The Covenant – set visit interviews [Part 3 of 4]

Plot: Four young men who belong to a supernatural legacy are charged with stopping the evil force they released into the world years earlier. Another great force they must contend with is the jealousy and suspicion that threatens to tear them apart.

Release Date: September 8, 2006

Special interviews from the set in Montréal, Québec, Canada.

Renny Harlin - Director

Pierre Gill - DP

Renny: Hello!

Q: Hello, How are you doing today?

Renny: Excellent, but we are completely freezing.

Q: We were told that an interesting scene takes place in this barn. What happens?

Renny: Well, it's a scene with two girls, and they are making out. It's really interesting. It's a final confrontation between the antagonist and the protagonist. It's the final action scene which we'll be shooting here for like nine days. These tracks that you see here in ceiling, they are all like flying rigs. Computerized flying rigs. There's a very complex fight scene which is... It's not like Matrix, it's not like Crouching Tiger. It's something I think people haven't seen before. These actors are climbing up the walls and flying all over the place.

Q: How can you possibly do something like that these days? I mean it's gotta be so difficult with these fight sequences getting so elaborate.

Renny: Yeah, it is. But it's... I don't know. I think we've come up with something that is unique and doesn't feel like...

Q: Is it balletic, or rough and tumble...

Renny: It's rough, it's not balletic, it's not like Crouching Tiger where people are like walking on top of beams and stuff. It's more fast and rough and dirty. It doesn't have a kind of like Matrix stuff with people frozen in the air type of stuff. It's really rough and fast and violent.

Q: Having done two movies in the horror genre before, what have you learned from doing those that you've taken into doing this?

Renny: Not to repeat cliche's that people have seen before. If you are doing something like that, you have to take the audience in another direction. You have sort of mold them into thinking "Oh, I'm going to see another cliche'" and then give them something that actually takes it's...and twists it kind of upside down That timing is everything. That in a thriller or horror film, it's like when you are telling a joke, you have to time it perfectly so that you deliver the scare. 

That it's very much how you shoot it and how you light it and he's a genius and the way his lighting the mood is, it's going to look incredibly unique and big and real but stylized. Not like one of those other movies that have blue lighting dark and shadowy. Somehow we've developed our own covenant look which I...maybe you can explain it a little better but when it looks so good, but it does.

Pierre: Because I'm trying I guess to produce a dark and horror movie or scary movie which is just like going into just blackness and not see anything. Like in the way that you see something but it's a movie and I call this a Stanley Kubrick way. It's sort of a 2001, it's not like... If it could be bright it would be just bright itself. It's kind of dark but I guess it's the approach I had a little bit and trying to make it dark but not too... More like main things also. More like main things which would make ah... What you feel is the ambiance of the room that you are in. It feels like a gives like a classic director also instead of being just like dark with a face coming into the darkness. In the locations we had discussions about this. How dark we go dada, dada, the bathroom sequence which I'm very, very happy with what we've done. It's moody but you can see so it's going to be even more scary because, like I say it's the sound becomes very important in that part because we hear. You should see something, you don't and so, and it works very well.

Renny: It's also more about the composition than just the darkness. We did this with the bathroom sequence in this big, big bathroom. It's kind of a scary sequence and it's really not like irreverence ending for Kubrick so we tried to do compositions that are very deliberate. So we are not letting the audience just wander through the movie. We're telling the audience how to feel about certain situations by putting things in a frame that is very deliberate. That way I guess ... and Hitchcock did the same thing. So we're trying to not just shoot whatever happens, but force the audience to follow our perspective.

Q: And what about the actors? Are you using certain camera angles on each one to sort of bring out their character?

Renny: Yeah... Yes, and no. At the beginning of the movie we don't want to tell who is the good guy, who is the bad guy. It has to be very confusing as much as possible. So we kind of figure out "Oh, is this the new guy? Is this a good guy or no?" We think that this guy in a group is a bad guy. It's a bit in the acting where they go through that.

Pierre: We're not forcing it.

Renny: I don't think so right now. We're working on the annuals of course. The guys look really good, and the girls are great, but there's nothing to extreme. Like at the beginning Reed is supposed to maybe be a bad guy but there's nothing too much on him. There's not a shot like "whaaa!" and the camera is at a high angle and you're looking up like that. Like a crazy lunatic.

Pierre: We also use actors and angles that are unusual so that instead of just your normal conversation whereas "tac tac tac" we try to find angles that ... not to emphasize who is a good or a bad guy but just to make the audience a little uncomfortable or make them just feel like "Ok, this is not my grandmother's movie. This is not how it's always normally done." It would be fast and easy to do just like "Ok let's do a long lens shot of somebody and follow them and whatever" We try to take the time at make it a quality shot.

Q: Renny, you must get lots of scripts coming to you. What elements of this movie attracted you?

Renny: First of all this whole world of magic. Which to me like I sometimes say this is like Harry Potter for grown ups. I like this kind of supernatural world of magic. I think it's the ultimate wish fulfillment movie that these teenagers can kind of make anything happen. And the visuals that story offers. That kind of imaginary sequences that we can have where you have fun and take the audience into a world on a journey that is not your usual. Like I would want to do some teenaged slasher movie where somebody is chased by a crazy killer or something like that. But this just has so much sort of flight of fancy and imagination that for me it's like the funniest type of a movie to do.

Q: You usually work with seasoned vets. Now obviously this is a young, up and coming cast. Do you have any preference on the type of cast you want to work with?

Renny: I'm happy to work with both but for this kind of a movie where the concept of the movie is really wild this is the perfect kind of cast. They are young and eager and inspired and fun to work with. They'll try anything. They're always around the set. Always ready to go to work. It would be impossible to make this kind of movie unless we had twice the schedule with the stars. It's just a different process.

Pierre: It's like we're working, we're doing the film, we're preparing the scenes, and they come and it's like we wrote everything and everything works right away. There's nothing... It's very pleasant...

Renny: Sitting around talking about the motivation and some things that's... A wedding, or trying to please somebody or whatever. We're just all making the same movie together and it's quite fantastic. All these actors are very talented. Of course you know there are movies where you really want to have somebody major because of their acting talent or you need that name recognition. I mean we all know that if you're making a big hundred million dollar movie, you've got to have somebody that pops out there in the marquee or that the audience is ah you know... Unless your movie is called "King Kong" or something like that. Called Jurassic Park. But ah, you know if you have a movie otherwise where you somehow grab the audience's attention. Of course you want to have somebody who's an actor, or if you're doing some incredible drama you can have Kenny Rohan, Meryl Streep.

Q: How long are you shooting for this?

Renny: We are shooting for about three months.

Q: Are you hoping to get a certain rating?

Renny: Definitely, PG-13. I'm sure. There's no blood in the movie. One situation with blood but there's a lot of action but it's advocating like "Oh, this is fun!" but it's sort of magical action instead of "Lets smash somebody's head in."

Q: More action than scary?

Renny: It's really a mixture, its like I would say its like a supernatural action thriller. So it's definitely scary. We just did, a couple of days ago we did a... Show them that one shot we did. It's... It's scary almost all the time. It's very atmospheric and there's this brooding dark feeling through it all the time. It's uncomfortable.

Q: The notes mention shape shifting. Are there like creatures in this movie?

Renny: There are no shape shifting animals.

Q: Tone. Can you give us any thoughts on tone. What type of musical elements you want to include in this. Is it going to be instrumental?

Renny: There's going to be sort of an orchestral, instrumental score. At the moment I have like sixteen places for songs so its definitely going to be a lot of like cutting edge rock, mainly. Cause there are a lot of situations where driving their car, going to a bar or a beach party, or something like that so there's a lot of opportunity to score full music that's given... Again I reference a little bit like the Lost Boys. It was sort of like a very hip with music you know and stuff and people and... And even older people sometimes.

Q: Going back to the notes it says that eventually I guess they face some evil force. So I want to know, in the movie from beginning to end, what makes them better prepared to face that looming threat against them.

Renny: Well they have to sort of... The idea is they are like seventeen, in the story and the idea is that when you're thirteen you are getting the first taste of your powers. Its like when you are going through puberty and other kids are worrying about their pimples and something else, they have to worry about the fact that they are ... all of the sudden they realize they have these powers. And then they intensify and intensify so I guess, in the course of our story, they grow and learn to be responsible. In the beginning of the story they are kind of happy go lucky, like "Ok, lets see who's got powers.", and doing fun stuff and maybe being a little bit reckless. Then when they are faced with this enemy, this person who is going to use these powers for evil purposes, then they kind of realize you know, "Hey, with these powers come responsibility and we have to use them in sort of a way to defeat evil", and that hopefully in the future (unintelligible) not being reckless with something like that. Something special that we have, that you can see the beauty of it and use it. Not to cure world hunger but still, use it for the positive.

Q: They looked pretty powerful, so their enemy must be really powerful too.

Renny: Yes, there are special reasons why the enemy is so powerful, and that the enemy is also a young one of them.

Pierre: Oh ho! So there is your secret!

Q: Thank you!

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Staci Layne Wilson reporting