Director talks Fading of the Cries

Out now in theaters, is writer/director Brian A. Metcalf’s ambitious indie, Fading of the Cries (review here). Mixing the horror, anime, and fantasy genres together, the film has taken a long approach to finally finishing, thanks to its over 1000 visual effects shots.

Jacob, a young man armed with a deadly sword, saves Sarah, a teenage girl, from Mathias, a malevolent evil that has begun plaguing a small farmland town while in search of an ancient necklace that had belonged to Sarah s Uncle…

Killer Film caught up with director Brian A. Metcalf to talk about the film on the eve of its release. Read on!

Jon: In the press notes, it said the script went through numerous changes. What were they and when was the final shooting script completed?

Brian A. Metcalf: You know, some of those changes happened during filming. We had issues like getting kicked out of our sets, number of other areas like fires, rescheduling actors, unfortunately. We had to change the ending, the fights, just to make it work and coherent to clarify.

Jon: The film is noted for the 1000 visual effects in it, which is unheard of for an indie. What made you confident about this ambitious undertaking?

Brian A. Metcalf: We never intended to have that many FX shots to begin with. The reality was there were shots we needed to finish a scene, like in backgrounds. We never intended to do 1100 FX shots, but it just became that way in post. Between some of the shots we had and had to work with, we took B-roll footage and scenes of actors and reconstructed a scene that wasn’t working well. It was stuff we did that people won’t know were the FX shots. It wasn’t by choice, it just happened, we were trying to just make the film happen.

We ran into other problems like extras not showing up, so we created digital extras, stuff like that. That’s how it all worked out; generators not lighting the scene right, fires, everything that could go wrong for an indie, did.

Jon: How long was it in post, to accomplish all of this?

Brian A. Metcalf: From 2009 to late 2010, so it was awhile, since we had a very small group of artists working on it.

Jon: Explain casting American Pie‘s Thomas Ian Nicholas, and how did he become on of the film’s producers?

Brian A. Metcalf: Tom and I met working on a concept trailer way back in 2001. We initially wanted to do Fading of the Cries then, and Tom was going to be the lead. I promised him that I would make him a producer on it, since we had been working on it for so long. When we finally got the funding, I called him and he still wanted to do it. It’s taking a while to get this project off the ground.

Jon: What role was the most difficult to cast?

Brian A. Metcalf: Hmm, what role…it’s strange because with indie films we had an extremely short pre-production time, and our investors at the last minute cut our pre-production down to one month. So we were scrambling to get auditions in and I think these difficult roles were for Halle Hirsh and MacKenzie Rosman.

Jon: Talk about shooting for the long 12-hour plus days. What was it like on-set for your feature film debut; it sounded brutal.

Brian A. Metcalf: If it was a 12-hour day, it was a good day. What ended up happening was, we were up against the clock, and when we were on location, they would rush us out, even though we had like a few days to shoot there. Situations like that made us rush through the day to get everything. We were wearing multiple hats, so to speak. Thomas Ian, for example, was helping the prop makers built this bridge prior to a scene. It was exhausting, yet I was thankful for everyone’s hard work.

Jon: The film is a hybrid of genres, and it’s fun trying to describe what it is, but even with your influences, how do you think the film eventually morphed into its own thing?

Brain A. Metcalf: It’s interesting. I would considered it a fantasy. I didn’t set out to make a “horror” film but with the zombie aspects, people label it as such. I set out to make a film with hopefully a good story and interesting visuals, and try to do the best we could. I would personally call it a fantasy. Like you said earlier, it’s like a live-action anime in a lot of ways.

Fading of the Cries is out now in LA and NYC.