The Signal director William Eubank speaks with us about making a little sci-fi movie with big ideas.
Den Of Geek: What inspired the movie?
I really wanted to jump into that.
There was a specific idea but I couldnt say it without totally destroying the film.
But theres like a one sentence line about like hey, I want to make a movie about this.
And thats how we got into it.
But I dont want to say it because it sort of like gives away the whole film.
I like the idea of these kids tracking hackers and mysterious signals.
It seems like its so more prevalent than ever because of the way were connected via the Web nowadays.
You dont really know who youre following.
What is your background in science fiction as a fan?
What were the things that sort of informed your approach to this genre?
Growing up, my dad would take us tuna fishing and I was like a really bad fisherman.
And all that was there were theseTwilight Zonetapes.
And so Id spend an entire day watchingTwilight Zoneepisodes over and over again, you know.
And somehow that burned into my brain.
Some of them particularly were just so crazy and I remember watching them was so exciting.
Time would evaporate even though I was out on a tuna fishing boat.
Super random but that kind of stuff I think always kind of stuck with me.
Especially David Lynch, he would make stuff that I didnt even necessarily like.
Ive got to admit when I was a little kid and I watchedEraserheadI did not like that movie.
It all felt so like sort of disorientingly fresh, you know.
A lot of science fiction writing always gave that to me.
I mean in terms of making them look big, thats just how I think.
I always tell people Im a huge fan of the Scott brothers Tony and Ridley Scott.
But they know how to make the shots count so that it feels bigger than it is.
And so Ive always enjoyed like kind of studying those templates and how they do that kind of stuff.
Movies likeBlack Hawk Downand stuff.
So Ive studied those films and then tried mixing those with the leanness of the action in anime.
I wonder what that is?
How did you shootThe Signal?
Yeah, high def.
And like I remember at that time that was insane.
That was like, Oh my God, we are going to have personal real filmmaking.
We had sort of a great perfect storm.
No crew, nothing.
It was just shooting.
If they were super movie stars I dont know if they would have allowed me to do that.
Your next project is a military thriller, but is sci-fi a genre youd like to return to?
So that will always be there.
But I want to always explore different mediums and different sort of genres.
But yeah, hopefully I can continue and make different things.
And thank God theirs is nothing like mine.
So well see what happens.
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