A Q&A WITH TO YOUR LAST DEATH WRITERS Tanya Klein & Jim Cirile
Tanya Klein and Jim Cirile, the writers of the awesome 2D animated horror ‘To Your Last Death’ shares their answers to seven questions that everyone is asking!
1. Please explain your inspiration and point of view when you first started developing and collaborating on TO YOUR LAST DEATH.
We wanted to bring something new and different to the horror genre (which can be riddled with many tropes.) So we figured we’ll start our story where some horror films end: the heroine, blood-soaked, crawls out of the wreckage after a night of terror – the last one standing. And then we’ll send her right back to do it all over again. At first, we wrote it as a live action film. However, our producers, Cindi Rice and Paige Barnett, had the wonderful idea to make it an animated movie. Since that is something that really hasn’t been done before in this country – a 2D, hand-drawn, animated horror film – we were thrilled with the idea.
2. Please explain your history in filmmaking.
Tanya: I’m originally from a theater background and spent many years working in NYC as a director, writer, actor and producer on countless shows as well as a long stint as Artistic Director of a theater company. I felt the need to spread my wings artistically speaking and wanted to paint with a broader and more far-reaching brush and switched my focus to film.
Jim: I grew up on a steady diet of and And my mom was a hard-charging NYPD detective, and my first car chase was in utero. So I guess you could say getting into genre films made some sort of sense. After moving to LA, I got a steady stream of indie rewrite jobs and worked on a series of action movies for Lionsgate before founding Coverageink.com, a screenplay development and analysis service. We launched Coverage Ink Films to create out-of-the-box “elevated nerd” movies with something to say.
3. What would you like the audience to take away after they have seen the film?
Firstly, the spooky thought that there might be beings somewhere out f*cking with us. Religion generally postulates that God is a benevolent deity. What if this is simply not so? Maybe we’re all pawns in a game, and our misery is someone else’s amusement. Evidence seems a lot stronger for this theory than the former. Secondly, we’d hope they’d pick up on the political subtext. On the one hand, the powerful and ruthless war profiteer, and on the other the powerless, committed and struggling activist – who still runs the race and has a shot at winning. It’s a small and personal horror movie, but in many ways we’re talking about much bigger issues. Lastly, there’s an empowerment theme here — we are all prisoners of the hands we’re dealt; or are we? Do we have the power within to reshape our lives, to overcome our programming, doubts and fears? Which goes back to the first point – if we accept there is no help from above, then can we make our own destiny?
4. What is your relationship to the cast of this film and how was it working with them?
We were extremely lucky to get a geek dream cast (and we are certainly geeks). We’ve been big fans of Morena Baccarin’s ever since FIREFLY (a show canceled far too soon — curse you, ABC). Needless to say, every geek’s dream is to work with Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner, and we were fortunate enough that the part spoke to him. Every horror freak wants to meet Chop Top (just not alone and in a dark alley,) and we were lucky enough to get Bill Moseley to join the cast. (People might be surprised that he’s one of the funniest people ever. Despite the fact that he has made a career playing deranged serial killers and psychos, he’s also unexpectedly normal.) And Ray Wise is not only an amazing actor, but also an amazing human being. Great to work with. A very giving performer and extremely down to Earth. Our lead, Dani Lennon, came to us via audition. She’s one of the most talented people we’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. In fact, we listened to many, many, many voice auditions and as soon as Dani came on, we knew that was it. She just nailed it.
5. What was the production process like?
With animation, all the dialogue must be recorded first. Director Jason Axinn created the animatic – moving storyboards paced and synced to the dialogue track. That becomes the earliest watchable form of the movie. There’s no sound effects or music – if the story plays as an animatic, it’s a pretty good bet it will work as a feature. And after that, the hard work began: line art (Carl Frank, best known for his work with Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons did all of our character designs,), followed by color. Finally, the animation began, all done in After Effects under the watchful eye of Animation Supervisor Vicente Saldivar, with Jason massaging every shot as it came in. Finally, there was some clean-up and special effects animation and edits for pacing. All told, almost five years from beginning to end.
6. When did you meet your collaborators? How did those partnerships come about?
We met our producers Cindi Rice and Paige Barnett after we completed our previous movie (superhero short LIBERATOR starring Lou Ferrigno, Peta Wilson, Ed Asner and Michael Dorn [yeah, we’re Star Trek fans]) from Epic Level Entertainment, and we were looking for something to collaborate on. We showed them the script and they loved it and suggested Jason Axinn, our director, whom they had worked with on their web series “Bite Me” and “Space Guys in Space.”
7. What was your biggest challenge with making this movie, and the moment that was the most rewarding to you, where you knew you had something?
Finances. An animated movie is a very expensive proposition. We are not Pixar and we don’t have millions. We couldn’t even afford to hire an animation house to do everything under one roof. So we ended up building our own team of line artists, colorists, and animators from across the globe. At one point, we had people on every continent (except Antarctica) working on this movie. Once we saw the movie with sound effects and music in place we exhaled because we knew we hadn’t wasted the last few years of our lives as well as all of our money on a turkey. Then, of course, we were nervous when we had our first cast, crew, family, and friends screening because you never know how people react to something. Especially to something that’s essentially a new category. But it went over like gangbusters and we were thrilled.
