Attack The Blog - Day 5: Another Exclusive Interview With Joe Cornish!

No week of fawning free publicity for Attack The Block would be complete without a few words from its director Joe Cornish, and a few words from its director Joe Cornish is exactly what follows.

This was your first feature film as director. Was everyone mean to you on set, like that time I moved house and joined big school and got my head flushed down the bog? No, everyone was really supportive. If anything, I was a bit shouty for the first few days, as I had a lot of pent up energy and anxiety inside me. Nira, the producer, had to take me aside and say "Joe, you know, the first assistant director can shout at the crew". I think if I'd carried on like I was carrying on everyone would have just fucked off and done something better with their day. Learning how to get the most out of the great talent and experience of your crew is one of the biggest and most rewarding lessons I learnt from the whole experience. Edgar Wright was an executive producer on Attack the Block. What was his single most worthwhile contribution? It would be reductive for me to single out one thing Edgar has done for me, because he’s done so much. He helped the film in every way possible. Being his friend and working with him has taught me a lot over the years, and although Attack the Block is very much its own thing, everything I learned from him is in there in one way or another. Your film isn’t overburdened with CGI, motion capture or other in-your-face effects. Was this purely down to budgetary reasons, or do you feel strongly about how certain SFX should be employed? I love practical effects. When I was a kid every effect I saw in movies was either a painting or a model or a puppet. It had been made by hand, and as a result you felt it was a magic you could achieve yourself if you tried hard enough. Perhaps the same is true for clever, computer literate people today, but for Attack the Block I wanted to evoke those old school, physical effects. So I went for practical monsters that were there on the set with the actors. I reckon that, where live action films are concerned and whenever possible, CGI is best used to enhance or adjust real physical in-camera things. That’s how we approached it. Did you encounter any unwanted attention while hanging around the streets of Brixton in the middle of the night? I’m referring to the time you were shooting your film as opposed to just casual nocturnal wandering. No, we didn’t. I wish I had an exciting story to tell you but the residents, police and councils on whose patches we shot were nothing but welcoming, accommodating and tolerant. Apart from one woman who marched onto the set while we were shooting the police van sequence and shouted "why don’t you take your tuppence ha’penny film and fuck off!". But I’ll gloss over that. What do you make of all this fuss about Attack The Block needing subtitles in certain (English-speaking) foreign markets (called America)? I liked it because it meant people were talking about the film and that they cared about the film. I don’t think it’ll happen though. I think everyone’s smart enough to deal with the way the characters speak. The slang is a fun strength to the movie, not an obstacle. Tom Townend told me that the alien effects were created very simply, by using real aliens. Is that true? Because if so that’s quite a significant scientific breakthrough and I’m surprised you’ve kept it so quiet. Tom Townend is an extremely talented and intelligent man who would not waste The Incredible Suit’s time with idle nonsense or frippery. Given the title of your film, are you concerned that there might be a rise in unprovoked attacks on innocent blocks? You sound very distant all of a sudden. Can you hold the handset closer to your mouth? It seems to me that along with Chris Morris, Edgar Wright, Garth Jennings, Duncan Jones, Gareth Edwards, Richard Ayoade and some others I’ve forgotten, you’re creating a bit of a “movement”. Do you feel like there’s something going on right now with hip young British director types? I really don’t know why some glossy mag doesn’t hurry up and do a sexy photo shoot of us all looking bored, sitting on rusty oil barrels in a disused garage in the east end. It's only a matter of time. I asked lots of people who worked on the film for juicy gossip from the production with which to annoy and/or blackmail you, but they both failed miserably, so it’s down to you to tell me about something that happened that you don’t want anyone to know about. Go! Maybe I should call you back on your land line? Already people will be dying to know what your difficult second film will be. I know you won’t want to talk about it but you can tell me, I won’t tell anyone, promise. Hello, can you hear me? This month, blogs around the world are reviewing You Only Live Twice for The Incredible Suit’s future award-winning BlogalongaBond initiative. What are your thoughts on the fifth Bond film? I like it. But I haven’t seen it for a while. Get in touch when it’s The Man With The Golden Gun time. I’m planning on starting a rumour that you’re directing the next-but-one Bond film. Would you care to neither confirm nor deny that you’ve been offered the job? Hey, don't joke about stuff like that. If you do direct a Bond film and you need someone to play the handsome, charismatic blogger that the series has so far sorely lacked, you know who to call. (I’m referring to myself. Not sure if that was obvious) When you came to the Attack The Block press junket, I was secretly auditioning you for the role. As I’m sure you’ll understand, it’s important that Bond looks tough and confident, rather than gentle and a bit nervous, and on that basis I’m afraid we can’t offer you the role at this time. Well, that’s all we’ve got time for. Have you got any final golden nuggets of witty genius you’d like to share before we say goodbye? You should really upgrade your mobile phone. What network are you on? You should get onto one with better coverage, because I kept losing you. Oh, and thank you for supporting Attack The Block, I’m very happy that you enjoyed the film. Long live The Incredible Suit!

I conducted this interview via email, so I'm not sure why he kept banging on about the phone connection. Anyone would think some of my questions were completely fatuous and stupid.

Anyway, massive thanks to Joe for all that, and also to Tom Townend, Jon Amos, Marcus Rowland, Luke Treadaway, Jodie Whittaker, Leeon Jones, Alex Esmail, Simon Howard, John Boyega, Franz Drameh and Nick Frost and everyone at Optimum and ThinkJam for all their time and help, without which this week would have been full of more whining about X-Men: First Class posters. The Incredible Suit's viewers are no doubt at least grateful for that.

Attack The Blog - Day 2: Exclusive Interviews With Production Designer Marcus Rowland, Director Of Photography Tom Townend And Editor Jonathan Amos!

Day 2 of my unoriginally-titled week of Attack The Blockery sees us being afforded a rare insight into the engine room of a film, the technical departments rarely mentioned in the mainstream movie press when promoting a new film. Take that, mainstream movie press!

I chatted to three of the major talents responsible for bringing Attack The Block to the screen. Here are the least technically complex answers that I understood, which sadly means I had to excise Tom Townend's essay on chromatic bas-relief.

*CONTAINS TEENY-WEENY SPOILERS*

MARCUS ROWLAND, Production Designer Before Attack The Block, Marcus was production designer on Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. In an ideal world there'd be a photo of him here but I can't find one. He may or may not have a beard. What gave you inspiration for the design of Attack The Block? I looked at all the films which inspired Joe, but generally I take my ideas and influences from various different sources as well as film, so I use a lot of photographic, visual and architectural references. We also looked at many tower blocks across central London, which gave us a good idea of which elements we wanted to incorporate in the design. What combination of sets and real locations did you use for the tower block? The establishing shots of the tower block exterior and low-rise were locations, as were the walkway chase sequences. Apart from that we built the apartments, corridors and lifts at Three Mills Studio. This involved reworking various sets which we'd built to be used for different parts of the script, which we were able to do because of the generic nature of tower blocks. The film takes place entirely at night: how much did that affect your work? Well thankfully all studio scenes were shot during more sociable hours! But yes, the location shoots meant we had to divide our crew up into day and night shifts. I tended to do a very long day and also the earlier part of the nights. What's Joe Cornish like to work with? He was great, he's such a film enthusiast. It certainly wasn't the easiest film for a first time director to make and he managed it brilliantly. I really enjoyed making the film with him. Finally, are there any hidden treats in the production design for the sharp-eyed viewer? I hope so, but I'll leave that up to the viewers to spot.

TOM TOWNEND, Director Of Photography Tom has been working in the camera departments of various feature films, TV movies and programmes, commercials and music videos since 1996. Attack the Block is his first feature as director of photography. It would be best if you didn't ask how I got a photo of him in bed.  The exterior scenes self-consciously hark back to many early '80s films, with lots of improbable blue backlighting – how did the decision come about to reference that era? In a way there was a deliberate choice to recreate that era - in my first meeting with Joe, we asked: “Why do the films we love of the late ‘70s and early ‘80s (specifically American films such as Escape From New York and The Terminator, which both have extensive night shooting) look the way they do?” The answer I posited was that they didn’t have the resources to relight acres of city streets, and at the time municipal lighting in the US was mostly mercury vapour lamps which appear as a green blue, as opposed to sodium vapour lamps which are orange. There’s bold use of colour throughout the film, in both the production design and costume, and it made sense for the lighting to follow suit. Street lighting is artificial by definition, and Joe wanted us to push saturated colour as far as would look plausible – partly as a reaction to the historically dingy and monochrome look of low budget British film-making, and also to up the ‘fun’ quotient. Are there any sequences or shots that you're most proud of? There’s a shot of a creature leaping off a bridge which, given the scale of the production, was pretty ambitious and I was very pleased when we pulled it off - not least because everything about it is ‘in camera’ live action, shooting from a fast moving vehicle. Getting it right was testament to the hard work and skill of the camera operator, Julian Morson and Terry Notary, our lead creature performer, who practiced the stunt for weeks. The sequence I like best takes place in a smoke-filled corridor. It’s a new twist on the ‘spooky dark corridor’ idea, what with it not being dark. I can’t take any credit for it though: Joseph Cornish thought it up and put it in his marvellous script for me. Does filming at night make life easier or harder for a cinematographer? It makes it harder for the lighting department. There’s not a single shot where they can kick back and sunbathe. On the plus side, I can look at every shot and feel a sense of authorship over the lighting. The net result is that one becomes an exhausted egomaniac. What challenges were presented by the film's relatively low budget? The main challenge was that they wouldn’t pay for a car to pick me up and take me to and from set. LOL! Other than that, every budgetary constraint became a virtue of the creative process. For example, before the advent of spiffing photorealistic CGI, filmmakers working in the sci-fi/fantasy genres didn’t linger on what they knew might look ropey. Instead the audience received their monster/alien/shark thrills by proxy through the reactions of the human characters in the scene. Joe was emphatic about getting a range of shots of characters reacting to the off screen menace, in the knowledge that these could be as effective as the sight of the creatures themselves. How were the alien effects achieved? The aliens were real. This was a trick question, right? Once the shoot was over, what further input did you have? I popped into the edit from time to time but mostly to natter to Joe about stuff like The Only Way Is Essex and Lady Gaga. The grading of the film (the digital refinement of colour balance and contrast to ensure visual uniformity across an edited sequence) is where I got my fingers back in the pie and enjoyed myself. It’s the icing on the cake. Pie. Cake. I think of the sound mixing and the music as the custard but I didn’t have anything to do with the custard. Any juicy gossip or funny stories from the shoot? I have to confess that it wasn’t a very gossipy shoot. The frantic work pace led to a very busy and tired cast and crew, whereas for hilarity and shenanigans one needs to be overfed, under-worked and put up in a luxury hotel with a well stocked bar miles from anywhere. I should just make up some shit like how Paula the continuity woman continually forgot where she’d locked up her bicycle, but that wouldn’t be true. Was Joe Cornish a lovable idiot or a menacing tyrant? He was somewhere between the two: a lovable tyrant and a menacing idiot.

JONATHAN AMOS, Editor Jonathan has edited several TV series, including Peep Show, Spooks and Ashes To Ashes. Attack The Block is his second feature film, after co-editing Scott Pilgrim vs. The World with Paul Machliss. I couldn't find a picture of him either so you'll have to make do with this photo of his near-namesake, John Amos from Die Hard 2: Die Harder. Attack The Block runs a satisfyingly taut 88 minutes. Is that the running time you were aiming for or did you just cut the film to a length that felt right? Joe really wanted the film to clock in at 90 minutes, but as you get into the fine cut process, changing factors pull the edit in different directions. It sometimes feels like sculpture: you start with this big piece of rock - the script - and you chip away the layers. Eventually it becomes an organic and instinctive process of shaping and fine tuning the dialogue and the action, then the film just becomes whatever length it should be. What were your stylistic aims as you approached the edit? The shoot and edit were partially influenced by the genre films which inspired the script, and Joe wanted to carry over as much of the aesthetic of those films as possible. We deliberately tried to avoid a lot of the tropes of modern action movie editing, and during the process the film inevitably takes on a character of its own. The turning point was when we tightened up the initial mugging; we really wanted that to be as shocking as it would be in real life. The first creature attack then provides a similar counterpoint for the gang, equally shocking and kinetic. The cutting in these, and the subsequent gang dialogue scenes, really provide the rhythmic backbone for the entire piece. Which films did you use as references for the editing of Attack The Block? The films that Joe was influenced by, like Aliens, Predator, Gremlins, Streets Of Fire, The Outsiders, The Warriors, E.T., and Assault on Precinct 13 gave us an aesthetic root from which our movie could find its own identity. Of course things have moved on since then so we never limited ourselves by rigidly obeying a strict visual grammar, but because we started from a slightly different place [to most modern films], Attack The Block ended up having quite a unique tone. What challenges did you face in the editing process? Working with practical creatures was probably the trickiest element. Our aliens would be on screen throughout the picture so we had to be very careful how we edited them, keeping the performances kinetic and animalistic without exposing any humanistic traces. Also there wasn't a limitless pot of money to enhance the creatures, so we had to work quite judicially to bring the edit in on budget without compromising the quality of the movie. We were fortunate in this regard to work with Double Negative and Fido whose SFX work was beautifully judged. It's a huge compliment to them that it's sometimes impossible to gauge what’s real and what’s digital. Finding the musical tone was also difficult - Joe described it as John Williams going over to Roots Manuva's house and having a stoned jam. Clearly that was never going to happen, so piecing together a satisfactory temp track to give a sense of what the film would eventually offer proved very tricky. It wasn't until Steve Price and Basement Jaxx came on board that the concept really came alive. What was it like working with Joe Cornish? Joe is incredibly passionate about films, and finally getting the opportunity to make this film is the culmination of a ten-year dream. It’s that passion that made Attack The Block the film it is, and it was a pleasure to assist him in creating his vision. Joe really drove every aspect of the film, and without his dedication, care, and attention to detail, such an ambitious project could have easily faltered.

Come back tomorrow for a mildly exciting competition and some exclusive artwork designed exclusively by Tom Townend exclusively for The Incredible Suit! It's an exclusive!

Attack The Blog

If you pretend that nobody else on the internet has made this pun before, it's actually quite clever.

Anyway, this post is something of a trailer to let you know about the barely-containable excitement that lies in store for viewers of The Incredible Suit over the next week.

To celebrate the release of the directorial debut of this site's second tallest interviewee, Mr Joseph Cornish, the whole week will be given over to a series of posts which include rambling interviews with some of Attack The Block's toppest talents:

Acting types Luke Treadaway, Jodie Whittaker, John Boyega,

Simon Howard, Franz Drameh and Mr Nicholas John Frost!
Production designing type Marcus Rowland!

Directing of photography type Tom Townend!

Editing type Jonathan Amos!

And, of course, megaphone-wielding type Joe Cornish!

There'll also be a chance to win some shit-hot Attack The Block merchandise, although the exact level of shitty hotness has yet to be confirmed, so don't get too excited about that bit. It might be a photo of Joe Cornish squeezing one of my breasts.

The "fun" begins tomorrow with my review of the film (spoiler: I liked it) and continues until Friday or everyone gets sick of it, whichever comes first.

In the meantime, here's a condensed, and much more professional, version of what to expect over the next five days: