Ben Robertson, Alex Justinger Interview, Sept. 23, 2006

Ben Robertson : "Rougge The Vampyre" is I guess the best way to put it a love letter to the German expressionist films of the 1920's particularly "Nosferatu", "The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari". It's just a film that's trying to be something fresh but at the same time paying homage to something that's so influential through out the history of cinema. It's something we really just love and we wanted to try out.

Reelscene : How did you come to write the story?

Ben Robertson : Initially me and Alex had talked about doing an expressionist film and came to the idea about a vampire film. And he put a lot of unique spin on it and it just became a story that was so, so collaborative and so,.. it was just art, it was a true collaborative effort and just coming up with something, a vampire story but from the view of a vampire, just trying something different but something old but a different spin.

Alex Justinger : I think Ben kind of summed it up there, One thing that had me really interested in the idea of the whole vampire story is the decay of the soul versus the decay of the body. It wasn't a horror film so much but more of an experience, a dream like film and a love story unfolding with these characters who are longing for something that's so distant from them.

Ben Robertson : That was kind of the theme, what is really like to be so old and so ancient and to be alive yet to have no real humanity to you. Your humanity just seeps away as time passes and all you have is maybe the faintest memory of a mother or a father or a loved one and it's all kind of taken from you. It's like a complete living death and in a way these horrible creatures, these undead monsters are also so pathetic. They've lost everything that's of value to being alive.

Reelscene : Well, there was somethings where Rougge was lamenting over his loss of humanity with his final victim because he's kind of like caressing her, kind of remembering the likeness that was once his.

Ben Robertson : The whole concept was.. I remember me and Alex talked a lot about visually one thing we wanted to do was to have shots where Rougge appear very human and would turn a matter of inches and appear completely inhuman, be a monster. That his actions and his personality are a paradox, he's a person but he's not a person anymore.

Reelscene : When did you start production on this?

Ben Robertson : We started production at the beginning of this year, January [2006], probably first, second week of January and we started filming on February and it's just a process up until about May of shooting, some reshoots and editing and finding all the filters and all the things we needed to kind of get the look we were shooting for. It was about a five month process

Reelscene : Did you shoot digital?

Alex Justinger : Yes we shot digital. We shot it on the DVX 100 that everybody now a days seems to be shooting on bur thank God for cheap editing programs because we have been able to just do wonders to it. Like for instance throw filters on it and finding all sorts of just cool filters like grain filters and looping it to throw it on there and to play with the color tones and really kind of give it that vibe of what we were going for and not make it look like we were trying to go for it.

Reelscene : Did you have any production problems during the shoot?

Alex Justinger : Ohhh did we ever yeah, I mean, every, every, if something's... let me back up. When we were making the film we were trained to go through such a militant way of doing things and so we followed that direction and everything was just going too smooth, so it was just expected that something was going to happen and it's always typical that something happens. We managed to work through everything but stuff like the cameraman calling up one day, the second day of shooting saying 'hey I can't make it'. And other issues with actors, and our music... our score has always been an issue too because we've gone through about four or five composers and have not gotten one to give us a score, it's always 'hey I'm working on it' and then they disappear. So ahhh...

Reelscene : Well, I noticed you used some of "Koyaanisqatsi" is that just a temporary score?

Alex Justinger : Yes, that's just a temporary score. When cutting this together I was listening to a lot of Phillip Glass and especially "Koyaanisqatsi" and a lot of Herzog's "Nosferatu" score and ah... we cut together a temp score to kind of find that feel and push that emphasis of the dream like music and everything.

Reelscene : Since the premiere at UAB (University Of Alabama In Birmingham) have you done anything to the film since then, like reworking with it?

Alex Justinger : We've done a little bit of tweaking, nothing really big, nothing anyone would probable even notice. It's just been a lot of headache with trying to find someone to do this music and getting it... yeah, I guess that's about it.

Ben Robertson : I guess this is our stab at being very low rent but very high concept and we encourage everybody to do the very same thing just because there's no money to be spent doesn't mean you don't need to not use your imagination a far as you can pull it..

Reelscene : Since it's starting to rain I'll have to cut off here but thanks and good luck.

Alex Justinger : Thank you.