(Director Peter Cornwell during the production of his stop-motion short Ward 13, above, photo by Glenn Watson)By Terry Keefe
(Exclusive to The Hollywood Interview. The director of The Haunting in Connecticut sits down with us to talk about the making of his first feature, as well as the creation of his rollicking and hilarious stop-motion short, Ward 13.)
Ward 13, director Peter Cornwell’s 2003 micro-budgeted stop motion short film, is easily one of my all-time favorite pieces of animation. The 14-minute film introduces us to the plight of Ben, a heavily-bandaged man who wakes up in a true hospital from hell, and spends most of the rest of the story attempting to escape from evil doctors who seem intent on performing experiments of mutation upon him. The set pieces are marvels of action-comedy, with enough escalating stakes, pitfalls, and pay-offs to rival the best of vintage Spielberg. Mixed throughout are memorable touches of surreal imagery. The image which has stuck with me the most is these red dogs which have seemingly been genetically spliced into two different animals - one which just contains two dog heads, and the other which consists entirely of the two backsides of the dogs, complete with happily wagging tails. Also of note is a tense sword-style fight, which Cornwell has explained was largely inspired by the Errol Flynn classic Robin Hood.
Cornwell grew up in Sydney, Australia, and began his film production career as a sound recordist in the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC-TV). The Haunting in Connecticut is his directorial debut, and is being released theatrically in the United States tomorrow by Lionsgate. The film stars Virginia Madsen, Martin Donovan, Elias Koteas, Kyle Gallner, and Amanda Crew. The story is loosely based on the haunting supposedly experienced by the real-life Snedeker Family in Southington, Connecticut, although the family name here has been changed to Campbell. As the plot unfolds, the family is thrilled to find a great deal on a new house, but they soon learn why it was such a good deal. The place is a playground for the dead and was once a funeral home where seances were held. Kyle Gallner’s Matt, the eldest child of the family, is suffering from cancer and is the first target of the spirits, although it isn’t known at first whether his experiences are real, or the byproducts of his illness.
We spoke with Cornwell during the South by Southwest Festival, where Haunting had its World Premiere last week.
When you became involved with The Haunting in Connecticut, did you feel the need to do much additional research into the actual story that it is based on?
Peter Cornwell: When I came on board, the screenplay had already been written and then I watched the “Haunting In Connecticut” documentary as well. So, that worked out a lot of what was going to be in the film. There was a lot of conflict within the story of the family as well, which added a different type of background for this kind of story, and a lot of depth. And the mystery of the story was unique. I had never seen a haunted house story where the reason for the haunting was that it used to be a funeral home. That was a really creepy element. All of that being said, I was making a feature film here and not a documentary.
How involved have the Snedeker family members been in the production?
Carmen (Snedeker) just did the Q&A after the premiere. She’s behind the film.
You opted to shoot much of this in a real house (in Manitoba), rather than on a soundstage.
It wasn’t a big-budget film, and so the house was perfect. It was great to be able to go up the actual stairs. When you’re building sets, you have to cut between rooms, but it’s great to be able to move from one room to another for real. That being said, we did build other small bits of the house.
I imagine shooting on a real location in a haunted house film helps create that claustrophobic feel. At the same time, you and the crew were probably always backing into walls.
That’s true. You always want the house to be bigger than it actually is so you have somewhere to put the camera crew [laughs]. But one of the things that can bother me about haunted house movies, is that the family can supposedly not afford to just move out because the rent is so cheap, but at the same time, it’s a huge house [laughs]!
Let’s talk about some of your actors. I was happy to see that Martin Donovan was cast as the father. He’s an underrated performer who I’ve always enjoyed, going back to his work with Hal Hartley.
Same for me. And in this film, he doesn’t have to always carry a hand grenade (as Donovan did in Trust) [laughs]. Martin’s terrific.
Virginia Madsen.
She’s also awesome. She brought a reality to his part and a great deal of warmth to this character, who is also a very strong woman. I wanted to mention Kyle Gallner, who has such a central role, and a tough one. He had to make you question whether he was actually seeing ghosts…or going crazy, and he did a great job bringing the audience into that conflict. Elias Koteas is also such a great guy and good to hang out with too [laughs]. He’s got a whole ton of new things that haven’t come out yet.
(Virginia Madsen and Kyle Gallner in The Haunting in Connecticut.)What type of research did Kyle do into the real-life aspects of his character, that being a teenager with cancer?
We actually had a long talk with a girl who had survived the same form of cancer (as that of Kyle’s character). One of the interesting things that came out of that conversation is that she explained that you weren’t always weak. There were periods when you were quite strong, and others when you just became weak.
(Amanda Crew in The Haunting in Connecticut, above.)
Were there any favorite horror films that you were channeling when directing this one?
The Haunting [1963], by Robert Wise, for sure. It’s just a great piece of film. It’s really creepy, really scary, and you never see the ghosts. There are just so many weird layers to the story, and such a sense of the unknown. Sometimes your own fears are much scarier than seeing a 10-foot monster.
Had you thought about completely going that route with this film, and never seeing the ghosts?
Yes, but I do think it’s difficult to do in today’s horror market. Blair Witch was able to do that and make it work. I gave a lot of thought to what the rules should be in a supernatural film. You can show certain things and still not answer all the questions. Like in The Shining, the first times you see those two creepy little girls….you see them but you don’t know a lot yet. What are they? What are they doing in the hallway?
Let’s talk a bit about the making of Ward 13, which was made with Claymation?
I actually call it stop-motion, more like The Nightmare Before Christmas because there's not much clay in the models. Only the faces are made from clay. You can get subtlety in the facial expressions that you can’t get from silicon. It’s handmade, but very expressive.
Some of the set pieces in this are so elaborate and must have been mind-bogglingly time intensive. How did you keep yourself going?
I would do a tough scene and tell myself that was the hardest scene in the film and it was all downhill from there [laughs]. I basically shot it like it was a live-action film. And because it was in stop-motion, I was able to make a big-budget blockbuster…all in my bedroom [laughs]. The whole thing was just sort of an insane dream. And because it was shot like a live-action film, I was quickly able to meet with a lot of live-action producers who were never thrown by the fact that it was made with stop-motion. They understood that I could handle live-action.
(One of the great chase sequences in Ward 13, photo by Glenn Watson.)
The action scenes where the characters are moving fast in one direction, while the backgrounds are all moving in another - this is something I’ve never seen done so well on a low-budget film.
What’s tricky there, when you’re shooting motion…the depth of field can be a problem. You want to blast it with light, but then the clay melts.
(The Dogs in Ward 13, above, photo by Glenn Watson.)
There are a lot of great comedic beats in Ward 13. As you were working on this long project, did you show stretches of it to anyone to see if the comedic timing was hitting?
Well, I cut on a Steenbeck (Editor's Note: a film editing machine where you actually splice the film together by hand, kids.), because I was making 15 seconds of film at a time, and the minimum for video transfer was a half hour. So, I cut it on film. And yes, I would play parts back for friends, and make sound effects with my mouth [laughs].
With Ward 13 as a sample that many in Hollywood have seen and are still discovering, you’re undoubtedly going to be offered quite a few animated and stop-motion projects to helm. Will you take one on?
If it’s the right project…maybe. You have a lot of control, but at the same time, I like working with actors. With live actors, you get to shoot more than 4 seconds a day [laughs]. My actors on Ward 13...I was able to put them in a box at the end of the day [laughs]. But I have an incredible respect for actors. And when you’re using live actors, you can tell right away, when shooting, whether someone is in the moment, or if it feels fake. Kyle was cast in the right part on Haunting, and if the actor is right, you know you’re safe. The more I’ve gotten to know about acting, the more I respect actors.
You grew up in Sydney. Did you go to film school?
I went to technical film college. Which was great, because you learn all the technical aspects of filmmaking, without the emphasis on Battleship Potemkin [laughs].
The trailer for The Haunting in Connecticut can be viewed below, and here are links to the official website, and the MySpace pages. The official website contains a cool interactive map of the United States, with links to various famous hauntings…some of which may be right in your neighborhood.
The website for Cornwell’s groundbreaking short Ward 13 can be found here.
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