After a long night out on the town, Graham Skipper is still able to meet with 366 in the Fantasia Film Festival media lounge for a chat about his directorial debut.
366: It is the 20th of the July, Thursday and I’m here with Graham Skipper, director of Sequence Break [reviewed here] for an interview about the motion picture and whatever else comes up. Hello, Graham!
Graham Skipper: Hello!
366: This is your directorial debut?
GS: Yes it is.
366: So you’ve disowned Space Clown?
GS: [Laughs] No, I wouldn’t use that term… Space Clown was a good experiment that definitely helped me to learn more about film-making. But Sequence Break is definitely my first real directorial effort that’s indicative of what I’m trying to do.
366: I noticed you had a bunch of acting credits to your name, short films, TV shows, and things, and then on your website—congratulations on getting “GrahamSkipper.com” before the other guy, by the way…
GS: [Smiles] Thanks, thank you.
366 : …you’re listed as an “Actor/Writer/Director”; are you interested in shuffling those words around at any point?
GS: I love all three of those things. I love acting very much, I really loved being able to direct, and along with that, writing—the seed that grows in that sandbox. But they’re different skills and different adventures, so I want to continue doing all three.
366: You mentioned before the screening your role as Herbert West [in “Re-Animator, the Musical”]—you’re the first person in the role of Herbert West on stage. I take it you must be a fan of the original Re-Animator movies?
GS: Absolutely.
366: And Jeffrey Combs, who obviously doesn’t show up on screen nearly often enough.
GS: Oh yeah. I wish that — I could watch Jeffrey Combs read the phone book. He’s amazing.
366: Have you read the original H.P. Lovecraft story? What did you think of it [compared to the movie]?
GS: I have. It’s very different. I like it, it’s very pulpy. I like that it leans so heavily to the Frankenstein archetypes. I like the war time elements, the Zombie war during [World War I].
366 : I recently finished reading all the Lovecraft works…
GS: Oh cool.
366: …and there’s a rich vein there that has barely been tapped, cinema-wise.
GS: I think Lovecraft is really hard to adapt, so much of Lovecraft is, Continue reading BREAKING IT DOWN: AN INTERVIEW WITH GRAHAM SKIPPER (2017)
All right, this is Giles Edwards from 366 Weird Movies here with the director of The Honor Farm, Karen Skloss. We’re going to discuss the first fictional feature she’s directed, having previously directed 
Nikias Chryssos: My grandparents had a holiday house in Switzerland. It had this big bunker room in the basement with a thick iron door as a shelter for wartime. I imagined it would be funny if someone wants to rent a room and he basically gets locked away. I wanted to build a story about a place like this. Initially, the film was set in a kind of fairytale house in the woods but when we found the entrance to this bunker during our location search, we decided to put the whole story underground. The limited setting gave us a lot of control but also provided us with specific challenges. My production designer Melanie Raab, the cinematographer Matthias Reisser, and I then did a lot of research and the main challenge was to make the setting interesting even though everything takes place in one house. We wanted to give the different rooms different colors and moods but still keep it coherent. We also worked with different lighting set-ups, like more contrast during the night scenes and softer light in the day, even though the light might not change that much underground. As the student, our main protagonist, is working on some big scientific work, it was also interesting to work with patterns and build little connections there, whether it is the wallpaper, the walls, his blanket, the door frames or Klaus’ pajamas. Sometimes, these patterns also give the feeling of a prison cell. Thanks to great production design team, I never had the feeling something I wanted wasn’t possible. Another challenge was to not go mad in such a claustrophobic set during the shoot.