BAAA BOYS: An interview with BLACK SHEEP director Jonathan King

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In this CGI World, BLACK SHEEP (see trailer here ) is a refreshing look at the horror comedy. Out of New Zealand, the sheep gone wild tale incorporates old school filmmaking reminiscent of early the Sam Raimi classics. Director Jonathan King has interjected an element that has been missing in horror films of late—the fun without the use of CGI. FILM RADAR recently discussed the film with King. Read the Review here.   All right let’s talk killer sheep!  I would love to. To paraphrase an old joke, in “BLACK SHEEP” (view trailer here)  the Sheep are hungry and the men are scared. Let’s get the obvious question out of the way.. why sheep?  Because there are so many of them in New   Zealand. You go anywhere in the world and the people always say “New Zealand! The Sheep! The Sheep!” I didn’t strategize to make a film about the sheep. Literally, the idea just popped into my head. I said “WOW! That’s an idea for a movie” As soon as I thought about it and filtered it to my sensibilities, I knew what kind of film it had to be. It had to be scary and violent. But also it made me laugh straight away as well. In a way, the film popped into my head almost fully formed. Indeed it was a process of a couple of years fine tuning the script and the story to deliver as much fun as you hope when people will get when  hear the idea. I’m not good with animals, how could you stand being around so many sheep?  I guess we got used to it. I don’t particularly like animals. The thing about sheep is that they are bigger, stronger, smellier and stranger then they look from a distance. I guess we got used to it. I tried not to be too hands- on during the making of the film. Sheep are generally known as docile animals. How did you make them look so terrifying?  Like I was saying, if you look at them closely they are very strange looking. They have these quite hard, boney faces. The have very strange lizardy looking eyes, sharp hooves. And a lot of them are bigger than you actually think they are going to be. A big part of it is attitude as well. If you walk up to a sheep, it kind of skitters off looking behind it. If you see sheep staring at you, completely eyeballing you, not flinching when you move, it’s a completely different feel.  It’s a bit like if you walk down the street and a dog stops and stares at you. Straight away, it’s like “My god is he sizing me up to tear my throat out?” As soon as you see a sheep start acting like that it rings those kinds of bells. We had some amazingly well trained sheep, but there were things that they would do and that they wouldn’t do. One thing they would do was stand where you wanted them to and look where they wanted you to and they stare straight at you, which they rarely do and they will run at you. In the press kit you refer to wanting to kill the sheep at times. What kind of hardships did you face with these animals?   The biggest hardship when you are a making a film you only have so much time and so much film stock. There would be a day where I had to get a shot of the sheep running down the hill, and as difficult as it getting actors to remember what they are supposed to do, getting a sheep to do it is even harder. So yeah, all you can do is say “Okay let’s have another go and RRRRRRRRRolling film” and the sheep runs in the wrong direction or the sheep stops. You can train them to do a simple action which they’d get  for a food treat. But if we gave them too much food, they got too full and would lose interest. So there were frustrations. Also I wrote a script, I could write the most amazing sheep action that I wanted to but then you got to film the sheep doing it.   In BLACK SHEEP  I picked up an early Sam Raimi flavor. Who else has influenced you?Well certainly people like Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson. Even people like the Coen brothers who are obviously somewhat related to Sam Raimi tangentially, Terry Gilliam and things. You know part of that wide lens larger than life approach to things. Even the comedy—their fantastic way of looking at the world.. Even farther back, people like Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles are such fun brilliant filmmakers. All of their films, not in a time capsule way, are just great fun, brilliantly put together movies.   I think my approach to filmmaking is sort of classical. Sure we have some state of the art effects stuff. At the end of the day it’s telling a story with quite classical film techniques. It was really refreshing to see a CGI free movie. It's gotten out of control, even in 300 I am pretty sure the abs were CGI.   I think some of them were. Do you think that you will stick with old school filmmaking or are you going to embrace the CGI?  I certainly wouldn’t rule out EVER doing it..  But for a creature movie like this, it was really the way to go. Kinda of a low tip, fun approach. When the little creature rips the guy’s ear off, pretty early on, you sort of see what kind of movie you’re in for. Stuff like that really invited the audience in to become a part of it. The audience has to bring some of their things into to make it work, When the audience does brings that , they are on board, they are invested in it working. It’s a great way to get the audience into it. There are going to be people who say “Well, that’s ridiculous, I’m not doing it.” But I think it involves the audience a lot more than CGI.. But I wouldn’t rule it out for the right thing. For a project I am working on right now, we are talking about some of that kind of stuff. We do want to root it in physical effects and miniatures before discussing CGI.  At least in America, the horror genre has evolved more into a torture genre with franchises like SAW and HOSTEL. Why do you think about that? I don’t love those films. I love monster movies. My film is obviously slightly violent, but there is a comic approach to violence. The thrills don’t come from seeing people actually terrified or actually tortured. You know it’s not the idea of “Oh My God, what if that was me or my girlfriend” So I really don’t like those kind of films. It’s not the direction I would like to go. I would be interested in making a scarier film than BLACK SHEEP. I think I would be interested in finding ways to make scares that didn’t involve that kind of fucked up thing those torture films do.  Do you think horror flicks have lost their sense of fun?: I think to some extent some of the movies have. I find it creepy when you are in audience and people cheer that kind of violence. I remember when I saw EVIL DEAD, when I was quite young, and the audience SCREAMED and cheered because it was just so outrageous, fun and shocking. There is a crazy gleefulness to it. A really nasty torture scene is not fun. Some people laugh at that. If you are laughing then that is coming from a more fucked up place. I’d like to see monster movies become more fun and trips to the movies being fun too.  With You Tube and the several editing programs available for your computer movies can now easily be cut and distributed. Should filmmakers be worried? I don’t think Hollywood should be intimidated by it. I am thinking about a new project at the moment. We were talking about it and we were thinking maybe we should shoot it with these new HD cameras that are coming out. Then we would be able to cut it on our own Final Cut or whatever. In a funny way, most of the things you spend money are people standing around. What are you gonna pay those people? What are you going to feed those people? What are you gonna put in front of the camera? Look at a film like PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN or whatever. And the last one didn’t entirely work but the people pay their money to see more than the hardware things. It comes down to story and spectacle. The great thing about these new developments is that someone with a great simple story to tell could do it quite cheaply. If you look at a film like RESEVOIR DOGS, it could be made for a fraction of what was made for. Hopefully, some really exciting new voices might get out there. But most filmmakers will want to try more elaborate things after that. But you will still want people to have the communal experience of sitting in the theater and watching something rather than just sitting and watching it on You Tube. Which looks kind of crappy at the moment.   What next for you?I working on a thing called UNDER THE MOUNTAIN which a scary science-fictiony adventure for younger viewers. It’s is based on a New   Zealand novel that came out in the late 1970’s. I am working again with Weta Workshop who did the special effects for BLACK SHEEP and LORD OF THE RINGS. So we are hoping to make that and we are looking for a reasonable amount of money to make it. It kind of harkens back to the really quite scary younger viewer stuff like in England  DR. WHO or POLTERGEIST or THE GOONIES, which are quite hardcode things for younger viewers. Your first film is Super 8 features a paper Mache alien flying through your High School. Can we see it on You Tube?  (Laughs)No. I don’t even have the piece of film in question. There wasn’t much there really. I had the paper Mache alien longer than I had the film. I do have a short on You Tube which is called CHOGAR and it’s quite a fun comedy horror short.   /> Dave Howard also writes for Crackpot Press. http://www.filmradar.com/interviews/item/in_this_cgi_world_black_sheep_see_trailer_here_is_refreshing_look_at_the_ho/