Talking to the studio, did you have conversations about perhaps spinning this film into a Lights Out franchise?ĭS: They didn’t make any hard rules but that’s always the hope when they make this kind of thing, that they possibly get turned into the franchise if it is successful. ST: You are currently directing Annabelle 2, the sequel to a spin-off film from The Conjuring films – together that whole franchise has taken $876.4 worldwide. It was strange that we had $5 million and we couldn’t afford to do that kind of thing but it turns out that $5 million doesn’t go all that far. Then, of course, you find out that when you ask for things like rain in a scene you are told that you can’t have it because it is too expensive.
LIGHTS OUT SHORT VS FEATURE MOVIE
ST: When you had conversations with the studio about turning it into a feature film, was there a budget that you had in mind and how did you decide on a figure?ĭS: I had no sense of what a movie costs to make here, I had just heard budgets for different films, so when they said it would cost $5 million, to me, that sounded like all the money in the world. That made it very hard to light on set though because she couldn’t be hit by light! It was also important to stick to the rules of the protagonist in the original piece and that she couldn’t be in the light. For me it was just liberating because when you make these super short shorts you don’t really have time for characters or much of a story so that was the fun part for me, to be able to expand on what I had and go into these character’s backstories. It felt that as long as we stayed true to that concept, the film could be anything really.
Did you have concerns about turning it into a feature and possibly losing some of that?ĭS: I wasn’t actually that concerned because the short doesn’t have that much of a story, it was just a concept we played with for two and half minutes. Theatre on July 19, 2016, in Hollywood, California. Sandberg attends the premiere of New Line Cinema's 'Lights Out' at the TCL Chinese. As we got to know each other they saw that I did know a thing or two and it got a lot better.ĭirector David F. I got the impression that they felt they were doing me a favor and they were wondering who was this guy who didn’t know anything. ST: How did the crew and the talent react to the fact that they were working with a director who had never been on a movie set before?ĭS: At the start, there was a little bit of friction.
LIGHTS OUT SHORT VS FEATURE HOW TO
At times I felt like I just wanted them to give me the camera because I knew what I wanted but I had to learn how to give my vision to people and explain to them what I wanted.
I had never worked with a crew before, it had just been me shooting and editing myself so it was quite an adjustment. How have things changed for you as a filmmaker?ĭS: For me, the biggest change is the fact that I had never been on a film set before so this was the first time and I was the director and that was scary. Jon Watts turned his short, Clown, into a film with the help of Eli Roth and $1 million - he's now directing Spider-Man: Homecoming.
ST: You’re not the only director who has come up through this route in recent years where an online short has led to a Hollywood movie. I had no idea that a two and half minute short could turn into something like this. ST: At the time did you think of it as something that you could expand into a full-length film?ĭS: Not at all because we originally just made it for online for a film contest.
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