Dispatches from Dreamland: On Set with Anderson

British director, producer and screenwriter Paul WS Anderson is repped by Anonymous Content and The Mob Film Company for commercials. In shots acting US editor Simon Wakelin’s latest blog piece from Toronto, on the set of the 3D period epic, Pompeii, Anderson takes a break to talk about commercials, gore porn and the undead…

Known for Hollywood blockbuster panache, Paul W.S. Anderson has spent the better part of 18 years making films grossing over $1.5 billion worldwide. Currently directing Pompeii in 3D, Anderson began the interview explaining how the project took six years to reach fruition. On that note, I asked what his thoughts were on directing commercials, notorious themselves for fast turnarounds and deep polarity to the Tent Pole mentality.

“Commercials are a lot of fun and very exciting to shoot,” he answers. “I began directing them after I finished Death Race. I’d just spent two years prepping on that film, building specialist rigs to shoot the car action. But all of that experience and technical mastery, all of those amazing rigs for the film were laid to waste after we wrapped – until I realised nobody else in the ad world was better prepared to direct and shoot car spots in such a unique way. I also got into the car genre because it was an area I thought I could excel in – plus I wanted to have some fun!”

One of Anderson’s first commercials was a Golf GTI launch campaign for Volkswagen produced through The Mob Film Company for DDB Berlin. The thrill-a-second spot led to more commercial work with clients including Castrol and Telecom:

“I came at commercials from a creative perspective,” Anderson continues. “I don’t do overtly funny spots - although my work does have a sly sense of humor to it; it’s all visual effects and, I guess, what you’d expect from me. Working on them you get to try out new people, new cinematographers, new equipment and, quite often, new techniques that find their way into my movies because commercials are a great way to try things out.”

While commercials pique Anderson’s interest, so is the upcoming prospect of directing the sixth installment of the Resident Evil series this fall. I asked him if he felt at all responsible for awakening a dead genre. He agrees – but also outlines that it was just a matter of time before zombies became unearthed again:

“As a teenager I used to love zombie flicks,” says Anderson. “They were very, very popular with directors like [George A.] Romero and [Lucio] Fulci releasing new movies all the time. That’s one of the reasons I created the first Resident Evil; I looked at the genre and thought wow, I used to love this stuff and nobody had made a zombie film for over a decade, so I decided to make one. It ended up being the first in a whole slew of undead films that include 28 Days Later and Dawn of the Dead.”

We go on to discuss the zeitgeist of zombies today in shows such as AMC’s immensely popular The Walking Dead. “I think the undead genre really plays to primal human fears,” suggests Anderson on its popularity. “That kind of stuff never goes out of fashion. The themes of a zombie story are always good; they make for good filmmaking.”

Another subject we ponder is “torture porn” as seen in recent flicks such as the Evil Dead remake; a purely “gore porn” outing far less slapstick with buckets more blood than the original created in 1981:

“I think ‘gore porn’ is a very American thing,” offers Anderson. “Movies indulging in that have a very north American audience. My films are more global in nature, and even though I make movies with zombies it needs to be restrained. When you have people reaching into cavities and eating intestines you basically alienate a lot of your audience. It’s better filmmaking to suggest violence and leave it to the imagination. What an audience imagines is far more frightening than anything you can put on film.”

As for digital filmmaking, Anderson embraces it and hasn’t looked back since shooting three digital features in 3D in a row with Resident Evil: Afterlife, The Three Musketeers and Resident Evil: Retribution. Pompeii will be his fourth outing in digital 3D:

“I used to say they’d have to take film cameras out of my dead, dying hands,” he quips. “Then I made my first digital movie and I loved the experience.  After 15 years of filmmaking I had to completely re-learn my craft. I felt like I was making my first movie again – and that I found very, very exciting.

“I wrote Resident Evil: Afterlife as a 3D movie, so envisioned all the action scenes that I thought would play well in 3D,” he continues. “It was very much a holistic approach, written and conceived as a 3D film.”

One of history’s greatest disasters, Pompeii will also see Anderson capturing the story on 3D rigs loaded with Red Epic cameras ramping anywhere from 24 up to 288 fps – all designed and built by Pompeii cinematographer Glen MacPherson. While the film is set to explode onto movie screens on 28 February 2014, Anderson explains that post production is still a difficult equation in the digital format:

“As movies get more complicated you need to use more complex tools to get the job done,” he explains. “Just because it’s digital doesn’t mean I sit around twiddling my thumbs. The DGA has always given directors 10 weeks for their cut, and those 10 weeks are always jam packed in my experience. Digital allows you to make more choices and do more complicated things – but that in itself eats up more time.”

As the conversation winds down I throw out a random question, asking how he finds ideas that spark his imagination in both film and commercials.

“I’ll take a great idea from anyone,” he answers. “It can be somebody working at the studio, at an ad agency or even at a craft service. People have great ideas – 95 per cent of them are terrible, but if you’re willing to listen to that other five per cent it will be far better than anything you could ever come up with.”