Horror fans are in for a treat with the exciting new film “Death and Life.” This incredibly creative production team seeks to challenge the audience to look past Death and relish in the experience of Life. The Director, Writer, and Producer, OJ Hansen gave Nerd Alert News an amazing look behind-the-scenes. It is a must-see film that asks the age-old question of “What is the meaning of life” as it follows the character of Death through a mundane and immortal existence in Purgatory. It is a Tim Burton-esque look that is set in reality and it’s more similar to a Mad Max post-apocalyptic wasteland. It is dark and wonderfully creative with the use of infrared photography techniques to create a Purgatory setting. This truly one-of-a-kind look was done with a converted Sony A1 and Sony A7SIII equipment to create a darker sky, transparent skin tones of crystal blue, and changes foliage from an everyday green to bright white. It is simply stunning!
Another exciting facet of this movie is that their team can boast an almost entirely women-led producer team which gave them the opportunity to execute this story in a way that honors their director’s original concept while developing the project with a largely female influence. The creativity involved in this project is mind-blowing and the passion and work that went into making “Death and Life” will no doubt be rewarded. Check out the trailer, and read why this is such an amazing project.
Colleen Bement: Congratulations on your one-of-a-kind new film, “Death and Life.” The trailer is eye-catching and the concept is exciting. My first question is where did you get the idea to shoot the film using infrared photography techniques? It’s stunning!
OJ Hansen: Thank you very much. So, I’ve been interested in infrared photography since 2006 when I saw my first infrared photo. It was this wild image of a tree, standing by itself in an empty field, with its leaves all blinding white, and this extremely dark, almost black, minimalist sky behind it. It just really jumped out at me as, refreshing, and eerie, while also fantastical… all at the same time. Before I understood that it was a photography technique, I just thought it was a magical location in some faraway land. And that was my first introduction into infrared (IR) and I became obsessed with it ever since. From that point, I started learning more about it, getting any and all information on infrared photography, knowing I just had to try and shoot with this style.
It was around then that I saw the trailer for the movie 300 (2006), which had this incredible look and style to it. And this was back in ’06 before everyone had access to all the amazing camera equipment we can affordably get today. So, I thought, with IR, I could get this amazing style, and compete with the big studio style, but without the huge price tag that normally comes along with it. Piece of cake, right? That’s where I was wrong because the complications of infrared soon reared its head, and I would spend the next decade figuring out all of its many issues.
CB: What was challenging in shooting with a converted Sony A1?
OJH: Everything. Every… fucking… thing… is challenging about infrared (laughing). The second you think you got a handle on it, something else pops up and causes issues. You can’t approach it as you would normal cinematography, because what’s normal for lighting/camera in any other film, is usually the exact opposite for IR. An example is that you can’t just use any lens. I would say out of all the thousands of lenses in the world, and only a small percentage (2-5%), will actually work in IR. It can be the world’s sharpest, most expensive lens, and when you use it in IR, it’s extremely soft, with heavy vignetting, and more than likely will have a dreaded hotspot at the center of the image. A “hotspot” is a white blob in the center of the image, very common in infrared with most lenses, caused by light reflecting off the interior barrel of the lens, or caused by a lens’s coatings on the front element. Sometimes this hotspot is a sharp tiny circle, and other times it’s this huge ghostly circle floating around in front of your subject. It can vanish if you point your camera in one direction, but then pop up, if you change your position to a light source. And regardless, this hotspot will change in size and intensity, depending on your aperture setting. Typically, the more narrow the aperture, the worse the hotspot is. The wider the aperture, the better a hotspot can become. But every lens is different, with some better than others, etc., etc., etc. It’s just a big rabbit hole of complexities. And these were just camera lenses. For lighting, LED’s are worthless in IR. You have to stick with old school Tungsten lights and those even have various issues depending on what the lighting conditions are.
Doing actor’s makeup is nearly impossible because so much of it doesn’t show up in IR, due to various ingredients in the makeup’s pigment that may/may not be visible in IR. Down to the time of day is a challenge, as the “magic hour” time, is not the best time to shoot in IR. High noon is the best. Which is normal cinematography, is the exact opposite. And we haven’t touched upon the complexities of color in IR (more laughing). We shot in the 720nm IR light spectrum, so what is blue in the camera, will be orange in post, while red is invisible altogether. IR is just an ass-backward technique, where you have to unlearn the normal way of shooting a movie and relearn how to see the world through infrared and plan ahead for it.
CB: Please share the storyline with us and what can horror fans expect?
OJH: The film “Death and Life” is a feature-length Horror-Western, giving off the feeling of an old 70’s Spaghetti Western set in purgatory, that also shares a heavy kinship with the comedic romance seen in “A Princess Bride.” The film follows Death, who upon losing his powers, sets out into purgatory to regain his magical coffin from an old man refusing to let go of his past life, as both confront the meaning of existence in a lifeless world. Sounds drab, but there is quite a bit of humor in it all. The film is set in Purgatory, as we travel throughout California; from the eerie deserts of Death Valley to the beautiful forests of Yosemite, ending at the Pacific Ocean of Point Dume, Malibu. The production design will combine a Tim Burton-esque gothic style with a Mad Max post-apocalyptic wasteland. By mixing good old-fashioned set building, with cost-effective miniatures, we are able to give the film’s world a much more hand-crafted feel that someone might remember from older Jim Henson films like “Labyrinth” or “Dark Crystal.” You can expect macabre visuals, mixed with odd humor, that create a truly unique experience for the horror viewer.
CB: How exciting is it that this film has an almost entirely women-led producer team! How did this come about, and how does it enhance the project?
OJH: In my opinion, having representation of all types only helps to improve a project. Because you are getting different perspectives, which allows further creative ideas to flow, that wouldn’t be there from the eye of a single person. To me, it was a no brainer, and having Melissa Saracyan, and Emilie Soghomonian leading the way, has given the movie a chance to be better than it was without them. And no matter how much I bother the hell out of them, with my over-the-top ideas, and hard to hike to locations, they’ve stuck with me through it. And the idea of female-led productions, is no longer out of the norm, as female creatives are taking charge now. The male-dominated film industry is no longer a “boys-only club”. I mean, Kathleen Kennedy is helming the entire “Star Wars” franchise. Whether you like her decisions or not with that universe, it doesn’t take away the fact that more and more women are entering the film industry and are being heard, in much more than a simple damsel in distress acting role position. They are taking charge and have just as much reason to be there as any male counterpart. So having them here has been invaluable to me and I am all for making better movies. And having women there to tell their stories is only going to give us better stories in the end.
CB: Tell us about the casting. What was involved in finding the perfect fit for this film?
OJH: Well, we started the casting process in the beginning of Covid, which turned into a pandemic and ultimately caused us to stop production. But when we were able to come back to casting, it really just came down to finding people who carried the right amount of balance in tone, with these characters I had spent so much of my time living within my head. What I’ve always looked for during the audition process, is an actor’s ability to take direction, and to be able to change a previously decided-on approach, in favor of a different one if the scene calls for it. It seems like common sense for an actor to be able to do but is actually not as common as you would think, and the actors that take direction well are hard to come by. If an actor is unable to adapt to direction, then you are bound to the performance the actor gives you, and that can be problematic.
As movies go through various stages (or drafts), from the initial treatment to the final script to shooting on set, and then during the editing process in post. It goes through many heavy changes during all those stages that the creatives have to adapt the story to. And when on shooting set, it’s similar, as moments arise where we all have to adapt to them. I count on the actors I bring on board, to give something more than what is just written on the page, as I place my trust in them. The concept of actors trusting Directors is brought up all the time… but it’s the same thing the other way around. While shooting, we don’t have all day, where a Director can puppet everyone’s physical movement and tone, in every frame. This isn’t an animated film. A live movie set is a living breathing organism. Filming a scene is a moment where actors, Director, and production teams all come together, and only have a few takes to create a scene to make it the best they can while working together. And that is through collaboration. It takes adaptation from all people on set to make a great scene.
I worked with Emilie Soghomonian previously on two of my short films and knew what I was getting when I asked her to play my favorite character Elizabeth in Death and Life. I trusted her with the role and just knew it was in good hands from past experiences with her. Ethan Daniel Corbett was someone that I’d never worked with before, so I had put him through two different video auditions, and three zoom auditions, where we were able to work on a few scenes together. This is the fun time, where you get to see if this is going to work with you and the actor, or if it isn’t. It was after those Zoom auditions, that I knew he fully understood the over-the-top ridiculousness of the Death character while giving it a grounded delivery in this realistic purgatory world. So, I became very comfortable with what he brought to the table and the questions he was asking. When you know, you just know, and the same is said for the rest of the cast. Everything just clicked.
But I don’t want to say it was just acting abilities that were all I was looking at. Because a big part of casting for myself is also asking, who do I want to be around for the length of the shoot? When you’re making a movie, there are a lot of rough days, where you are “in the trenches” so to speak, doubting everything you’ve worked so hard to put together. And so, the question comes up, who do I want in those trenches with me? Personality, and an easy-going vibe, are also part of the audition process. We don’t have all the luxuries… or any of the luxuries (laughing), that most productions have. Having the right balance of personality, to be with me day in and day out is important to gauge when making decisions on casting (and crew).
CB: How did you create a world in Purgatory? Where did you draw inspiration from?
OJH: Inspiration for the world is pretty vast and can be pulled from many movies growing up. In particular, fantasy 80’s movies, like “Legend” (1985), “Labyrinth” (with David Bowie), or the anime “Angel’s Egg” (1985), to “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1992). But ultimately, the movie’s world was taken from my own reality. I was a server for a multitude of restaurants, and around the late 2000s, I hated where I was at in life, and felt like my job was this mundane purgatory place that I just couldn’t stand. I always projected my frustrations (in life) by channeling it into my artwork. In this case, a script. It was late one night after a long shift, on a frustrated walk back to my car, I figured I would write a story about a character who was dead set on quitting his job. I mean, if I couldn’t quit my job, at least I could live vicariously through one of my characters and vent my frustrations through them.
The key was to do a story about an interesting character with an interesting job. I arrived at Death wanting to quit his job of burying the dead. And that’s how it started. But the story didn’t end that way, as with rewrite after rewrite, I realized the movie worked better with Death being forced to quit his mundane job. And from there, he realizes what a pointless life he had, in comparison to the humanity around him, who had a vastly shorter life than his own, yet a more fulfilled one. And this was all due to taking my own reality, and recycling my existential issues through these fictional characters, to help me see the truth to my own needs.
CB: How can we get involved in order to support this amazing project?
OJH: Well, we are in the final days of our crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo where you can support us, which has all the proceeds going to the film and would be huge for us if anyone is able to support us. I am also on Instagram, and I regularly post updates on the film, and all the builds that have been occurring for the many sets, wardrobes, and camera tests, that we have been going through. Sharing content is an easy, and free way for anyone to support this movie as well. Check me out on IG and say “Hi”. It’s the little things because every little bit helps.
Be sure to follow OJ on Instagram. Be a part of the project.
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