Pat Higgins: Director
Interview: Pat Higgins
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Pat Higgins is a busy man. Fresh from directing two feature-length films back to back, hes already launched into the heavy load of his next movie, Hellbride. In between one and the other, Cinescare paused with Higgins for an hour one morning - instant message an interview across the Atlantic and a time zone. Cinescare was ready for eggs an toast. Higgins was thinking a midday meal.
Cinescare: Good morning from the United States, Pat.
Pat Higgins: Good morning from dreary London! How are things with you?
Cinescare: Excellent. Thank you for taking a little time for Cinescare.com.
Pat Higgins: A pleasure. Absolutely love the site, by the way.
Cinescare: Thank you very much. What is Pat Higgins is working on this week?
Pat Higgins: Been a very busy week, actually. Some editing on Hellbride, some sales stuff for KillerKiller and a couple of meetings regarding funding for the next one. No rest for the wicked.
Cinescare: Tell me about "Hellbride." We've looked at "TrashHouse" and "KillerKiller," and we'll get to both in a moment, but what's the new film about?
Pat Higgins: Hellbride' is the tale of a cursed engagement ring, originally owned by a woman who was wronged by her husband-to-be and murdered rather a lot of people It falls into the hands of a rather lovely young couple who are planning to marry and all manner of mayhem ensues. It's essentially a romantic comedy, but with an awful lot of dark, crazy, scary stuff thrown into the mix. I think it's the funniest thing we've done thus far, for those who liked the humor in the first two.
Cinescare: Has it been progressively easier to acquire funding? Did "TrashHouse" give you any leverage to make to "KillerKiller" and "KillerKiller" prod resources to come to the table for "Hellbride?"
Pat Higgins: Hellbride was actually shot before KillerKiller. We shot the
features back-to-back last summer, but the rather more complicated digital effects have meant a longer post-production than KillerKiller. The funding block for both films certainly wouldn't have come together had TrashHouse not gained a decent release and some positive reviews! Of course, it had the odd awful one too!
Cinescare: Then in some sense, you had to to raise the budget for two films - although perhaps you maximized time and expenditure by doing them back to back. Shared cast? Shared crew?
Pat Higgins: Absolutely. I think the idea of shooting them back-to-back came at some point during TrashHouse, when I realized that getting insurance for a shoot twice the length, or even two shoots, would be almost exactly the same price as for the period we were getting it for. That principle applied to lots of other things too, and we realized that if we could get two flicks prepped and ready then the budget wouldn't have to double. It would have to increase, but not double!
Cinescare: Whatever the sum needed, where does an independent filmmaker turn to for funding in the United Kingdom?
Pat Higgins: I shot TrashHouse with my own money; just took a risk to see if I could pull it off. Since then, we've relied on investment from individuals and small companies, alongside money brought back to the company from sales and so forth. It certainly gets easier the more of a track record you build up.
Cinescare: Talk to me about your crew on the films. How has your team changed and/or grown over the course of three shoots?
Pat Higgins: There are folks who will come and go over the years depending on their availability, I'm sure. Sometimes projects clash and that rules people out. Having said that, there have been certain folks who have recurred over and over. Alan Ronald has been my [director of photography] on all three movies. James 'Magic' Mitchell has been on the sound team for all three, as an assistant on the first and then the boss for the other two. It's great to know that I've got a good contacts book full of folks I can rely on
Cinescare: Do you shoot film or digital?
Pat Higgins: The latest two have been HD, although I've yet to see the entire film in actual High Definition; only seen the final cut from a standard DVD thus far!
Cinescare: You're editing on what platform?
Pat Higgins: Final Cut Pro. TrashHouse was cut on a PC running Pinnacle Edition. It kept crashing every other day, and I'd lose hours of work. So we opted for a monster Mac running Final Cut Studio for the new ones. Only ever crashed once thus far, despite having hours and hours of HD footage in it. Think it only crashed that once to warn me that it could.
Cinescare: Who is your digital effects team? That's been a factor certainly in "TrashHouse" and now, as you mention, "Hellbride.
Pat Higgins: We've got an in-house effects team, which basically means that we have go-to people for different types of effects.
Cinescare: Are CGI effects your first choice, or a choice of economics?
Pat Higgins: On TrashHouse it was an absolute necessity. We hardly had a set, so we were adding structures digitally in post to make it feel more like a house. It was a way of getting things done any which way. It was a fairly cartoony flick anyway, so realism wasn't a massive concern. On KillerKiller, however, we wanted more of a sense of reality and so we backed away from CGI and went for a lot more practical effects. Beverly Chorlton, our hair, make-up and gore expert, worked overtime on that one!
Cinescare: There is a remarkable difference between the look of "TrashHouse" and "KillerKiller."
Pat Higgins: I agree. TrashHouse is the product of a set built in three days, whereas KillerKiller had a fantastic location.
Cinescare: Both are stylized pictures, and the look of both represents something essential to the psychology of the characters and the themes of the script.
Pat Higgins: The limits of the TrashHouse set also limited us in terms of camera angles and movement. The psychology of the characters in TrashHouse was a big influence on the colors and so on.
Cinescare: Given that you were working within the real world, and the financial/physical constraints of "TrashHouse" dictated some choices - talk about how the relationship of technology and psychology dictated the hyper-real look of the film.
Pat Higgins: I think we took our cue from the 1950s sequence; black and white with the laugh track. That was one of the first things that I came up with, years and years ago. From there, I was always struck by the idea that if you're shifting from black and white to color, there need to be some extremes of color to actually look at. And once you've opted for a color palette of extremes, (down to the totally green lighting in James' room once he's gone completely insane), the other stuff falls into place to a degree
Cinescare: This is the psychology of the audience now, playing with the things they are hardwired to understand about how film on the screen behaves.
Pat Higgins: Absolutely. The good old fourth wall. I still love the shot where Lucy looks straight into camera and gives the line 'Well, I am the comedy genius" and the laugh track kicks in.
Cinescare: Your set and the psychological condition of your characters was also key in "KillerKiller." Talk about the location. Did it prompt the script or did you find the perfect location for a story already written?
Pat Higgins: The script was already well and truly written. I'd looked at various places; disused prisons, and so on. I'd been talking about the project to Cy Henty, who ended up playing Rosebrook, and oddly enough he said I think I know somewhere. He'd actually worked at Warley when it was a functioning mental hospital. His first job out of university. It had been derelict for 10 years, and was slowly being converted into flats. I made some calls, went had had a look around, and decided that it was perfect. The per-day rate was extremely high, though, so we had to work very quickly indeed to get the shots we wanted.
Cinescare: It lends a similar intensity to the film as the Danvers State Hospital did to "Session 9." Those old mental hospitals seem to ache to be on film - and the stories we want to tell in them seem to be stories about fear, revenge and the border between reality and some other world.
Pat Higgins: The crumbling walls, peeling paint ... it was absolutely ideal. Like a glimpse into the brains of the characters. I also rather like the idea, in a selfish kind of way, that the building isn't going to be there for much longer. Areas that we filmed in have probably already been demolished. It's not like there'll be a hundred films all using the same location. Just this strange snapshot of something that's no longer there.
Cinescare: Your scripts, at least the three we're talking about today, do something similar - taking a certain convention and inverting it. "TrashHouse" turns the horror-fed mind inside out via a technological toy. "KillerKiller" turns the homicidals mind inside out via a supernatural phenomenon and "Hellbride" uses a ring to expose the inner neuroses about marriage. In each case, an external device yanks internal damage onto the screen.
Pat Higgins: I hadn't ever thought about it that way, but that's absolutely correct. And I've just realized that applies to the next one too. My plot devices are showing
Cinescare: They're themes - not just devices.
Pat Higgins: It sounds much better that way! Certainly the things I like to explore are the buried things.
Cinescare: If you had a gun to your head, what are the two key themes you with which you think you're grappling in the horror genre?
Pat Higgins: I think that people have a tendency to hide things about themselves, even from themselves. So I think I'd probably say identity is one of them. The difference between how people perceive themselves and what they actually are. The other would probably be love. So, there I am. Exploring identity and love by having people stabbed through the head by undead cheerleaders!
Cinescare: Humor is also important to "TrashHouse" and "KillerKiller, balancing the fear of being punished for what one has thought or done with a sort of theatrical safety valve. Tell me about the importance of the element of humor in your work.
Pat Higgins: I have honestly tried, more times than I can count, to write something straight with no real humor to it, and I find it nearly impossible. Without having that release valve, that tension breaker, my stuff just seems to fall to bits or I lose interest in it. I did standup for a few years, and maybe that has something to do with it. You get that pathological need to get regular laughs, even if you're talking about something entirely serious. And the truest laughs are always the darkest.
Cinescare: Pat, you've been very generous with your time. We're just about ready to wrap - so that you can have some some lunch and I can slouch off towards breakfast, but how did you come to make horror films? What prompted you to put so much on the line?
Pat Higgins: It was what I'd always wanted to do; I've got Super-8 footage that I filmed at age seven, messing around with stop-motion monsters, using torches as laser guns. Then life gets in the way, you know? So I ended up graduating with a degree that opened no doors whatsoever. Worked in video shops, cinemas, anything to be near film. Then I was stuck working in a call center during the dot-com boom, literally writing screenplays between calls.
Cinescare: What changed? How did you take the first step?
Pat Higgins: The company floated on the stock-market, and I was convinced that the stock would rocket. I borrowed cash from my parents, my flat-mate, the bank; bought stock, watched the company float and then sold it off. Paid back everyone in full that very week, bank included, but had enough money for a broadcast quality camera and an edit suite for my PC. That was the camera I shot TrashHouse with; a Canon XM1
Cinescare: Today, what represents the next level in your career?
Pat Higgins: Hmm. A bigger budget and a cinema release would be nice at some point further down the line, but I'm not holding my breath for that yet. I'm happy in my niche for the moment. I'm honored to be the first Cinescare interviewee.
Cinescare: Let's make this the first of many. As "Hellbride" comes to fruition - we'd like to be involved.
Pat Higgins: I'll make sure that we get a screener out as soon as we hit final cut, which should be late next month. Have a great breakfast!
James O'Brien
Cinescare Staff
The cast of "TrashHouse."
