The marketing of horror films often ends up including statements along the lines of you’ve never seen anything like this before or those with a heart condition will die in the first 5 minutes! Stuff like that. When it comes to the upcoming adaptation of the SILENT HILL video game, though, get that hyperbole machine going. This f*cker has looked aces from the get go, and now an interview with F/X master Patrick Tatopoulos over at IGN FilmForce has me even more excited.
IGNFF: How big of a challenge has Silent Hill been so far?
TATOPOULOS: Silent Hill was a completely different deal… The challenge of Silent Hill was actually resolved pretty quickly because the director told me, ‘Patrick, I want those guys to look like they are made of plastic,’ which is exactly the opposite of what we do usually. We try to make them look like they are not plastic. There’s a style to the videogame which is quite amazing. They all look like dolls – you know, surreal… That’s the quality that the director likes.
So with Silent Hill, the cool thing is we take this world and create new designs that you haven’t seen before. I won’t tell you too much, but there are things you don’t know from the videogame – much crazier stuff even … So, the challenge of Silent Hill was ‘How do you make this work?’ We had to rethink completely the technology we use today. All the things we have used before, we barely used on that movie. We used a different type of fabric, we used rubber to create that different [look]. Initially, there will be a mix of CGI and practical, but we did deal pretty much in practical… That was a fantastic shoot.
My level of excitement about this flick has just entered into previously unknown realms. Now excuse me while I go clean up my pants.
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