Last month we caught a look at a new trailer for Nacho Vigalondo’s EXTRATERRESTRIAL, and despite not know exactly when the flick will be released this summer, the Spanish filmmaker has spilled some guts about the humorous romantic sci-fi outing. Let’s get right to it!
While speaking to Filmmaker Magazine, Nacho covered a lot of ground regarding his new film. here are a couple of snippets:
“Extraterrestrial first originated as a short film before I wrote the feature-length draft, and the first sequence I wrote was a scene for the night before [the invasion]. When it came time to shoot, I decided not to do it because of the reason you said: the ambiguity at the beginning is so attractive and makes sense in the context of the whole film. It’s not only pure ambiguity, it also puts the audience very close to the character’s perception. If the characters don’t remember what happened the night before, neither does the audience. As a filmmaker, I wanted to push myself into shooting this mute sequence at the beginning. I was going for something Hitchcockian, where the action is all shown from the perspective of the character. It’s like Rear Window in that way, we only see what he sees. This really allows you to get close to the characters. That ambiguity also means the film doesn’t reveal itself right away. Even though in many ways it is a romantic comedy, you don’t know this at the beginning. Is it a suspense film, is it a horror film? I love to be ambiguous not only in the sense of what I’m showing and hiding, but also in the tone. If you think the movie is a comedy, I love to work the horror aspect, if the scene will allow me to do that”
He continued with this:
“One of the films I had in mind when writing this was Cloverfield. At the time, Cloverfield was in theaters, and I really love that in that film, as a human being, you are just there. Even if you are a victim of the disaster, the disaster in Cloverfield being a big monster, the fact is the monster doesn’t care about you. In fact, he doesn’t even know he’s killed you because you are so infinitesimal. I love that in Cloverfield you have this love story that somehow gets solved, but the big story doesn’t get solved at all, because the character disappears before the big disaster comes to a conclusion.”
Michelle Jenner (below), Carlos Areces, Julian Villagran, Raul Cimas and Miguel Noguera all appear in the pic.
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