You do look at a lot of movies and many characters seem to be interchangeable.
That definitely I feel is part of my generation: social networking, communication over the Internet, whether it's Skype or IRC or some form of text-based chat, text messaging.
I played lots of games and I was a fan of gaming, so I was always looking for new games.
There is this whole level of communication that I think our generation and younger is used to that does have this weird effect on people. It creates a familiarity that is possibly not always justified. I think that's interesting and I think it's nice to be able to incorporate it into films, because most of us can relate to that now.
Fantasy films tend to skew towards what Tolkien fantasy was, which is that the humans, the Hobbits and the cute creatures are the good guys, and everything that's ugly are the bad guys.
When Peter Jackson did The Lord of the Rings trilogy with Fellowship of the Ring, not everyone had read Tolkien, and yet somehow with that scope and the spectacle of that fantasy, people were willing to give it a shot. And when they watched the first one, the characters drew them in and they started understanding the story. And then, all of a sudden, they were The Lord of the Rings fans, even if they never read Tolkien.
I was also a science fiction and fantasy fan, growing up, in games and books and movies. I love Tolkien and I love Dungeons & Dragons, so the opportunity to have a fantasy-based RTS, or real time strategy game, at that time, seemed cool. I started playing it, and the early games were simple, but fun and they had these great heroes.
You go through different stages when you're working on the music in film. At least, I do. You have a temp score, so you have music from other people, usually from other movies, to give you a sense of what the mood is supposed to be, what the atmosphere is.
I was massively jealous but also excited when Tarantino did Inglourious Basterds, I'm a huge guys on a mission fan. Those kind of movies.
Obviously, there's a big homage to Outland in Moon. I obviously had Ridley Scott's response, which was great. But Peter Hyams really loved Moon and was really enthusiastic about it. He was also enthusiastic about the fact we'd remembered Outland and had remembered it fondly. I think, for him, it was like some kind of edification that there were people out there who loved his film. So, that was a really lovely feeling.
I had a real comfort with being on a set and in particular working with special effects and because of that background, it became much easier for me to base a first time feature film on a low budget cause I was sort of already knew how to do that.
I've worked really hard to build up a career on my own. I turned 30 recently and it took me a long time to get the chance to make a feature film and do it on my own terms.
Here in the UK the audience immediately reacts and they get the fact that: "What would be the most annoying thing in the world?" A Chesney Hawkes alarm clock!
We can't tell particularly smart stories if we want to keep our audience big enough to pay for these big spectacle films that we want to do.
Bill Pearson is definitely a man to talk to, especially in the afternoon when he's had a couple of drinks because he's got so many stories and anecdotes.
I was doing the promotion for Moon in LA at the same time that Tony Scott was there with [The Taking of] Pelham 123. But obviously he was so concentrating on his own film that he didn't even know I was doing a feature film.
I think I was brought up with games and I don't think that they're just Pac-Man or Space Invaders. I think we've moved on, I think that there are stories being told and worlds being explored.
You are spending millions and millions of dollars of other peoples money when you make a movie. You have to at least approach it in a way where you can see how you can make that money back for the people who are investing.
When I said that something was going to cost a certain amount of money, I actually knew what I was talking about. The biggest problem that we were having on the financing front was people with lots of money saying "you need more money to make this film [Moon]," and us saying "no this is the first feature film we want to do it at a budget where we sort of prove ourselves at the starting end of making feature films; we can do this for $5 million." That is where the convincing part between me and Stuart came, we had to convince people with money that we could do it for that budget.
I've been working my way to doing my first feature film for about ten years. So I went through the commercials route and some people come from a theatrical background and some people come from a writing background, but I directed commercials
There are things which need to be shown in the trailer in order to let the audience know what kind of film it is that they're going to be expecting to see.
Maybe there is a sort of a sweet middle ground there, where you can do something with something with like 20 to 40 million and do something which is much more character driven, but still create a sort of visual spectacle around it. That is what I'd like to do.
My biggest difference with our film and those kinds of science fiction films is that they are going from one special effect set piece to the next, what we were doing was more of a character study. And I think that is the freedom that you get by doing an Indie film. You can only really do that with a lower budget. So I understand where the conflict is between those two priorities.
And as a first time director I needed to work with someone that I felt comfortable with, and that I could get along with. It was a perfect match [with Sam Rockwell]; I am so thrilled I got to work with him. He is a really nice and incredible guy.
Everyone wants to know what you want to work on and everyone wants to pitch you what they're working on. And that's just part of the process. And hopefully, at some point you find someone of like minds and you make a film.
