Ever want to know what goes through an Indie Film director’s mind? I spoke with Bradley Scott Sullivan, director of I Didn’t Come Here To Die to find out.

Originally, I published this interview prior to the film’s release, back in 2010. A lot has changed since then – for instance I now write for OtakuDome, and not PunchDrunkInternet – but more to the point, I Didn’t Come Here To Die has released, played in a handful of theaters, and currently can be found on Amazon VOD and in a Redbox near you!

Before diving into the interview, there are a few things you need to know. IDCHTD is not your standard Horror film, it doesn’t try to make you jump, that’s just a bonus – in fact, I laughed most of the way through it, but I’m a sick bastard and the gore is satisfyingly clever. Don’t be fooled by the “stock-photo-collage” either, it has nothing to do with the actual movie, and neither the girl or the scene are in the film. I prefer the UK cover art, or even the promo poster – mainly because they both capture the feel of IDCHTD, and the UK cover actually features one of the actors in the movie, what a novel idea.

IDCHTD reminds me of my favorite gory-slasher-comedies: Evil Dead, Tales from the Crypt, Friday the 13th, and even a few 90’s Twilight Zones. It’s more fun than fear, and scares lose out to “shock and awesome” – but that’s what IDCHTD is all about, getting you to yell “OOooooh!” instead of scream “AHHHHH!”.  Knowing that, I hope you decide to check out this stellar indie “Gorror” film.

Much thanks to Michael Baberick for allowing me to republish this interview, now let’s get to it — Here’s my talk with Director, Bradley Scott Sullivan.

—Now Entering 2010, Enjoy Your Visit—

Longest title ever? Maybe. After a few months hiatus, I’m back writing. It feels good, and what makes it better is that I’m delivering an interview with a very talented director, who actively seeks to incorporate current technology into his films. Without further ado, an hour with Bradley Sullivan, director/writer of I Didn’t Come Here To Die.

What’s the general plot, and how did you come up with the idea?
The basic idea, it’s about a group of 6 volunteers, working with the group V.A.G.G. (Volunteers of America Generating Goodwill). The volunteers are building a summer camp out in the woods, and being as it is a horror movie – they don’t make it out. The Idea of it came about from – I guess, an ‘unnamed’ volunteer thing I did, very similar to what they’re doing in the movie… we traveled as a team, around the country for a year back in 2005. For one our projects, we were living out in the woods of Vermont, building a summer camp. I was 19 at the time, it was really my first time working with a lot the shit – we had chainsaws, power tools, all this kind of jazz – I’m kind of a hypochondriac with an active imagination, and I’d imagine at times these awful things happening. When I had to run a chainsaw myself, I could see me dying in so many ways.
Any true tales make it into the film?
There were accidents we had, and there are things in the movie – like a girl gets her eye poked out – that’s an actual story I heard happened in a different team. No one died or anything on my real team.

One of your first projects, Stache: Origin of a Hitman, was insane, it had plenty of light and dark comedy -and some impressive blood work! Can we expect the same from ‘IDCHTD’, or does it have a different feel?
I didn’t set out to make it like Stache at all, but it has similar elements- some really funny stuff, some really gory stuff- it’s not nearly as wacky, or goofy though. Watching the two together, you can tell the same people made them, but the goal with IDCHTD was to make it feel as polished and clean as we could.

You’re cameo/voice over is hilarious in Stache (voice on answering machine), did you work yourself into IDCHTD?
Right now, I’m over at the sound mixer’s house to finish up mixing the first scene, I have a cameo of breaths. I’m doing the intense breathing over the opening credits. There may be other parts as well, we’ll see as we go along.

Stache: Origin of a Hitman from Bradley Sullivan on Vimeo.

Between the two, how were the production processes different?

It’s a whole different world working on [I Didn’t Come Here To Die], it’s not a huge budget movie… so there’s some things I had to relinquish. But now there are other people, I have a sound guy – where as with Stache, Idid all the sounds and mixed it, but now I have a guy who I can sit down with… it’s good!

Gotta love the help. Was there a moment when things seemed like too much though?
Making a movie is hard, at every stage of it, but it actually came together really well, getting the money, the crew involved, casting it, and getting all the elements together went smoothly – it’s a blur to actually think of how it happened. The hardest part was definitely the very first day of shooting, it was a completely different thing. On Stache, it was me behind the camera, and the actors. It was a student film, there were no stakes at all. Then, I Didn’t Come Here To Die, we’re there. We’re renting a location, people have put money into the film, there’s a whole cast and crew.

Bradley on set

The first day, there were 20 people standing around, money on the line, we’re shooting everything in natural daylight, so we had limited time… The day started off great, then things just compounded, and it got really rough – we’re losing light, we needed to get these scenes, we’re two hours over – it was a debacle. When it was all said and done, I was driving home and I just wanted to cry. I was thinking, “I don’t know if I can do this. This is such a bigger thing. This isn’t the kiddy pool anymore.” I felt like I couldn’t handle it, and thought I would come in the next day and say “Look, someone needs to take over or we need to just stop, because I can’t handle this.” But we started day two and things went smooth, I found a rhythm, almost like a meditative state – not letting outside influences bother me. I was so used to doing everything, I had to learn to just not worry about some shit – I need to focus on what I’m doing.

Words to live by. Before that, during scout shooting, you came across an actual animal skull – blessing, curse, ironic omen?
Well, we didn’t end up shooting there. But there were animal skulls everywhere, especially on the location we did shoot. I didn’t think anything of it, besides that is was creepy looking.

Did you work the skulls into the film?
No, no. There’s no bones or skulls. You know the thing is, everything could have used more time. In normal movies, there’s months of pre-production, there’s 25 re-writes in the script – I probably would have worked in a bunch more elements, like “Oh, yeah – it’d be good for them to come across some bones right there”, but everything went so fast. I guess it’s maybe for the better, because that’s more of a standard horror movie thing – someone comes up, “AHHH! Fuck, bones..”, and it’s not really scary, so there’s nothing like that in the movie.

Time constraints must have been murder.

Everyday there were altercations, especially because we shot the whole thing in 7days. It was a fight for time. We had a lot of special effects, and just one special effects guy, so he was making everything, and we had almost no pre-production time. Everything was last second, all the fake bodies, blood-gags, any prosthetics on people faces – anything that had to be made wasn’t ready until the second we were going to shoot it, then they ran it in. But it all turned out really good.

Was there anything you just couldn’t get around using?
The only thing I was terribly disappointed with, we had…this fake raccoon. We talked about it a ton in pre-production, “Oh yeah, it’s going to look completely real, and life like. You’re never going to think twice… and we’ll enhance it digitally!” Then, the moment actually came when he brought it out – and I felt like he brought out a Triumph (the insult comic dog) version of a raccoon. The sun was going down by the time I saw it, so I didn’t have time to be mad, we just had to shoot it. Basically, it changed how I was going to shoot [the scene], but that’s something that happens in big movies, too. In Jaws, the shark didn’t work right and looked completely fake, so they just shot around it. So, we just shot the raccoon in a bunch of really quick close ups, and cut it together, now it’s actually pretty cool looking.

Caddy Shack Gopher Syndrome. Maddening.

Otherwise, the biggest thing I was concerned about was people getting hurt – I don’t have health insurance, and we’re this tiny movie – we need everyone that’s on it. We’re doing a horror movie with axes, chainsaws, and people running through the woods – the fact that no one got hurt is great.

Tissue?

Facebook garnered a sizable fan base for IDCHTD, 500+. Impressive, did you advertise the film through any other sites? Currently at 5,000+
The Facebook page blew up, I really thought that the twitter-verse would pick up on it. The original plan was that we’d put together a live, from the set, ‘making of a low budget movie’ documentary during pre-production, with 30-second video snippets here and there. We tried to do that as much as we could, but I didn’t have time for it, and neither did William, who was doing the behind-the-scenes, he’s the visual effects supervisor, and he did a million other things – we were so strained that we didn’t get to fulfill our initial intention… We hope to do a lot more with [Facebook, Twitter, behind-the-scenes] in the future, and get a lot more [Fans and Followers] as the movies comes out.

Where are people going to be able to see IDCHTD?
WATCH IDCHTD ON AMAZON OR FROM REDBOX
With IDCHTD, we’re hoping to get a theatrical release, of some sort. At the very least, I don’t think we’ll have a problem being bought up by a distribution company, and being a ’straight to DVD’ release, but we’re definitely hoping for theatrical. We submitted a rough cut to South by Southwest, in December – they’re announcing the full lineup in a few days, we haven’t been turned down yet! I have other friends that entered and have gotten rejection letters, so we’re really hoping, in fact it’s what we’re all thinking about, that we get into South by Southwest. That festival is huge! Sundance and South by Southwest are probably the biggest film festivals you can get into. That’s the goal, that’s where the world premiere would be. [SxSW] is in Austin, we shot the movie in Austin, everyone in I Didn’t Come Here To Die is from Austin, so it’d be really cool – and distributers or people interested in buying films will see it there, or hopefully the movie gets enough attention that it can play in bigger festivals, like Toronto, and gets seen by people who say “Hey, we can make some money on this!”. Regardless, the goal is that you’ll be able to see it in the theater, or on the DVD shelf.
Auth. Note: Unfortunately, “I Didn’t Come Here to Die” did not make it into SxSW, the film was barely beaten out by a handful of films with higher budgets. Money talks for independent films? Call it what you want, the pen is blue.
At the worst, a DVD release would be pretty great – especially if a lot of the behind-the-scenes footage were included.
 One of the cool things is that we have tons of behind-the-scenes footage, and I think one of the big markets for IDCHTD is anyone that wants to make a low-budget movie. We weren’t huge, we had $60,000, which is small for movie standards, but it’s more than I ever imagined having for doing a movie. Still, it’s a pretty big movie for that kind of budget, and it’s shows how you can do something on this scale.

IDCHTD: Blocking from Bradley Sullivan on Vimeo.

Do you have any Indie film inspirations?
I grew up loving Robert Rodriguez, and Indie film stories going big, like Kevin Smith, Christopher Nolan – his first movie, he did for about $10,000. Just hearing about how these guys have gone on to direct big shit like Sin City, Dark Knight, and all that – they started on these really teeny-tiny movies.

What’s the difference between their beginnings and yours?

They did it way back when, they shot on film, they did it in all these old way. We actually shot I Didn’t Come Here To Die on a GH1 Digital SLR Camera. A still camera, that shoots full 1080p hi-def video, as well. The company RED is making these new cameras, that are basically DSLRs, and Canon has new ones coming out, but the cool thing is – they’re cheap, they have great looking video, and the biggest thing ( that I wish I had when making Stache, or in High School when I was making stuff) is they have interchangeable lenses. You can put actual photographic lenses on there, and get the shallow depth-of-field, and really get that film look on way less money than normal.

I take it you’ll be using DSLRs for your next venture…
I really think that it’s the future, and that’s part of the thing when I was getting the money for the movie – I was pushing the DSLRs, because there aren’t really any DSLR films that have blown up yet. We weren’t the first feature film to shoot on the GH1, but we’re definitely the first feature length horror movie to use it.
You ground breaker, you. Did you use any other alternates-to-the-standard?
We shot all the behind-the-scenes on the iPhone, used iPhone apps, because I was thinking “What is the shit that I’d be interested in, if I wasn’t making this?” – Like, how you can make a low-budget movie with shit you already have.
Low-budget? Awesome!

IDCHTD: Storyboards from Bradley Sullivan on Vimeo.

iPhone love. Any specific apps you used?
There’s a really cool website handheldhollywood, that’s all film making apps, all they do is review and post news about film making apps for the iPhone. The truth is, I didn’t use half of what I intended to use on the iPhone. For instance, I have an app for slating, like you normally see with the big clapper – you know, “Scene 1, Take 6″ – there are clapper apps for the iPhone… and you can take notes on every clap. There’s an app called Storyboard Composer, where you can take pictures, put movement on it, drop in figures and people to pre-plan and storyboard the movie from your iPhone. I drew some production sketches on SketchBook Mobile. But gosh, like I said, we didn’t get to use half of what we had on there. Though, I actually wrote about 35 or 40 pages of the script on my iPhone, I have this app – Screenplay, which was a huge help, because I hate sitting down in front of the computer – you have all these ideas to write, then you sit down, and “SHIT!” – you get that writers block. Having it on my iPhone was great, full fledged, it’s as good a screen writing app as you’d have on a computer – but I can lay down in bed, on the couch, be out on the go, or sitting on this park bench and I can write three pages.

Your hair must look pretty if you’re going to die

35 Pages, just with your thumbs?

Just with the thumbs, I was pretty good at it. On the next film, I’ll use the iPhone even more, there are more apps coming out everyday – it’s a pretty ridiculous tool. There’s an app called Reel Director, that would have been nice for Facebook and twitter updates, but it wasn’t out at the time… you can take clips and edit them together, then upload them to twitter right from your iPhone.
Having finished filming IDCHTD, what have you learned for your next project?
It was absolutely the best learning experience in the world. You can go to film school, you can watch all the dvd commentaries, and all that stuff. But it’s a whole different world being on set and doing an actual movie. I think it’s turned out awesome, we did a great job, and I’m really happy with what we got – but having down this little moving, we could do something similar and have it go ten times smoother. Just because everyone will know what they’re doing, it was the first time for all of us. For me, it was the first time on a big set, with real actors and a crew, and for our special effects guy, composer, and producer – it was their first as well. If we were to do another film, I think it’d go way, way smoother – and that’s what we’re hoping for, hopefully IDCHTD gets enough attention that we’re able to keep it up and do some more films.

I’ve been waiting to see this movie, and I’m down to one last question… Given the choice, where would you go to die?

Uhh… I.. Like I said, I’ve got that over active imagination… I guess, the way I hope it would happen is peacefully and/or unexpectedly. All I can say is that, doing IDCHTD is part of my lifelong dream, to make a feature length movie – and have it go as big as possible. As far as where I’d go to die, I’ve always liked Burlington, Vermont.

As Bradley and I chuckled at the thought of Death-by-Vermont, a ravenous wail erupted through the speaker of my iPhone. Gnashing teeth and crashing equipment were the only sounds I could make out over the cacophony created by the unidentifiable mob – a pack of ferocious jackals, perhaps? A clamor arose, indistinguishable yells in the background, the sound of metal impacting flesh and clothing being torn, ripped by what I can only imagine to the beasts’ murderous claws. Bradley’s voice came back, breathing heavily, he managed few words between gasps – “…howler monkeys are back…” — My iPhone’s End Call button faded from red to grey, and the screen went black as the phone locked itself… the call had disconnected. I’d like to think Bradley ended it himself – but I fear his hand (and by extension his phone) is now in the jaws of a pestiferous primate, the call severed – much like Bradley’s poor hand.