Today I’m interviewing Michael Staininger, who directed the upcoming Edgar Allen Poe's Ligeia, he is a very smart, very talented up and coming director, this film looks amazing, and has a great cast, the website for the film has just gone up, its www.ligeiamovie.com  check it out. Oh yeah  I am in it too :)

How did you get into the business? Did you go to film school?
I was fifteen when I first went to New York University to explore the craft of directing and thereafter it became clear to me that this is what I wanted to do, passionately. I was born and raised in Vienna, Austria, and besides my strong career ambition it always mattered to me to have a profound and solid education which I could benefit from in daily affairs and which would give me the opportunity for a back door in case things did not turn out the way I had planned them and so I earned my Master’s Degree in Economics and Finance, plus went back to New York to attend film school in 2003. After my graduations I directed two smaller commercials in Vienna, both for car companies, and then took a chance in moving to Los Angeles in January 2006 I was 26 then.

How did you get involved with Ligeia?
In Los Angeles I was introduced to George Furla of Emmett/Furla Films and after a year of searching for the right material and trying to get certain projects off the ground with no success, I received a phone call about an Edgar Allan Poe script from the writer and the producer of The Crow. I am [a] big fan of the first Crow film and the possibility of working with the same producer responsible for a film I always considered a favorite, combined with the appeal of Poe’s fascinating classic tales, immediately intrigued me. So Mr. Furla consequently introduced me to Jeff Most (The Specialist, The Crow) and we took it from there. We spent a few months working on the script by John Shirley (The Crow) and after all the contracts were signed Jeff Most and I embarked on what became a year long adventure. We went on location in St. Louis mid August 2007 and after a few hiccups and the usual independent filmmaking setbacks during pre-production we rolled cameras in December 2007 for 18 days, 3 long 6 day weeks, right up until Christmas, in the excruciating Missouri winter, with maybe half a day of sunshine total, which granted made the crew suffer a little bit, but was tremendously beneficial to the look of the film and its gloomy, dark mood. We then broke for the holidays and re-gathered the troops the beginning of January in the Ukraine, where we shot another 8 days, most of it exteriors in a castle by the Black Sea, involving two major stunts including a fall from a 60 foot watch tower. Post production was done in Los Angeles, where I had the pleasure of working with my gifted editor Danny Saphire for almost six months. We just announced completion.

You have so many great actors in the film, how did you go about getting them?
Yes indeed, the cast is amazing. As a first time feature director, with hardly a big resume, casting is a tricky thing to do, as established actors are hesitant to work with a director they don’t know anything about. On set, the actor performs for the director; it is the director’s job not only to guide the actor but to make the actor feel comfortable, to give the actor the opportunity and confidence to open him/herself up completely, to become vulnerable. Only then outstanding, genuine, truthful performances become possible, only if the actor is able to trust the director, to put his/her work in the director’s hands. So for that reason it took us quite some time to find the quality cast that we now have. Michael Madsen and Eric Roberts came on board first, Wes Bentley joined the fun after we had strengthened his character’s arc in the script, He is a big Poe fan and attracted to dark, complex material, but he needed his character’s journey to be strengthened. After we had done that he signed on and given his great reputation as character actor this meant a lot to me and in fact his involvement opened a lot of doors to even go darker with our main character and the story in general. Katilin Doubleday as one of the two female leads came highly recommended by our casting director Shannon Makhanian. It took a long time to search for the right 'Rowena’ and an equally long time to shape her character in the script, but in the end it all worked out great. We have two gorgeous girls fighting for our handsome lead, one of the girls representing the world of darkness, mysterious, haunting, and deadly, the other one representing purity and innocence. In addition, Mackenzie Rosman from the successful TV show 7th Heaven had her first bigger feature starring role as a young peasant girl who gets possessed by an evil spirit. To round off the name ensemble, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, an Asian star many know from the films Mortal Combat and Memoirs of a Geisha, plays a university chancellor. And even small roles are prominently cast, for example with Christa Campbell portraying the university chancellor’s wife. So all in all I consider myself very lucky to having been able to work with such an acclaimed cast as debutant director. 

Was there a lot of CGI, or mostly makeup?
First off, Edgar Allan Poe’s Ligeia is a supernatural thriller, not a gory horror film. The horror in this film is very atmospheric, much like Poe’s writing, focusing on the mysterious, the unseen, and the evil lurking beneath the walls. The visuals transport the viewer into Poe’s world, one that leaves a lot to one’s imagination. The trick was to create a dark aura, an aura of horror that is brought out through Ligeia’s character, through her world and through her evil deeds. Having said that, and because most of the horror involves the supernatural, visual effects obviously dominate over make-up effects or prosthetics. There are quite a number of visual effects in the film, which play a central role when realistically depicting entities such as the human soul or a spirit. When making use of visual effects though one has to be extra careful to give them credibility, like something that could have been photographed practically, and when it comes to dealing with the supernatural, this can be tricky. No matter how expensive the effects, if the viewer doesn’t buy into them, the film is in trouble. That is why in Edgar Allan Poe’s Ligeia, we kept things very grounded and believable, because only then what happens on screen is truly terrifying.

The star Sofia Skya is fairly new to acting, how did you find her?
In the script, Ligeia is of Russian descent; her family owns a manor in a remote location by the Black Sea. I liked this concept a lot; it makes her instantaneously exotic, but not in an inviting way; it makes her cold, mysterious, otherworldly, and untouchable. My idea was to go with someone unknown, a face that no viewer could relate anything to, somebody foreign, authentic, with a real accent, ideally a Russian girl with great physique and body control, and amazing eyes. To me most of what makes Ligeia so intimidating and yet so irresistible has to do with her eyes, and the way she moves. So I was being very specific as to what I was looking for and quite honestly, after we had found Sofya Skya and I was stunned by how perfectly her looks fit the part, in casting an unknown, at that time inexperienced actress, we took a leap of faith. But in the end it was all worth it; she shined in every way and has tremendous screen presence. And her commitment and dedication is every director’s dream.

Do you have a favorite scene in the movie?
The favorite scene question is obviously very difficult for a director to answer, especially because I know every line, even every breath of the film, but if I had to pick one it would be the one in which Ligeia seduces Jonathan, which is composed and edited much like a dance between a snake and a mouse, before the final bite that kills the weaker, and the visual transition that follows it.

Where did you film?
We filmed in St. Louis, Missouri, and in the Ukraine, to be precise in Yalta, in an amazing castle by the Black Sea, in Sevastopol and by the ruin and bay of Balaklava, a village where the Russian fleet used to be stationed.

Any set gossip you can dish?
On a film set there is always gossip but much like the saying "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas", all I can say is "What happens on location stays on location". Please quote me on that.

How was working with Wes Bentley, and Michael Madsen?
Wes and Michael are both acting heavyweights and their impressive resume reflects that. However both have a very different approach to their craft, and they come from very different schools. Wes is very intuitive, he likes to take a chance, he likes to explore, let the character take him places and possibly discover things on the spot that weren’t planned. On a good day, he opens himself up completely, and on Ligeia there were many good days like that. Michael on the other hand unzips his bag of tricks, his looks and gestures, each assigned to a certain physical and psychological action, and that works perfectly for him. Not to say that he is not intuitive, but he likes to go about a scene in a different way than Wes. See acting is about the result, what the audience sees on screen and how they experience the actor’s performance; if it’s real, truthful and comes from the gut, actor and director have done their jobs right. Each actor’s tools are a little different, their methods very subjective, but it was very interesting to work with two great actors that have such distinctly different styles. 

You went to the Ukraine to film some scenes how was that?
Shooting in the Ukraine was a fascinating experience. We had already completed three full weeks in St. Louis and I had grown comfortably into my position so in many ways the Ukraine shoot was a little lighter than the Missouri shoot. On the other hand the entire team had to face enormous challenges, two potentially very dangerous stunts were shot there, supervised by a relatively young stunt crew, the weather absolutely needed to be on our side every single one of the eight days, which thankfully it was, and the scope of the shots that were taken there often did not allow very many takes. In the end the material turned out so great that almost every shot taken in the Ukraine ended up being in the film. This was made possible by Robert Crombie and his local crew, who have given ‘Ligeia’ the scope that it could have never had if it would have all been shot in the United States.

Where can we see the film?
Producer Jeff Most and I are currently in the middle of exploring various distribution strategies but a premiere on an acclaimed international stage is expected soon. I will of course be happy to keep people informed and make an announcement once firm decisions have been made.