Speaker 1: H oh g is, folks.
Speaker 2: It's show tied.
Speaker 3: People say, good money to see this movie.
Speaker 4: When they go out to a theater. They want clod sodas,
Speaker 4: hot popcorn and no monsters in the protection booth.
Speaker 3: Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring. Don it off. You used
Speaker 3: to czar of the Telo on your neros to a
Speaker 3: mast motor, so it's a dirty sell a.
Speaker 5: Hey, folks want too. A special episode of the Projection Booth,
Speaker 5: I'm your host, Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking
Speaker 5: with Sandermaran, the writer and director, and Jan Andressen, the
Speaker 5: producer of the new film Chainsaws Worth Singing. This is
Speaker 5: a film that was I think eleven years in the making.
Speaker 5: It is a musical. It is about a chainsaw wielding killer.
Speaker 5: It is wonderful. Thank you so much for listening to
Speaker 5: this interview. Definitely find chain Saws Were Singing. It is
Speaker 5: currently making the rounds at festivals. You can find out
Speaker 5: more chainsawsworth Singing dot com. Thanks so much for listening
Speaker 5: and I hope you enjoyed this interview. Tell me a
Speaker 5: little bit about you guys. How did you get into
Speaker 5: filmmaking and how long have you been working together?
Speaker 3: We met back in twenty ten. I started making short
Speaker 3: films back in high school, which was two thousand and
Speaker 3: eight something like that. Jan as well separately, and then
Speaker 3: our path crossed and then we Yeah, we did a
Speaker 3: bunch of short films which was it's pretty crazy, and
Speaker 3: we tried it doing some special effects there and a
Speaker 3: couple of successful short film projects, which ultimately led us
Speaker 3: to change house. We're singing because we were figuring why
Speaker 3: do we keep doing these shorte little things when we
Speaker 3: could just spend our time and focus on one big thing.
Speaker 3: And there was a lot of time on this film
Speaker 3: with Yeah, so this was.
Speaker 5: Your first feature. What kind of challenges did you have
Speaker 5: making such a long feature compared to all the shorts
Speaker 5: we've been doing.
Speaker 6: The film school that we went to and everything has
Speaker 6: taught us how to do like a short movie, So
Speaker 6: we had no idea how to do that feature one.
Speaker 6: So in a way, it's under even wrote the script
Speaker 6: in a way that every scene is a short movie
Speaker 6: with a beginning, mid part and then.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it was basically like get twenty eight short
Speaker 3: stories or sketches even, I'd say, and that's what gives
Speaker 3: the film the sort of money. Quiet on esque sketch structures.
Speaker 3: We just want to just have some cool shit happen
Speaker 3: there and just across the lines or how we can
Speaker 3: get from one situation to another so it makes sense.
Speaker 3: And again that was our main main challenge, just coming
Speaker 3: from the short film background, that you don't really think
Speaker 3: about the narrative as a whole, and how are you
Speaker 3: going to keep the viewers interested? Sort of get the introduction,
Speaker 3: then you get the introduction, then you developed the story
Speaker 3: and then you come to a climax of the story
Speaker 3: with every short film, but it turned out that you
Speaker 3: only can keep the middle part or else it's just
Speaker 3: going to drag way way too much.
Speaker 6: So that's pretty much what we learned basically in the
Speaker 6: script wasn't written in the right format.
Speaker 3: Usually you have the Celtics, a no Celtics, no Curier
Speaker 3: new fontsying like that, there is a way to do it,
Speaker 3: and we didn't.
Speaker 6: We better had just like a microsoftort document with it
Speaker 6: was very chaotic, so we had no idea how along
Speaker 6: the movie was going to be. So the first cut
Speaker 6: was like three and a half hours or something. That
Speaker 6: was back in twenty thirteen when we wrote and shot.
Speaker 6: To think I believe we've grown a bit wiser since then,
Speaker 6: just a bit maybe. So there was a bunch of
Speaker 6: dumb stuff that we ended up cutting out, and we
Speaker 6: unless the bunch of dumb stuff in.
Speaker 5: Of course, where did you find your cast? I love
Speaker 5: everybody that's in this movie.
Speaker 3: Yet, first we reverse engineered, like Robert Dodriguez taught us,
Speaker 3: if you have a friend and use him if you
Speaker 3: have your kid brother, we did.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 3: I knew some twins for back in college, and I
Speaker 3: knew I wanted them to be in the film in
Speaker 3: exactly the same way they are. I'm not going to
Speaker 3: give away spoilerers, but yeah, twin with the Chase Saws.
Speaker 3: And also Carl Jose who plays the main character Tom.
Speaker 3: He was one of our crew as well. We've been
Speaker 3: making the short film with him since high school. Then
Speaker 3: the yond character who's plays the goofy goofball guy. He
Speaker 3: actually turned out was a big fan of our previous
Speaker 3: short films, so when we contacted him, he was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean whatever, I didn't need to read the script. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'll do it whatever it is. So that was cool.
Speaker 3: And Laura will play Maria in the film. We actually
Speaker 3: found through casting which was a killer. Yeah. Also the
Speaker 3: killer character I recalled, I had seen him somewhere in
Speaker 3: a short film and so I contacted him. He's otherwise
Speaker 3: at music festival producer at a film producer, so he
Speaker 3: didn't have a long background in acting. And also all
Speaker 3: of my friends and family are in distinct they die
Speaker 3: one way or another. But yeah, what else was there?
Speaker 3: I think that pretty much covered the female character at first,
Speaker 3: before we found Laura needs to play Maria. We got
Speaker 3: plenty people to show up at a casting and once
Speaker 3: they realized what the film was about, what the sprit
Speaker 3: was about, they just left. So at one point we
Speaker 3: were actually really afraid that we have written a film
Speaker 3: that was just unplayable for any momental wants to do
Speaker 3: like serious films or whatever. So it was so great
Speaker 3: we found her.
Speaker 6: Oh and the female main antagonist that we did the
Speaker 6: previous project with her, a short movie, Yeah, Rid the
Speaker 6: rat Step played the place the.
Speaker 3: Evil mother was in our previous short film Curiosity Kills,
Speaker 3: which was also somewhat successful on genre film festivals, in
Speaker 3: which and also with my kid brother plays in that
Speaker 3: one who was also in the film. And by the way,
Speaker 3: that fun fact the little kid brother from the film
Speaker 3: with the Cross Spoke. He was twelve when we shot
Speaker 3: the thing. Then he went through middle school, grade school,
Speaker 3: high school, college, amendatory what is it the amandator hornby
Speaker 3: Army constructor description thing we have in Stonia. And now
Speaker 3: as a twenty three year old, he's joined our film
Speaker 3: as a producer. So now he is a full time
Speaker 3: producer here. And also he is in the film, actually twice,
Speaker 3: he's in the film as a grown up as well.
Speaker 3: It was one of the last things we shot is
Speaker 3: in the gas station sequenced with the shootout. He's actually
Speaker 3: one of the last big big times. If you watch
Speaker 3: it very closely, Hysteros has grown up, don Trivia.
Speaker 5: Were you guys inspired by Richard Linklater with that whole
Speaker 5: boyhood thing where we're gonna start here and wait twelve years?
Speaker 3: Absolutely not, although someone pointed out that technically our film
Speaker 3: did take longer to make it to the audience. Now,
Speaker 3: it was never intended hell, someone said that, Yeah, So
Speaker 3: we shot the team twenty thirteen, and initially it was
Speaker 3: going to be ready by twenty fourteen, That's what we
Speaker 3: promised our our home genre film festival, and then we
Speaker 3: said maybe next year. And at one point they just
Speaker 3: stopped asking us. But yeah, it was never meant it
Speaker 3: to be this way. Just ten years for post production
Speaker 3: is not something you plan on happening in your life.
Speaker 5: So what was taking eleven ten years to do in post? Right?
Speaker 6: Basically, like all the stars aligned when we were shooting,
Speaker 6: so everybody was doing it for free and crazy enough
Speaker 6: during that summer people had time, yeah, and they were
Speaker 6: up for it. And then when we had finished with
Speaker 6: our principle photography, then everybody moved on with their lives
Speaker 6: and got like digs working somewhere. So Saunder was the
Speaker 6: only guy who had ye time to deal with it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I got a comment, Okay, so the film
Speaker 3: should be I think it was about sixty four days
Speaker 3: all in all, and we shot mostly during summer, and
Speaker 3: it's also dripped in the autumn. But yeah, I'm pretty
Speaker 3: sure I got some serious PTSD from the film shoot,
Speaker 3: just because it was very fun but very tiring, just
Speaker 3: two hours of sleep and then but I smoked way
Speaker 3: too many cigarettes during the day, and it's just it
Speaker 3: was just harrowing when the when the film shoot stopped,
Speaker 3: everyone was just congratulating us to yeah, it's finally over,
Speaker 3: but I knew that all of dear Lord. Okay, so
Speaker 3: now I have eight thousand video files and it took
Speaker 3: me two months to just to log and rename the
Speaker 3: files to get it systemized, not us the figure on
Speaker 3: the idea yet, not even talking about the audio recordings
Speaker 3: that we did have. So yeah, just to get a
Speaker 3: brief timeline. For two years I edited, which was all alone,
Speaker 3: which is normal considering the film. Then for a year
Speaker 3: I did the VFX and we started putting together a
Speaker 3: team to finally have it ready by twenty eighteen with
Speaker 3: a bigger post production crew. But that sort of imploded
Speaker 3: because we ended up paint a bunch of people, but
Speaker 3: that really didn't get us the results we wanted, at
Speaker 3: which point I was like, Okay, I'm just gonna go rogue,
Speaker 3: and then I did. So I ended up doing the
Speaker 3: sound design, mostly by myself for about another two years.
Speaker 3: Then for two years I learned musical orchestration from scratch
Speaker 3: to get the songs done. And then to top that off,
Speaker 3: it was two years of color correction. Because I don't know,
Speaker 3: if you saw the film on a screener, perhaps you
Speaker 3: don't see the vivid colors, but on a cinema screen.
Speaker 3: It looks really cool right now, and it did not
Speaker 3: at first, since it was shot with the crappiest, cheapest
Speaker 3: cameras you could get, and that's why we had to
Speaker 3: focus so heavy on the visual look of it. So yeah,
Speaker 3: that's where what gets us to twenty twenty four. Don't
Speaker 3: recommend doing that anyone.
Speaker 5: I definitely saw some of that color and just some
Speaker 5: of that vividness that you're talking about, especially with the
Speaker 5: car explosions, of which there are many.
Speaker 3: Yes, there are. Also the vfcs aren't believed the ball,
Speaker 3: but I'd say their cartoon, their cartoonist in just the
Speaker 3: right way. So they were comment.
Speaker 5: Had you guys done a musical before this one?
Speaker 3: Technically? You know, I done a song during a high
Speaker 3: school There was a song in one of your shorts. Yeah,
Speaker 3: in high school, but not like a fulaw musical having
Speaker 3: the entire musical structure to it. It was just another
Speaker 3: exploitation element, just just because we were shooting the thing
Speaker 3: so cheap. I knew that during a musical, number of
Speaker 3: people are most probably gonna get bored, so that was
Speaker 3: like a cheap way of entertaining the audiences. Plus there
Speaker 3: was always like this sort of few moment to like
Speaker 3: making this. Doing a subject matter that's violent, made sure
Speaker 3: it's just Cannibal the musical. Actually, our shooting script was
Speaker 3: a serial killer of the musical, But yeah, the songs were.
Speaker 3: I dabb believe piano, but I don't have a musical background.
Speaker 3: I don't know any music theory. I think it's actually
Speaker 3: a pretty pretty great piano. I must add, No, I
Speaker 3: couldn't play anything live as what I'm saying, But yeah,
Speaker 3: just having watched all the great Accounibal the Musical and
Speaker 3: Little Chopple Horrors and everything by Trey White, Parker Matt
Speaker 3: Jone and the Money Python Guys and Katieing the wrong
Speaker 3: kind of music Bulls is what drove me to make
Speaker 3: a musical that doesn't make you vomit with its prancing
Speaker 3: and dancing, so it's just contained.
Speaker 5: When was the first time that you actually saw this
Speaker 5: with an audience?
Speaker 3: And April a live public viewing. Our world premiere was
Speaker 3: in April, which was very lively because all of our
Speaker 3: cast and crew and everybody involved with the film who
Speaker 3: had been waiting for ten years fighting got to see it.
Speaker 3: So that was great. But yeah, we've been doing private
Speaker 3: home screaming since she can believe it or not, since
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen when it didn't have any sound yet. The
Speaker 3: color was crappy and there was no music. So throughout
Speaker 3: the post production process we'd be doing this more updated screenings.
Speaker 3: And that's why we were continent that it works on
Speaker 3: a crowd, because we had so much different backgrounds of
Speaker 3: people see it, and even when it was work in progress,
Speaker 3: they still laughed a lot, so that was fun. But yeah,
Speaker 3: other than that, Fantasia was also really cool, So we're
Speaker 3: looking forward to fantastic screening.
Speaker 5: Were you still doing other films at the time or
Speaker 5: were you just fully dedicated to chainsaws or singing?
Speaker 3: But you had like gigs but in the beginning, but
Speaker 3: then yeah, at first I tried to earn some money
Speaker 3: on the side and do at least something, But then
Speaker 3: I realized that my obligations on the project were so
Speaker 3: huge that even if I sign up for a day,
Speaker 3: project still always took about a week. So at one
Speaker 3: point I just stopped and just went all in on
Speaker 3: this one. So this is a true labor of love
Speaker 3: and hate.
Speaker 5: Are you full time filmmakers now or are you working
Speaker 5: other jobs at the same time?
Speaker 6: I have been actuity of full time Solms and recurd
Speaker 6: his production sound mixer projects for years now.
Speaker 3: But the sunder is now full time on this one.
Speaker 3: This is the only thing I've made, and it wasn't
Speaker 3: supposed to take so long, So I have to rebuild
Speaker 3: my life once I get out of this project. The
Speaker 3: other producers on our team are my brother's a journalist
Speaker 3: who played the hippie, my older brother, and the younger brothers.
Speaker 3: So for this year he's helping us out on the film,
Speaker 3: but the next year he's going to go to I
Speaker 3: think it something well, we're not really professional flat filmmakers
Speaker 3: per se. Maybe it shows in the film. I don't know.
Speaker 5: I think it's a fantastic I find so much energy
Speaker 5: in the film, and even just the way that you're
Speaker 5: shooting it and especially the way you're cutting it. It
Speaker 5: just moves so quickly.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I always loved Frank Kappra's quote and there are
Speaker 3: no rules of filmmaking, only sins, and the original sin
Speaker 3: is dullness. So yeah, I watched a lot of films.
Speaker 3: I worked through the one thousand movies you have to
Speaker 3: See before you die book, like, actually watched all the
Speaker 3: films now I watched most of it within a year,
Speaker 3: but then it tripped into two or three years. Anyway,
Speaker 3: as far as I respect arthouse films, I think I
Speaker 3: overdosed on them and I never want to see them against.
Speaker 3: So that's why I felt like a film has to
Speaker 3: evolve a lot of stuff happening in it just keep
Speaker 3: me entertained, and that's what I wanted to do to
Speaker 3: the audience as well. And technically, I might add why
Speaker 3: it's so fast, it is because our cameras they were
Speaker 3: crappy canon rebels, which meant we couldn't change the focus
Speaker 3: during when we were shooting. That means we have a
Speaker 3: picture storytelling structure where we have to edit so much.
Speaker 3: So that's made the process way lots of cuts, but
Speaker 3: it made it simpler. The viewers these days are actually
Speaker 3: more customs fast editing, so it helps us long and
Speaker 3: I don't know, I think it works well all in
Speaker 3: all that it went the way it did. Yeah, although
Speaker 3: in terms of color correction, where I said two years,
Speaker 3: that means that that means that there were three thousands
Speaker 3: of five hundred shots that I had to engineer from scratch,
Speaker 3: basically rebuild one by one, and that was a lot
Speaker 3: of work that make.
Speaker 6: Them thick with each other. Yeah. So the fast edit, yeah,
Speaker 6: it was a nail. The process behind that.
Speaker 3: I was in an Adobe premiere where I did it,
Speaker 3: and it was like a shot and then another another
Speaker 3: twenty eight or thirty video layers on top of each
Speaker 3: one containing all sorts of video facts as well, and
Speaker 3: so combining them together, and then I for one minute
Speaker 3: of the film, I put it to render for eighteen hours,
Speaker 3: come back the next day and find out, Nope, it's
Speaker 3: all crappy. To do a middle minor for a judgments,
Speaker 3: and then then again eighteen hours and then you see it.
Speaker 3: And I went through the whole thing that way. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's very manual.
Speaker 6: But what he did with the picture, there's no like
Speaker 6: a filter just slapped on and okay, we're good.
Speaker 3: No, see, you fine tuned every bit of like.
Speaker 6: Old movie scratches and stuff like in which scene it
Speaker 6: should be more and in which the shot it should
Speaker 6: be less, and he did them.
Speaker 3: Yes, that was never the plan though. Yeah, I was
Speaker 3: never planning on doing so much stuff alone. It just
Speaker 3: went this way because we didn't have a budget, and
Speaker 3: the budget we did try to put together, if we
Speaker 3: started paying people. It turned out that it's just so
Speaker 3: much the genre rich content in the film, which requires
Speaker 3: heavy sound editing and the visual effects and everything. It
Speaker 3: was just so much that any professional just didn't have
Speaker 3: time to invest in such a huge project. So that's
Speaker 3: why weight it went the way it did. But I
Speaker 3: think it gives it character that it's done at home.
Speaker 3: This way, it's certainly different.
Speaker 6: One week before the shoot, or or a few days
Speaker 6: before the first shooting day is when we got together
Speaker 6: is okay, we are not doing great with the preparations,
Speaker 6: so shall we do it next year or just go
Speaker 6: for it?
Speaker 3: And we decided to go for it. So everything was
Speaker 3: very chaotic during the shoot.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and as a director, he hasped scratched out a plan,
Speaker 6: so he was like shooting day by day. Like when
Speaker 6: we had done one day, then you can see him
Speaker 6: on the porch with a cigarette, just take it. Look
Speaker 6: at the next day's material, like how the director slept
Speaker 6: two hours then straight to do it.
Speaker 3: And the survival mode. It was survival moment and it
Speaker 3: was wared. It reminded us of going into battle. But
Speaker 3: the reason I think that it looks the way it
Speaker 3: looks and it has that sort of energetic. The chaotic
Speaker 3: element to this is because of the decision to go
Speaker 3: forward with doing it that year. Yeah, because if we
Speaker 3: hadn't done that so seriously, our started aligned there. Everybody
Speaker 3: was just available and wanted to do it during this summer.
Speaker 3: The next summers they were all gone, so that was
Speaker 3: our window and just to go all in and we
Speaker 3: risked it. It took about too many years of my life,
Speaker 3: but I'm glad we did it then. But yeah, sorry
Speaker 3: if I'm talking too much about in detail, but I
Speaker 3: just recalled. So the first day was rough. We filmed
Speaker 3: a bunch of stuff, but we felt maybe we could
Speaker 3: pull this off. And then almost all of the footage
Speaker 3: got deleted, which was a very bad start to filming process.
Speaker 3: And we had a meeting and it was like, let's
Speaker 3: just keep on going. We're not gonna lose anything here.
Speaker 3: But then we picked up the pace and then found
Speaker 3: out that you lose some footage, you can always just
Speaker 3: reshoot it. Yeah. The one we deleted was one with
Speaker 3: the flower killed in the eye. That got the leted.
Speaker 6: Okay, but we'll try to It's quite a minimal. Yeah,
Speaker 6: you wouldn't like have suicidal thoughts in the edits, so
Speaker 6: I should.
Speaker 5: After this arduous process, are you going to be able
Speaker 5: to handle shooting another film?
Speaker 3: I have to get a long outro out of this
Speaker 3: film because it's taken literally ten eleven years of my
Speaker 3: life and nothing else. Yeah, just thinking about doing another project.
Speaker 3: I don't even know what my life is going to
Speaker 3: be after we finish selling this and showing this.
Speaker 6: Just to give you an example, he has been with
Speaker 6: windows covered up fully in his room for several years.
Speaker 3: So he's not even accustomed to the light the same ways.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that was funny yet because I have to
Speaker 3: drive out all of my working station and it's in
Speaker 3: residential building, so it's like a film vampire. In one
Speaker 3: of the interviews with Dead with the Estonian, I actually
Speaker 3: told them that I don't know it. Throughout the years,
Speaker 3: the neighbors would hear screams, chainsaws, gunshots and fucking singing.
Speaker 3: I think it must have been so weakly. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Is there a good place mine for people to keep
Speaker 5: up with you guys and with the film?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Change Thus we're singing if you search or they are
Speaker 6: all in the Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and also we have our website www dot changeaws
Speaker 3: for singing dot com, which sort of combines all the
Speaker 3: screening informations there and all the linkster and social media
Speaker 3: handles are also there. So fine. Actually, yeah, our webite
Speaker 3: is the best source information.
Speaker 5: Yeah, fantastic. I want more people to check out this
Speaker 5: movie and see it on the big screen if they
Speaker 5: possibly can, because you guys have a lot to be
Speaker 5: proud of for this one.
Speaker 3: Oh, thanks so much, Mark, I mean love.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for your time. Fellows, this was
Speaker 5: really nice talking with you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, youto, thanks for having.
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