After years of acclaim in front of the camera and writing in the horror genre, Kate Segel finally made her directorial debut with V / H / S / nexts “Stowaway”, and bring Alanah Pierce along with her. Siegel is best known for her frequent collaborations with her husband, Mike Flanagan, first appearing in his 2013 horror film Oculus Before going to hold bigger roles in Play Gerald’s gameNetflix’s The haunting anthology series, Midnight mass And The Fall of the House of Usher. Beyond her work with Flanagan, Siegel also directed the Netflix thriller Twisty Hypnotic and has supporting roles in The wrath of Becky and HBO’s The Time Traveler’s Wife.
Fairs, on the other hand, is best known for her work in the world of video game journalism, having started in her home country of Australia by working for close to a dozen outlets, including Impulse gamer And these BBCamong others. When she moved to the U.S. US, she expanded her profile in journalism and game development, having worked for both IGN And Rooster teethand being a writer for Sony’s Santa Monica studio, including the award-winning God of War: Ragnarök. In terms of acting, Pearce has largely worked in the voiceover world, providing voices for Gears 5 And her voice and her image Cyberpunk 2077s figure.
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in V / H / S / nexts “Stowaway” segment, Pearce stars as Halley, a young conspiracy theorist and aspiring investigative journalist who heads to the Mojave Desert to film a documentary chronicling the various reports of hovering lights in the sky. When she interviews locals with a variety of stories about secondhand experiences and direct contact, Halley suddenly discovers and races after a set of lights, with the source being that of an alien spaceship, which she eagerly begins to investigate. Although she vents inwardly, Halley finds that she may be in over her head.
Before the premiere of the movie, Screen Rant Interviewed Kate Siegel and Alanah Pearce to discuss V / H / S / Next‘s “Stowaway” segment, Siegel made her directorial debut and worked with her husband Mike Flanagan to develop the script and story, Pearce landing her biggest live action role yet and how she pulled from her own career as a female gaming journalist to explore the subject of the story’s ambitions, and how Siegel worked with cinematographer Michael Fimognari to capture the sense of space on a low budget, including with a floating camera.
Siegel almost passed on directing for V / H / S / next Twice
“I was a little scared…”
Screen Rant: So excited to chat with you both for “Stowaway”. V / H / S / Next. I loved it, it’s one of my favorite segments of the franchise. Kate, I’d like to start with you. Congratulations on making your directorial debut with this, I know Mike wrote this, but how did the idea for this first come about?
Kate Siegel: It was one that just came out of the blue one day and landed in my inbox, and I was hesitant, because I’ve lived with a director for most of my adult life, I’m aware of how much work it is. is, and how much of your heart you put into it, and how much preparation is required. I was a little scared, so I might have started with none, and then the call came back again, and my husband and my manager were both like, “This is the time you should really do it. It’s worth it.” So, I dove in, as I often do, without looking and kind of never looked back.
I knew that when I talked about what I wanted to explore, I knew that my favorite movies in this space were The Fly and Contact, and one of my favorite Stephen King short stories was The Jaunt. I knew that I wanted something in that world. I like the female protagonist trying to prove something, I like ambition. I like the fact that the worst thing that happens is that everyone tries their best. I love the concept of relativity when it comes to time, all those things. Like I was having this conversation with Mike and just kind of bouncing ideas off each other, he left and in about 20 minutes he came back and said, “What about this, blah, blah?” And it was Stowaway.
Pearce saw the opportunity to act in the film as “As I was taking a course“In acting
Siegel also had a unique way of approaching her star with the proposal
So, Alana, I’d like to turn to you next. I know you’ve done some voice acting in recent games, but this, I feel, is really your first big role in live action. What was it about the script and working with Kate that really drew you to want to be a part of it?
Alanah Pearce: It’s kind of a no-brainer when Mike Flanagan writes something and Kate Siegel directs it and asks her to do it. You’d be crazy to say no, in my opinion. So, more than anything, I wanted to have the opportunity to work with someone, especially in the horror space. As you said, this is my first significant live action role, and I had access to Kate at all times, meaning that I had access to a brilliant actress who is so well-known in the exact space that we’re working in that, for me, It was almost like I was taking a course. [Chuckles]
I have to be like, “This feels dumb. What does it look like? Why this?” And it was so wonderful to have access to all that expertise and knowledge and, also, comfort. I was really comfortable with Kate, so I didn’t feel any judgment or pressure. I wasn’t nervous because no part of her worried that she wouldn’t have my back, and she did. Not wanting to do the best. So, it’s just, “Why would I ever say no to that circumstance of things?” But the script itself, I think, is really fun to explore because it’s so relatable.
There are so many human elements in it. Obviously, it’s in a sci-fi setting, we have a sci-fi paintjob. But I think we can all really relate to having to prove yourself, wanting to prove yourself against people who doubt you, and what you’re willing to lose in order to prove yourself. There are many ways I can say that I have related to this in all my work in gaming over the years with many people saying that girls don’t play video games. There is so much of this throughout my career. So, it’s just a really relatable human story that obviously just ends in, I’ll just say, a tragic way. It ends just a little sad.
Kate Siegel: Yes, I was so lucky to have Alana. We were at a game night with a bunch of our friends, and I just had a little something for her, because Alana, if you know her, has this very unique charisma, which is entirely her own. There’s an energy to her in a room that draws you in, but she’s not particularly bombastic, which is a very la trait of actors. They’re like, “Yes, yes!” And I just looked at her, and I was like, “I think it must be Alanah.” I just sort of went to her weird and was like, “Hey, you want to be in my movie?” [Laughs]
Alanah Pearce: You really went to me super weird. It was the most Hollywood party thing you could have done. I leaned on a counter, and you just came and leaned close to me. [Laughs]
Kate Siegel: To your credit, you just said, “Yeah, sure!”
Alanah Pearce: I think it was like, “Are you sure?” I really wanted to make sure I didn’t mess it up. I was really like, as long as you think I can do it, and that I was conscious of not wanting to take an opportunity away from someone else, as well.
KATE SIEGEL: But it was very, very clear to me after the first take of the first scene of Alanah, I texted some of my friends who are actors, and her friends, and I was like, “Alan Better leave. I’ll come get you.” It was clear that she was extremely talented from the start, and very direct, and so game to just collaborate. I was really, really impressed.
Siegel and Pearce both wanted to highlight the value (and danger) of ambition
“I love putting ambitious women on camera…”
I really wanted to touch that note of ambition, as well, for both of you. Alanah, if you’d like to start because, as you said, you come from the game writing world, and it’s one that’s very driven by passion and ambition. I’d love to hear how much you pulled from your own experience with that for your character, as well as Kate, bringing that story to life, how much did you pull from your own ambition as an actor to really infuse that into the character?
Alanah Pearce: For me, like I said, I’ve definitely doubted my whole career. When I started writing about video games in magazines, I was 17 years old, and back then, not many women played video games. There are still doubts about women playing video games now, but there was tons of scrutiny back then. So, the thing that I latched onto that, I think, let me find the person in the performance was thinking about how I could relate to that specifically in the way that I relate to.
Throughout my career, people told me that I wouldn’t make it, that they didn’t want to hear girls talk about video games. They don’t want to hear women review video games. “What do you know about video games? You play video games for male attention,” despite the fact that I’ve been playing games since I was four years old. So, it was very easy to just put the spin of – I’m even self-critical of how much I sometimes worry that I’m doing things to prove that I can do them rather than because I necessarily want to.
I think a lot of the ridiculous amount of work I’ve done in the game industry has been so that I can keep saying, “I did it again, though. Watch me.” And sometimes, you have to check yourself on that to be like, “Am I doing this because I enjoy it, or am I doing it because I need to prove that I can do it?” But I think we all relate to different parts of that just every day. You will face something where you feel that someone doubted you, and you feel like you really have to put that to someone.
I think that’s such a human experience. So, it was really easy for me to just take my particular circumstance and apply that to the role. But, as I said, I think there is something in it for absolutely all of us. I’d be surprised if a lot of people didn’t find that relatable, even though she’s a conspiracy theorist. Conspiracy theorists are really just people who want to be validated. It really is what it is, and I think we all need that at the end of the day.
Kate Siegel: I love putting ambitious women on camera. I love playing ambitious women, I love writing for ambitious women. I think it’s something that’s squashed in women quite a bit. And even in my career as an actress, it’s a pervasive idea, “Well, if you want it too much, you won’t get the part, if they can feel how bad you want it, you can’t have it.” And I hate that.
What I want to do and work with are people who want it really badly. I don’t want people on my set who are like half–ed about this project or any project. And maybe this is a protective attitude, because I really want to create, but I don’t think ambition or desire are bad traits to have as a creative person, an artist, a scientist, a mother, anything. So, I just wanted to highlight that, and let it be known that when I plant my flag in what will be my tiny little directing mountain, that part of that is ambition.
Alanah Pearce: I love that you made something where the ambition is really negative. [Laughs]
Kate Siegel: Yes. [Chuckles] Sir, there is a bad side. I was always interested in the people who would go in the spaceship. Because there are people in the audience who go, “I would never.” And there were people in the audience going, “I totally would.” And I want to sit with the people who totally would.
Siegel took every step possible to make space feel real in Stowaway (despite a small budget)
“…I believed in my heart that the V/H/S Audiences want to come along for the ride…”
Kate, I want to turn to you to look at the visual approach to the film, because the one thing I’ve always loved about the film V/H/S/ Franchise is how well they let each of their filmmakers experiment with looks and styles. How did you land on what you wanted the segment to look like?
Kate Siegel: Well, I knew from the script that we delivered that in the back half of this, we have to go into space. [Chuckles] So, we had to go into space, and I also knew that the budget was quite small, and I knew that in it too. So, I spent a lot of time thinking about, first of all, how I would make a camera float. It is a very difficult thing to do. We didn’t use a video camera. We used an Alexa, which is a big, heavy-bodied camera. And then, I had two different lens packs, one was an infrared lens that I needed because I was going to light the gear with infrared light.
Let me back up. So, I knew I needed to make it look like space, so I talked to a lot of people who were a lot more experienced than I was. And I said, “If you need to make a camera float, how would you do it?” Now, a lot of people said things like a bungee, and we talked about switching to a lighter camera like that thing, and it’s not quite working. And then, when Michael Fimognari agreed to come on as my DP and my cinematographer, the first thing he said to me was, “Have you ever seen how infrared light behaves on camera?” And I said: No, what can you show me? And he’s like, “I can’t show you anything, it hasn’t been done before.” Because Dun does an overlay, and No does an overlay. But again, these are huge budget movies, so their infra-red starts with a VFX kind of domino chain.
So, he took me to Arri Rentals to do a camera test, and we started looking at how infrared behaved on cameras, pure infrared with no filter and no color correction. And I was in love with him. The lens flares are so weird, and the way that you can have all your overhead lights on, so you have a completely open pupil, and you can turn the lights off, but the light quality doesn’t change on camera, but the pupil will to contract. So you can practically do the effect of the pupil widening, which I just loved. Then, I had to convince a series of executives that it was okay, and they were like, “Well, what can you show me?” And I’m like “It doesn’t exist. Nobody’s done it. I’d like to be the first one to do it for a little while.”
And then, I had to go find a bunch of ophthalmologists and be like, “Hey, am I allowed to shine this light on people?” [Chuckles] And we have all this, so we have the trend. We were like, “Okay, this is going to feel foreign, the light is going to feel foreign, and there are like 10 infrared lights in all of California.” We ordered them all, and then we got a bunch of strip lights, and we were like, “Okay, here we go.” And then, Arri also has something called a Trinity head, which is a gyroscopic crane head that we put on a Steadicam operator. So, once we saw the move, it could pan, it could 360, and it was controlled by a monitor, so we could slowly move it. It comes with its own operator, so Fimognari stood next to me, and we made it three and three.
When I saw those two things come together, I was like, “We got it. We’re in space.” And we did a couple of pretty cheap Twilight Zone tricks to make you believe Alanah was floating, and I believed in my heart that the V/H/S audience wanted to come along for the ride. They were ready to suspend, so I was like, “I just need to give them enough that they buy in.” Of course, there will always be people like, “Well, her hair would have,” or, “Her clothes would have.” And I’m like, “Yeah, absolutely, but I want you and I to go on this journey together in our minds that we’ve created a floating VHS camera.” And I’m very happy with the way it turned out in this section.
Stowaway’s final set piece required two stages of prosthetics for Pierce
“There was one day when I almost accidentally choked…”
Alanah, we can’t get into spoilers, so I won’t ask the full thing, but you have some prosthetics at some point in this segment, and I’d love to hear how it was all of the set on. You, and then see them in the mirror for the final effect?
Alanah Pearce: So it came in two stages. Again, also trying not to just talk about spoilers, but they put on, for those who were on me, super chill. [Chuckles] The girls who did this were really beautiful. I was just studying my monologues for the next day. This part is really easy. You just sit in a chair and people touch you. The second component of this is actually that I have to get into something that is prebuilt. Again, trying to avoid spoilers, and this was very uncomfortable. [Laughs]
There was one day that I was half-accidentally suffocated, and another day that I had trouble breathing. [Chuckles] Some of it was complicated, for sure, but I was so excited to see how it was going to look. So, even when I was in those positions, I was just like, “I can’t wait to see how it turns out.” And then, I go out, and I finally get to see it after we did the takes, and I was like, “Oh my God, this is terrible!” It was so exciting to see, so definitely very uncomfortable, but so worth it.
Such an important thing for us to end up doing, and it was really cool to see the whole process of how it all came together, as well, because I had seen some pre-production shots of how Kate wanted it to look, and then Some in-production shots. And how it ended up was such a cool thing to watch from the sidelines, to watch the effects team put it together over time, slowly. And I had to have molds and all that stuff.
It was a really cool, just totally creative part of the job that I’m not familiar with. It’s just really, really interesting to see it come full circle. Whereas for me, it was just sort of sitting there and standing in something. I probably had the easier job, even if it was very uncomfortable. [Chuckles]
About V / H / S / next
V/H/S/BEYOND, the seventh installment of the V/H/S franchise, will feature six new bloodcurdling types, placing horror at the forefront of a sci-fi-inspired hellscape.
Source: Screen Rant Plus