Interview By Joseph McCabe
Among the films screening at this week?s Screamfest, Brad Kean?s Entity: Nine is a bit of an anomaly, recalling the sci-fi actioners of the ?80s more than any purebred horror film. But lest we forget, classics like The Terminator and RoboCop delivered more than their share of shivers. So Kean?s short?about a robotics engineer whose technology is used by his superiors to murder their opponents?functions as both a charming homage to its forebears and a devious tale of cutting-edge terror.

Based on Entity: Nine?s production value and polished effects sequences, is it safe to assume you have a very strong technical background?

"As an underground I was a computer engineer, actually. I switched up and went to get my masters in film. So I was always kind of technical. But I didn?t know anything about visual effects, and throughout film school people would have effects shots they wanted to realize, and they?d go to me because I was a techie guy. So I said, ?Sure, I?ll try to figure it out.? I kind of learned by helping out as many people as I could, and just kind of trial by fire, doing various shots on people?s movies. I started to learn it that way, and then I took a visual effects class at USC. Then, when I was writing my thesis film, which was Entity: Nine, I had a lot of free time, because I wasn?t taking classes and I was just writing. I had a lot of spare hours in the day, so I decided to work at Sony Imageworks, which is a big visual-effects house, to keep me busy while I was writing at night. I worked on Polar Express and Spider-Man 2, and learned a lot. The job that I had gave me access to all the files on all their hard drives for all the shows that they were doing at Sony. So I would just kind of load up shots and see what the director shot on set and see the steps of everything they did on a shot to make it the final shot that was in the movie. That helped a lot, because it was empirical evidence of how people realized these things.
As far as speaking to the production value, when I was in film school I produced a couple of thesis films, because I wanted to learn how the heck you put these things together. I hadn?t done any producing before. I had mostly taken classes in directing and sound and cinematography, and never produced. So I produced two pretty big thesis films and learned just from doing that: about ordering equipment and finding crew and all the physical things that go with making a movie. I got a sense of ?Okay, if I spend money on this, no one?s gonna see it because it?s all off screen and it?s not that important or it?s passing by in the shot for two seconds and no one cares. But if I spend money on this other thing it will give me a bunch of production value and make it look more expensive than it is.? I kind of learned a lot of those tricks on other films. When I did mine, I knew ways to stretch my dollar as much as possible."

How long was the film?s production period?

"I shot it in the summer of 2004 and we shot for fourteen days, which is a lot I think for a short. Then I edited for about six months, and the visual effects took about eight months. But they kind of overlapped a little, so I think I was in post-production for about a year and a half, which is also a long time for a fifteen-minute movie."

A year and a half of your spare time?

"Yeah. It?s really hard to find visual-effects artists, because if they know what they are doing at all it?s not hard for them to get a job. So it?s hard to find people that are still students or not working but who you can trust to get the stuff done. I ended up doing probably about ninety-five percent of the effects work myself. So it was just sitting in a computer lab for eight months, in a room with no windows. It was pretty boring, but eventually I just plowed through it and got it all done."

What was the most difficult sequence to pull off technically?

"I think visual-effects-wise the hardest shots are the ones where they?re building an android, because that actually is 3D visual effects. The mechanical arms that come down, that are building flesh onto the android, those are CG. Those were 3D effects, and 3D is much harder than 2D, because you have to create these digital models in the computer and then you have to light them and put textures on them and render them and composite them into the scene. It?s a ton of work, but just from what people have said, the computer screens are what people notice as one of the primary effects of the movie. Those were quite easy, because those were all two-dimensional. I just drew some stuff in Photoshop, animated it and then slapped in on top of the shot. That stuff?s much easier to do; and, intentionally, when I?m writing a script, I try to write as many effects in that would be simple to do, because I didn?t want to be stuck doing post-production on my movie for three years, which actually happens to a surprising amount of short films, because if you put in 3D effects just expecting someone to do it for you and that doesn?t happen, you can really be stuck for a long time."

Did your experience with computers fuel the film?s storyline [about a robotics engineer who sees his technology taken from him and used by his superiors in an attempt to destroy him]?

"Yeah, I think a lot of the stuff I work on tends to focus on technology, the movies I grew up with, the stuff I loved, was James Cameron sci-fi action movies, or Paul Verhoeven movies?seeing RoboCop, Total Recall, Aliens, Terminator. I just ate that stuff up. So I think that I?ve always been into action movies that involve science fiction or technology in some way, because I think as a society we?re just kind of progressing and absorbing all these new technologies faster and faster and faster. And how does that affect the way we live? If you take it to its logical extension, what are the bad things or the good things that could happen because of it?"

You pay tribute to those films in some scenes of the film.

"Certainly, yeah. Everyone mentions Minority Report because of the computer screens, having the transparent computer screens. That always comes to mind."

And also Terminator and Blade Runner. But to your credit those scenes in which they?re referenced come across as nods rather than rip-offs.

"Yeah, that was something that I worried about too. Because as you write it you don?t necessarily think about that stuff, but then as the stuff gets on the page, that kind of is a reference to that other piece of material. You don?t want to be ripping anything off; it?s just more of a kind of influence. It?s something I was consciously aware of and concerned with?more referencing than all-out borrowing chunks from another movie."

What have you been up to since completing work on this film?

"Since this it?s pretty much all been writing feature-film screenplays. It?s been a boot camp for me, in feature-film screenwriting. I studied it in film school, but when you?re in the production program you?re so busy making movies that you have a really hard time finding the time to write feature-film scripts; because that?s a huge job in and of itself. Now that I?m done with the production phase, it?s just been pure writing. I?ve written a few action thriller movies, and I?m just trying to hone the one that I really want to use for my first feature."

Are any of those an expansion of Entity: Nine?

"It?s funny, but none of those are an expansion of the short. One of the reasons I?ve kind of avoided that is because if I took this and blew it up into a feature it would be a really, really expensive movie. Because there?s so many effects and so much stuff to go in it. As a first-time filmmaker it?s kind of hard to realistically be able to grab onto a film with that kind of a budget. So I?m trying to find things that are smaller in scope, smaller, character-driven thrillers; so it?d be easier for me to get a studio to let me make it. It?s really hard for first-time filmmakers, because you don?t have a proven track record. Even if you have a short, if you?ve never made a feature before, people are really wary of throwing millions of dollars at you to make a feature film. People will be more receptive to that if you make a smaller-scale film. It?s the reason I?ve avoided writing an Entity: Nine feature."

While you?re writing screenplays, do you continue to work in visual effects?

"Actually, I haven?t, because the visual effects industry is really demanding. There are a lot of jobs in it, but the hours can be pretty tough. Those guys, when they?re really crunching and near where a movie?s gonna be finished, they?ll work twelve, fourteen hours a day. I really don?t want to get the golden handcuffs where I get sucked into that world, just ending up in visual effects because I don?t have time to pursue anything else. In order to pursue my directing career, I have to be writing constantly. So to pay rent I?ve had to do stuff that requires fewer hours and less creative energy so I can focus a big chunk of time to actually writing.
It?s a crazy thing. When you get out of film school, everyone ends up in this position where they gotta pay rent, and you have to decide ?Do I want to go for the great job where I get paid a lot of money and it takes a lot of hours and I won?t get paid for anything else. Or do I want to kind of live more humbly and keep pursuing the directing thing?? That?s kind of the balance."

What?s your biggest fear?

"That?s tough. My biggest fear is making a film that doesn?t connect with people emotionally?that people would watch my film, whether it be my short or a future film, and for it to not connect. The primary reason I?m making movies is to affect an audience and entertain people. That?s my primary goal. The antithesis, of not connecting with people and not entertaining them, would be my biggest fear. Everything else I can handle. [Laughs.] And of course there will be misses, but hopefully there will be many more hits."

For more information about In The Wall and Screamfest LA visit the official Film Festival Website.