d3rang3d Interviews : Andrew Wiest

Bloodthirsty outlaws resurrected to reap vengeance on the living? A posse of the undead? There's just no way that d3rang3d could resist finding out all of the inside info on forthcoming treat Dead Noon. We caught up with director Andrew Wiest who kindly took some time out to answer our questions.

You can check out the official site for the movie HERE - and trust us when we say that it looks a real treat is heading to our screens soon.

But, enough of me, here's the man himself to tell you all about the movie - director Andrew Wiest :

d3rang3d : To get the ball rolling, can you tell us a little bit about Dead Noon?

Andrew Wiest : Yeah, it's essentially a modern day western / horror / action / drama / comedy / supernatural thriller about an outlaw who meets his demise in the late 1800's, spends the next 100 years or so in Hell, beats the devil in a game of poker and in so doing is able to return to earth with his posse of the undead to finally finish off the bloodline of the man who sent him to Hell in the first place. Intertwined throughout this incredibly dramatic and poignant tale of vengeance, redemption, love, and death are lots of explosions, copious amounts of blood, cowboy zombies, and most importantly...walking skeletons! I dare you to find me one person who doesn't absolutely love walking skeletons...seriously...I dare you!

d3rang3d : If you had to sum Dead Noon up in a catchy sentence or two to sell to our readers, how would you describe the movie?

Andrew Wiest : Like the trailer says: It's Sam Raimi meets Sam Peckinpah. It's Dawn of the Dead meets High Noon. It's Dead Noon! I also like to think of it as the most epic $4000 movie ever made.

d3rang3d : Any interesting stories - funny or serious - that you can share with us from the making of Dead Noon?

Andrew Wiest : Lil, who plays Grace in the movie, had to do what I refer to as "the obligatory shower scene." In order to make her feel better about the fact that I was going to objectify her, I felt that everyone should have to do their own obligatory shower scene, which soon became known as the O.S.S.'s. It was the least I could do...she is, after all, a close friend of mine and my friend Rob's wife (Rob plays Frank, the villain of the picture and has been with me from pretty much the start of my directing career). So, we took a couple of nights and most of the cast and crew (being the incredibly good sports that they are) took turns sudsing up for the camera. I hope to include these as extra features on the dvd. They're ridiculous, sexy, and over the top--much like Dead Noon itself. The one featuring my effects man Jim and a life size skeleton is hilarious and surprisingly tender all at the same time.

d3rang3d : What's your favourite scene in the movie?

Andrew Wiest : I'm really partial to "the woods chase" scene. It's a scene that consists of a guy (Deputy Stuart Kane) running through the woods, duckin' and dodgin' as 3 resurrected cowboy corpses with the powers of Hell at their disposal unleash a barrage of "hellfire bullets" upon him. Now hellfire bullets are no ordinary bullets, mind you. Oh no...these suckers do some serious damage and the result is lots and lots of explosions and burning trees toppling to the ground, just narrowly missing poor old Stu. And just you wait until you see what a hellfire bullet can do to a person.

d3rang3d : You mentioned when we spoke before that some scenes were currently being reshot - can you tell us more?

Andrew Wiest : It's not so much a reshoot as much as it is a new shoot. The movie was bought this last year by Barnholtz Entertainment and Lionsgate has just recently agreed to release it in North America. Somewhere along the way it went from just another direct to video, make a quick buck kind of movie to something they think could be a potential hit of some sort. I'm not exactly sure when or how this happened but, thankfully it did. So, anyway, Barnholtz is kicking in some cash to shoot some extra scenes that will develop a couple of the characters a little more and stretch the running time of the movie (as of right now the movie is like 84 minutes or something and we'd like for it to be a bit longer). I'm really looking forward to the new shoot. There were a few things due to budget, time limits, technical problems, etc. that I wasn't able to get in the movie and this is a great opportunity to put some of that stuff back in.

d3rang3d : What's your fondest memory from the making of the movie?

Andrew Wiest : I can't think of one specific thing. We shot the movie in multiple phases over the course of a year and each time we got together to shoot it was just such a blast. We all live in different places and don't necessarily see each other very often so just being able to hang out and do what we love was amazing. There was a lot of staying up late, talking and laughing...just having a really good time as friends. When we work, we work hard but that doesn't mean we don't have a great time in the process. To me, making movies is just as much about relationships as it is about telling a good story and entertaining people.

d3rang3d : Anyone from among the cast and crew who'd you like to single out for a special mention?

Andrew Wiest : That would have to be James Teague, the man without whom Dead Noon would not exist. Jim and I go way back. When Matt Taggart (who co-wrote and produced the movie) and I decided to make Dead Noon we knew that there would be some effects work required and that we needed someone really talented to pull them off. I immediately thought of my good friend Jim who is a graphic designer and a fantastic artist. Jim was about to head off to school but I somehow talked him into sticking around to work on the movie. I originally thought that there would be about 30 or 40 effects shots that would have to be done in post and that I would need him for about 6 months or so. It ballooned to about 800 effects and more than a year and a half of pretty much non-stop work. Jim stuck with me the whole time, working for absolutely nothing, sleeping and working in my basement in the middle of nowhere Montana, working with limited equipment, going above and beyond to deliver some of the craziest stuff I've ever seen on screen. The work he did is incredible and earned him a Best Visual Effects award from "The Tabloid Witch Awards," a film festival in Santa Monica.

d3rang3d : What was the greatest challenge you faced in getting Dead Noon from mind to screen?

Andrew Wiest : The hardest thing has been the amount of time it's taken to complete the thing, get it sold, and eventually distributed. Just trying to survive while working full time on the movie for 2 years has been a challenge. Lucky for me, I have an incredibly understanding and devoted wife who not only works on the side to help support us but who also works hands on as a producer to keep the movie on track. She also did some of the effects seen in the movie. Like I said, I'm a lucky man. Trying to shoot a movie in the middle of winter in Wyoming was quite a task as well. During the shoot we faced winds up to 105 mph and the temperature dropped below 0 on more than one occasion. Some of the cast and crew got frostbite, myself included. The most frustrating part is that it really doesn't look all that cold in the finished product. We might as well have shot it in the summer. Oh well.

d3rang3d : Can you tell us more about the work that went into the special effects for the movie? Judging from the trailers they look excellent and great fun.

Andrew Wiest : Jim did them all using Adobe After Effects and Photoshop. A few of the less complicated effects were done using some of the tools available in Final Cut Pro. There's no CG in the movie, everything was done using old school techniques. The skeletons were done in a combination of ways. We used miniatures; a full sized skeleton that was puppeteered in front of a greenscreen and then composited in later; a couple of different skeletons were used on location, including one made out of paper mache by my mom and another one made out of cardboard for stunt purposes--like flying off of a cliff (our one full sized skeleton was borrowed from my former high school science teacher and belonged to the school so we had to be as careful as possible with it). A lot of things were done practically and then we would spruce them up later using After Effects. For example, we have quite a few burnt bodies in the movie. We decided that they didn't quite look gross enough so in post we added ribs and teeth and veins, anything we could think to make them more disgusting. We used a stock fx footage company called Detonation Films for most of our explosions and some of our blood effects. They do some really quality work and most of it is free or at least very cheap. We found that if you layer effects upon effects and add a lot of dirt, debris, and smoke, you can pull off some really cool looking explosions without putting people in danger. Jim just kept upping the ante with each effect so I just kept pushing him further and further to see what else he could pull off and the result is a pretty wild movie.

d3rang3d : It really happens - you're in the Wild West and zombies, demons, skeletons and the like start emerging from behind every cactus. Are you a hero and fight back, or do you run for the nearest bottle of rotgut whiskey and a gogo dancer to hide behind? Seriously, what would you do?

Andrew Wiest : I'd stay and fight, a six gun in one hand, a go-go dancer on the other, a bottle of rot gut waitin' for me when I'm finished disposing of the undead vermin. Zombies I can handle. Zombies ain't got nothin' on the crazy, flannel sportin', red neck loggers I tussled with in a backwoods, Montana bar while taking a much needed break from editing. Just ask effects man Jim, he was there.

A note from d3rang3d : Andrew passed this question on to many of the cast and crew of Dead Noon, you can check out some of their great answers over at Dead Noons Blogspot HERE - some of those answers are classics and deserve a site of their own :)

d3rang3d : Away from your own work, what are your favourite movies from the world of horror? And any actors/directors who you think are really getting it right?

Andrew Wiest : I'm a huge Sam Raimi fan. Army of Darkness is my favorite movie with Evil Dead 2 being a close second. Spider-man 3 was a bit of a misstep but I'll let it slide as long as he moves on soon and does something else--like Evil Dead 4. I've always liked my horror with a side of humor. In my opinion, horror should always be fantasy, you know, monsters, zombies, ghosts...I've never liked slasher movies or movies about serial killers. I don't even like Silence of the Lambs and I can't stand Seven. I love The Evil Dead, Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead (the original), Bad Taste, Dead-Alive, Day of the Triffids, Creature From the Black Lagoon, John Carpenter's The Thing, The Haunting (the original), From Dusk til Dawn, the list could go on and on. This probably doesn't really count but as a kid it scared me and is still one of my favorites--Jason and the Argonauts (what can I say? It has walking skeletons). Oh, and while I'm on the subject of Harryhausen I have to mention Valley of Gwangi (also not really a horror movie but it's got cowboys and dinosaurs, what more could you possibly ask for?).

d3rang3d : Who or what - if anything - scares you in horror movies?

Andrew Wiest : Those twin girls in The Shining terrify me. Actually, just about any creepy kid in a horror flick frightens me. Like the little dead boy in Pet Sematary or the gang of kids from In the Mouth of Madness.

d3rang3d : What's next for Andrew Wiest?

Andrew Wiest : I have a script for a family film that I wrote with my dad and Keith Suta (one of the writers on Dead Noon). It's called Cody and the Kid and it's a time travel movie set in my hometown of Cody, Wyoming, where Dead Noon was filmed. It's about a young boy who travels back into the old west where he meets a young Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok. Action and adventure ensue, culminating in Buffalo Bill and the boy having to stop a band of outlaws from wreaking havoc in the future. There are a couple of different production companies looking at it right now and I hope to be shooting it by next summer. I'm also working on a couple of new scripts, both horror movies, as well as trying to get myself an agent.

d3rang3d : And, finally - the open non question. Your chance to say anything you like about any subject under the sun - thank the fans, cuss the critics, plug your favorite beer. Anything goes, so any final words?

Andrew Wiest : It seems more and more that I come across people who always talk about their dream of making movies and how they're going to make a movie but once they actually try to make one and discover that it's a lot of hard work, they give up. I guess I'm just sick and tired of people who are all talk and no action. I also hate it when people use their low budget as an excuse for why their movie sucks. In this day and age no budget is no excuse. The equipment available to us Indies now a days is unbelievable. We're living in a time where there could be some really incredible stuff coming from independent filmmakers and I feel like for the most part we're dropping the ball. I so badly want to see some new and original movies and lately there just doesn't seem to be many. I guess this is my plea to any of you out there who have a really great, original story to tell: GO MAKE IT! I want to see it and I know there's a whole lot more out there who do as well, especially in the world of horror. It's such a great genre and has so much room for original ideas. This is why I made Dead Noon, to prove what can be done for absolutely no money. We would've never been able to pull off Dead Noon 5 years ago. I also wouldn't have been able to pull it off without all of my extremely talented and intensely loyal friends and family. I owe you all a huge debt of gratitude. I also have to plug Coors beer (after all it is the beer of the Rocky Mountains). I've also gotten into Tri-Motor Amber which is brewed by Lang Creek Brewery in Marion, Montana. If you're ever in northern Montana and are looking for a great beer...look no further than Lang Creek Brewery.

Thanks for the really fun questions. I had a great time answering them. And be watching for Dead Noon sometime early next year.