ScreenAnarchy Visits The Set Of Vincenzo Natali Produced Thriller 388 ARLETTA AVE
If I hadn't known exactly where writer-director Randall Cole was shooting his new thriller I would have missed it. If not for the production assistants keeping watch for traffic on the street corners and star Nick Stahl walking across the street as I approached I'd never have known it was there. The only outward sign that something was off was that the house number was incorrect when compared to the rest of the street.
It's rather fitting that a film revolving around illicit surveillance should keep such a low profile. Anyone who has ever been to a set before can tell you that they are normally big, bulky affairs, location shooting announcing itself with seemingly endless rows of big white trucks, equipment cables snaking across the road and hundreds of orange pylons running up the curbs. There is none of that here, the production maintaining as low a profile as Stahl's unseen observer.
Coming from Steve Hoban's Toronto-based Copperheart Entertainment (Ginger Snaps, Splice) the film is Splice director Vincenzo Natali's first foray into a producer's role, with Natali playing much the same role here with director Randall Cole as Guillermo Del Toro did for him in the effort to get Splice made. Though his third feature this is Cole's first step into thriller territory and Natali has been there through the development process to offer advice while giving potential investors a familiar name on the creative team.
Though nobody will say what Cole is up to, exactly - the exact plot being a closely guarded secret - it's clear he's aiming to push the found footage genre into a new direction. The film strips away the self awareness that normally marks this style of filmmaking and instead plays out as cold, clinical surveillance footage. The rooms of Stahl's home are rigged with as many as five small digital cameras at a time - cameras the characters are unaware of - while footage outside the house is shot at a distance by an unseen observer armed with a digital SLR. What's it all about? And what will Stahl's character do when he realizes that he is being observed? Nobody will say anything other than referring to the script as the twisty sort of thriller that Hitchcock would have been proud of. Cole puts the influence simply: "Hitchcock definitely would have been interested in what perversity would come with tiny little cameras."
I had the chance to sit down with both Cole and Stahl while on set and caught up with Natali over the phone the next day. Expect those interviews, and more from 388 Arletta Ave, soon.
It's rather fitting that a film revolving around illicit surveillance should keep such a low profile. Anyone who has ever been to a set before can tell you that they are normally big, bulky affairs, location shooting announcing itself with seemingly endless rows of big white trucks, equipment cables snaking across the road and hundreds of orange pylons running up the curbs. There is none of that here, the production maintaining as low a profile as Stahl's unseen observer.
Coming from Steve Hoban's Toronto-based Copperheart Entertainment (Ginger Snaps, Splice) the film is Splice director Vincenzo Natali's first foray into a producer's role, with Natali playing much the same role here with director Randall Cole as Guillermo Del Toro did for him in the effort to get Splice made. Though his third feature this is Cole's first step into thriller territory and Natali has been there through the development process to offer advice while giving potential investors a familiar name on the creative team.
Though nobody will say what Cole is up to, exactly - the exact plot being a closely guarded secret - it's clear he's aiming to push the found footage genre into a new direction. The film strips away the self awareness that normally marks this style of filmmaking and instead plays out as cold, clinical surveillance footage. The rooms of Stahl's home are rigged with as many as five small digital cameras at a time - cameras the characters are unaware of - while footage outside the house is shot at a distance by an unseen observer armed with a digital SLR. What's it all about? And what will Stahl's character do when he realizes that he is being observed? Nobody will say anything other than referring to the script as the twisty sort of thriller that Hitchcock would have been proud of. Cole puts the influence simply: "Hitchcock definitely would have been interested in what perversity would come with tiny little cameras."
I had the chance to sit down with both Cole and Stahl while on set and caught up with Natali over the phone the next day. Expect those interviews, and more from 388 Arletta Ave, soon.
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