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By James Wan and Leigh Whannell,
as told to Pat Sisson
When they came up with the idea for the horror movie Saw, Aussie mates James Wan and Leigh Whannell expected to make the movie in their backyards with a cast and crew of friends. After all, these Melbourne film school grads didn't dream that they could stir up interest from Hollywood halfway across the world. Armed with a creative sales pitch and a highly original script that asks "how much blood would you shed to stay alive?" the duo eventually garnered a bit of financial backing for their project, which they shot in two weeks. And much like The Blair Witch Project, the meagerly funded Saw proves that a small budget doesn't always mean an inferior flick. Saw -- starring Cary Elwes, Danny Glover and Monica Potter -- received a Sundance premiere, rave reviews and a perfect pre-Halloween release date from Lions Gate Films. Director Wan and co-writer Whannell share their advice for funding and filming that horror film idea you've been dying to get made.
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Isolate the situation, and forego big sets and special effects. "Today, with some of these home computers and James's model-building skills, we could have achieved spaceships and stuff, but they would have only looked like really good model spaceships," says Whannell. "We thought rather than go that route, we'd isolate the situation and just show the story of two people trapped in a room." The cheap formula also helps make the writing process more streamlined, eliminating distractions. |
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"Storytelling is what it's all about," says Whannell. "If you come up with a good story it's guaranteed, 100 percent of the time, that someone out there will be interested." A good script doesn't cost any more than a bad one, and without a big star, explosive special effects or gigantic set pieces, you need everything you can to get the audience's attention. "It forces you to come up with things that are a bit more out there than you would get from a more mainstream film," Wan says. "It's all about out-thinking the audience, and that's difficult because the modern audience is pretty smart. If they hear there's a twist, they look for it. I have to put myself in the crowd and think what would fool me." |
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Film one pivotal scene from your script and pull out all the stops. Whannell explains, "Urban Legend was made by a guy from Melbourne called Jamie Blanks. He went to film school in Melbourne and he had attracted attention after shooting some short horror films in school. He went out and shot a trailer for I Know What You Did Last Summer with his own money. By the time he finished making the trailer they had picked a director, but his trailer was so good -- he had helicopter shots and everything -- it got him Urban Legend." Whannell and Wan spent $2,000 of their own money to film the "jaw trap scene" from Saw, which captured the attention of producers and potential backers. |
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Simple tricks can create cool shots. Everything you do as a director figures into the budget, even something as simple as the filming technique. That's why Wan avoided long, expensive tracking shots in favor of a raw, hand-held aesthetic. "During our car chase scene, all we did was film the driver in a parked car and have a few guys shake the car," explains Whannell. "It was cheap, but that shot came out really well." Props also shouldn't be overdone. When the filmmakers were deciding on booby traps, Whannell was intent on creating a huge metal cocoon that would pick up a victim and fold him into a box. "I just said let's do shotguns," says Wan. "Shotguns always work." |
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Off-screen, implied killings "add to the mythology of the antagonist" and save money on costly death scenes, explains Wan. "It's like The Usual Suspects," adds Whannell. "You hear about all these killings by Keyser Soze, and it makes the threat seem bigger." |
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Since the movie-making process is so drawn out, and years go by between writing the screenplay and making the movie, it's easy to get hung up on your original vision. "From an artistic point of view, when you have to compromise it saps your energy and it makes you feel pretty down," says Wan. "But then you have to step back and look at what you're getting and look at what you did accomplish." Whannell adds, "Filmmakers never say their movie is 100 percent perfect. Finishing this movie was like giving birth -- I felt it was like this ugly little baby came out at the end. I wanted a boy, but we got the seed of Chucky. It didn't look exactly as we planned, but in terms of the message of the film it worked just as we originally intended." |
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Blood on a Budget
From Night of the Living Dead to The Blair Witch Project, Playboy.com lists the
best cheap horror flicks of all time.
Wan and Whannell photo: Mark Mainz |
