working out at the moment. Obviously the next step is to get it distributed and out there to a wider audience. The word of mouth and websites like this are helping loads with that so cheers.
Nadja: I am overwhelmed at how well it is doing! I know it sounds clichéd but when you are making a film, you have no idea if the audience is going to respond well to it. I would love for this film to go theatrical and see it on a big screen. This one is for the fans!
Adam: well - the thing is - since me and Nadya paid for it.. we can do whatever the fuck we want! We've got to spend more money getting the sound sorted out (more than the film cost I'm guessing!).. and then that's it.. I'm going to wait to see how it plays out at the festivals for the rest of the year.... I've had a LOT of offers for the film, but I'm in no hurry. I'm going to wait for the rest of the year to see if fans keep enjoying it.. then go with the best release we can get in 2007... I just want to get a limited theatrical.... But I guess we'll see... In the mean time - any fans who can't get to a festival to see it can email me and I'll send a DVD out to them (assuming that I don't get hundreds of emails!)... I just want people to see the film and enjoy it. Its not about making money for me... Its long term for me. Its about my career.
Stu: Any last words for SGM readers?
Nadja: If you like it tell everyone. And I mean everyone!
Simon: When it comes out, buy it.
Adam: Or email me if you want it for free! Ha Ha.
For more information on 'Broken' and the impressive work of the Brand/Mason team check out their official site by clicking here.
Special thanks to Adam, Nadja and Simon for their contribution. Thanks also to Adele, Gunnar and Stu.