The writing process is the time where nothing's been set in stone. It's a blank slate, or a blank page.
Leigh Whannell
Upgrade' was a hard one to make.
I felt the violence in 'Upgrade' was necessary because I wanted to show what a computer was capable of.
One of the most crucial aspects of a haunted house movie is the fear and disbelief of the characters, because they don't know what's happening to them.
You might not have the biggest budget or resources or cast, but if you have a great story, people will latch onto it.
In chatting to directors over the years, including James Wan, they always tell you the war stories. No one ever says, 'Oh, I had a great time on that film.' It's always this went wrong, that went wrong.
Like everyone else, I use my phone a lot, and being a screenwriter, my laptop is my life.
You know you've have a good idea when you're lying awake at night going 'someone else is going to take it, I just know it!'
Saw' definitely had an edge to it that wasn't American.
The great thing about horror films is that they work on a low budget. The genre is the star. You don't need big movie stars, and I actually think a lot of times that the best horror films are the low budget contained ones.
Certain stories need the resources of a studio. If you're telling a story about a giant robot war in outer space, you're going to need the money and the resources most of the time to do it justice.
I found myself in this conundrum of loving acting, but not liking the path that you have to take to do it. I was just never good at auditioning, so basically I decided I would just write my own stuff and if I could get a role in it, then fine.
I think true connectivity is something that is rare in sequels. I mean I love the first 'Die Hard' film; you won't find a bigger 'Die Hard' fan than me. But I feel like with the sequels, they're just taking that character and dropping him in different scenarios. There's no real connective tissue.
The movies sort of tell you what they want to be as you're writing them.
That's what I love about writing is you don't need anyone's permission to do it. You can just get up in the morning, grab a pad and pen and start writing.
I'm still a big believer in movie theaters, and going to see movies in public.
A lot of low-budget genre films you see are horror movies, because horror is the friendliest movie to lack of money.
In a lot of ways knowledge kills fear. Once you know who the boogie man is, once you know what's under the bed, it can still be frightening but that fear of the unknown is gone.
I love, and I've always loved, contained sci-fi films that utilize practical effects. I feel like the human eye can tell when something is actually in the frame and when it was inserted digitally later.
Maybe I'm a product of my era, but I just enjoy the practical effects of 'The Thing' more than CGI aliens.
Prior to 'Insidious Chapter 3,' I was happy to write movies for James Wan to direct as I felt very much that I was one half of a duo. I looked at us as a team who works together and I was happy to be part of that, I was happy to effectively be the bass player in The Beatles.
Well you know, the big trick with 'Saw,' the sleight of hand that you have to pull off is that - spoiler alert - the bad guy, the antagonist, is right there in front of your face, literally.
When I was a kid, 'Robocop' to me was just good guys and bad guys.
You know, by the time you get to the fourth film in a franchise you're really mining for something different. You're really looking for a way to go about things that the audience hasn't already seen.
I like pointing the camera at the actors and letting them fight. Don't let the camera do the fighting for you, and don't let the camera give them the adrenaline hit. Let the people in the frame do that.
That's one of the great things about creativity. You labor away in a room, and when you're writing a film, it couldn't be more of a solitary activity or a lonelier job, but if you then write a film that gets made and goes out into the world, it kind of flies away from you. It's not yours anymore.
I always say that the horror genre and the comedy genre are close cousins because they are the two genres where you are attempting to elicit an involuntary vocal response from a crowd of people and you instantly know whether it's working or not.
A lot of the fear about being a first-time director is just starting with a completely blank slate and thinking: 'Is this going to connect with anybody?'
After 'Saw,' we got offered every horror remake under the sun, and I was just always thinking, 'I don't see how this could be interesting for me.'
A lot of times when a film is a success, the fans of that film take ownership of it - it becomes their property.
I will say that when it comes to the horror genre, for me, the scariest thing is when something is actually in the frame.
If I'm going to live in Sydney, I want to live on Bondi Beach.
It's a weird little anomaly about horror films in that the more money and noise you have, the less scary it gets.
I love watching audiences scream.
I feel like with the first 'Insidious' film we had a massive cache of stories and scares that we'd built up over the years. It was like a band, you know they say a band has forever to write their first album because no one cares.
The problem with acting is that there's really no control. You're at the behest of others.
Somewhere along the way, the ability to make terrifying big budget films like 'The Exorcist' or 'The Shining' was lost, and I don't know if we'll ever get it back.
I don't know if I can see myself writing another 'Saw' film. It's such a special part of my life, and I almost don't want to ruin it by going back.
I always want to fulfill genre expectations and think that should be the bedrock of any film - then you can layer in thematics.
Creating 'Upgrade' was really something I enjoyed even though it was stressful. I would do it all again.
You never meet other screenwriters because it's such a lonely profession.
The thing I love the most about low budget films is the creative freedom.
Every now and again, something will pop into my head when I'm driving or I'm in the shower, you'll just get an image and it stays with you. It doesn't have to be much, it doesn't have to be a story, it could just be an image. But it won't leave your head and that's when you know you've got something.
What I feel like science fiction fans respond to is just people trying to hit them with something new, something they haven't seen. And if you do that you'll be okay.
I remember when James Wan and I did the first 'Saw' movie, a lot of people would say to us, 'Well, you left the door open for a sequel.' And we would say, 'No, we literally closed the door!' We thought it was a nice ending. Little did we know that the producers had other ideas once the film was a hit.
The most fun part of making a horror movie is watching it with an audience.
The great thing about 'The Exorcist' is it's dead serious horror. No comedy, no self-reference, it's a documentary style.
Australia, most of the filmmakers there write a film and they direct it. There's a lot of writer/directors there, because nobody wants to write a script and then let it go when they've had that much of a personal investment to it, because you're not getting paid huge amounts of money in Australia to direct.
I think that's the problem, when you're a young filmmaker and you're starting out, you don't know people, you're easily lead, you don't know the right people to talk to, you really need guides.
I don't think humor is something to be afraid of.
