H oh g is, folks.
It's show tied.
People say, good money to see this movie.
When they go out to a theater. They want clod sodas, hot popcorn and no monsters in the protection booth.
Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring. Don it off. You used to czar of the Telo on your neros to a mast motor, so it's a dirty sell a.
Hey, folks want too. A special episode of the Projection Booth, I'm your host, Mike White. On this episode, I'm talking with Sandermaran, the writer and director, and Jan Andressen, the producer of the new film Chainsaws Worth Singing. This is a film that was I think eleven years in the making. It is a musical. It is about a chainsaw wielding killer. It is wonderful. Thank you so much for listening to this interview. Definitely find chain Saws Were Singing. It is
currently making the rounds at festivals. You can find out more chainsawsworth Singing dot com. Thanks so much for listening and I hope you enjoyed this interview. Tell me a little bit about you guys. How did you get into filmmaking and how long have you been working together?
We met back in twenty ten. I started making short films back in high school, which was two thousand and eight something like that. Jan as well separately, and then our path crossed and then we Yeah, we did a bunch of short films which was it's pretty crazy, and we tried it doing some special effects there and a couple of successful short film projects, which ultimately led us
to change house. We're singing because we were figuring why do we keep doing these shorte little things when we could just spend our time and focus on one big thing. And there was a lot of time on this film with Yeah, so this was.
Your first feature. What kind of challenges did you have making such a long feature compared to all the shorts we've been doing.
The film school that we went to and everything has taught us how to do like a short movie, So we had no idea how to do that feature one. So in a way, it's under even wrote the script in a way that every scene is a short movie with a beginning, mid part and then.
So yeah, it was basically like get twenty eight short stories or sketches even, I'd say, and that's what gives the film the sort of money. Quiet on esque sketch structures. We just want to just have some cool shit happen there and just across the lines or how we can get from one situation to another so it makes sense. And again that was our main main challenge, just coming from the short film background, that you don't really think about the narrative as a whole, and how are you
going to keep the viewers interested? Sort of get the introduction, then you get the introduction, then you developed the story and then you come to a climax of the story with every short film, but it turned out that you only can keep the middle part or else it's just going to drag way way too much.
So that's pretty much what we learned basically in the script wasn't written in the right format.
Usually you have the Celtics, a no Celtics, no Curier new fontsying like that, there is a way to do it, and we didn't.
We better had just like a microsoftort document with it was very chaotic, so we had no idea how along the movie was going to be. So the first cut was like three and a half hours or something. That was back in twenty thirteen when we wrote and shot. To think I believe we've grown a bit wiser since then, just a bit maybe. So there was a bunch of dumb stuff that we ended up cutting out, and we unless the bunch of dumb stuff in.
Of course, where did you find your cast? I love everybody that's in this movie.
Yet, first we reverse engineered, like Robert Dodriguez taught us, if you have a friend and use him if you have your kid brother, we did.
So.
I knew some twins for back in college, and I knew I wanted them to be in the film in exactly the same way they are. I'm not going to give away spoilerers, but yeah, twin with the Chase Saws. And also Carl Jose who plays the main character Tom. He was one of our crew as well. We've been making the short film with him since high school. Then
the yond character who's plays the goofy goofball guy. He actually turned out was a big fan of our previous short films, so when we contacted him, he was like, yeah, I mean whatever, I didn't need to read the script. Yeah, I'll do it whatever it is. So that was cool. And Laura will play Maria in the film. We actually found through casting which was a killer. Yeah. Also the killer character I recalled, I had seen him somewhere in
a short film and so I contacted him. He's otherwise at music festival producer at a film producer, so he didn't have a long background in acting. And also all of my friends and family are in distinct they die one way or another. But yeah, what else was there? I think that pretty much covered the female character at first, before we found Laura needs to play Maria. We got plenty people to show up at a casting and once they realized what the film was about, what the sprit
was about, they just left. So at one point we were actually really afraid that we have written a film that was just unplayable for any momental wants to do like serious films or whatever. So it was so great we found her.
Oh and the female main antagonist that we did the previous project with her, a short movie, Yeah, Rid the rat Step played the place the.
Evil mother was in our previous short film Curiosity Kills, which was also somewhat successful on genre film festivals, in which and also with my kid brother plays in that one who was also in the film. And by the way, that fun fact the little kid brother from the film with the Cross Spoke. He was twelve when we shot the thing. Then he went through middle school, grade school, high school, college, amendatory what is it the amandator hornby
Army constructor description thing we have in Stonia. And now as a twenty three year old, he's joined our film as a producer. So now he is a full time producer here. And also he is in the film, actually twice, he's in the film as a grown up as well. It was one of the last things we shot is in the gas station sequenced with the shootout. He's actually one of the last big big times. If you watch it very closely, Hysteros has grown up, don Trivia.
Were you guys inspired by Richard Linklater with that whole boyhood thing where we're gonna start here and wait twelve years?
Absolutely not, although someone pointed out that technically our film did take longer to make it to the audience. Now, it was never intended hell, someone said that, Yeah, So we shot the team twenty thirteen, and initially it was going to be ready by twenty fourteen, That's what we promised our our home genre film festival, and then we said maybe next year. And at one point they just stopped asking us. But yeah, it was never meant it
to be this way. Just ten years for post production is not something you plan on happening in your life.
So what was taking eleven ten years to do in post? Right?
Basically, like all the stars aligned when we were shooting, so everybody was doing it for free and crazy enough during that summer people had time, yeah, and they were up for it. And then when we had finished with our principle photography, then everybody moved on with their lives and got like digs working somewhere. So Saunder was the only guy who had ye time to deal with it.
Yeah, and I got a comment, Okay, so the film should be I think it was about sixty four days all in all, and we shot mostly during summer, and
it's also dripped in the autumn. But yeah, I'm pretty sure I got some serious PTSD from the film shoot, just because it was very fun but very tiring, just two hours of sleep and then but I smoked way too many cigarettes during the day, and it's just it was just harrowing when the when the film shoot stopped, everyone was just congratulating us to yeah, it's finally over,
but I knew that all of dear Lord. Okay, so now I have eight thousand video files and it took me two months to just to log and rename the files to get it systemized, not us the figure on the idea yet, not even talking about the audio recordings that we did have. So yeah, just to get a brief timeline. For two years I edited, which was all alone,
which is normal considering the film. Then for a year I did the VFX and we started putting together a team to finally have it ready by twenty eighteen with a bigger post production crew. But that sort of imploded because we ended up paint a bunch of people, but that really didn't get us the results we wanted, at which point I was like, Okay, I'm just gonna go rogue, and then I did. So I ended up doing the sound design, mostly by myself for about another two years.
Then for two years I learned musical orchestration from scratch to get the songs done. And then to top that off, it was two years of color correction. Because I don't know, if you saw the film on a screener, perhaps you don't see the vivid colors, but on a cinema screen. It looks really cool right now, and it did not at first, since it was shot with the crappiest, cheapest cameras you could get, and that's why we had to focus so heavy on the visual look of it. So yeah,
that's where what gets us to twenty twenty four. Don't recommend doing that anyone.
I definitely saw some of that color and just some of that vividness that you're talking about, especially with the car explosions, of which there are many.
Yes, there are. Also the vfcs aren't believed the ball, but I'd say their cartoon, their cartoonist in just the right way. So they were comment.
Had you guys done a musical before this one?
Technically? You know, I done a song during a high school There was a song in one of your shorts. Yeah, in high school, but not like a fulaw musical having the entire musical structure to it. It was just another exploitation element, just just because we were shooting the thing so cheap. I knew that during a musical, number of people are most probably gonna get bored, so that was like a cheap way of entertaining the audiences. Plus there was always like this sort of few moment to like
making this. Doing a subject matter that's violent, made sure it's just Cannibal the musical. Actually, our shooting script was a serial killer of the musical, But yeah, the songs were. I dabb believe piano, but I don't have a musical background. I don't know any music theory. I think it's actually
a pretty pretty great piano. I must add, No, I couldn't play anything live as what I'm saying, But yeah, just having watched all the great Accounibal the Musical and Little Chopple Horrors and everything by Trey White, Parker Matt Jone and the Money Python Guys and Katieing the wrong kind of music Bulls is what drove me to make a musical that doesn't make you vomit with its prancing and dancing, so it's just contained.
When was the first time that you actually saw this with an audience?
And April a live public viewing. Our world premiere was in April, which was very lively because all of our cast and crew and everybody involved with the film who had been waiting for ten years fighting got to see it. So that was great. But yeah, we've been doing private home screaming since she can believe it or not, since twenty sixteen when it didn't have any sound yet. The
color was crappy and there was no music. So throughout the post production process we'd be doing this more updated screenings. And that's why we were continent that it works on a crowd, because we had so much different backgrounds of people see it, and even when it was work in progress, they still laughed a lot, so that was fun. But yeah, other than that, Fantasia was also really cool, So we're looking forward to fantastic screening.
Were you still doing other films at the time or were you just fully dedicated to chainsaws or singing?
But you had like gigs but in the beginning, but then yeah, at first I tried to earn some money on the side and do at least something, But then I realized that my obligations on the project were so huge that even if I sign up for a day, project still always took about a week. So at one point I just stopped and just went all in on this one. So this is a true labor of love and hate.
Are you full time filmmakers now or are you working other jobs at the same time?
I have been actuity of full time Solms and recurd his production sound mixer projects for years now.
But the sunder is now full time on this one. This is the only thing I've made, and it wasn't supposed to take so long, So I have to rebuild my life once I get out of this project. The other producers on our team are my brother's a journalist who played the hippie, my older brother, and the younger brothers. So for this year he's helping us out on the film, but the next year he's going to go to I think it something well, we're not really professional flat filmmakers
per se. Maybe it shows in the film. I don't know.
I think it's a fantastic I find so much energy in the film, and even just the way that you're shooting it and especially the way you're cutting it. It just moves so quickly.
Yeah. I always loved Frank Kappra's quote and there are no rules of filmmaking, only sins, and the original sin is dullness. So yeah, I watched a lot of films. I worked through the one thousand movies you have to See before you die book, like, actually watched all the films now I watched most of it within a year, but then it tripped into two or three years. Anyway, as far as I respect arthouse films, I think I overdosed on them and I never want to see them against.
So that's why I felt like a film has to evolve a lot of stuff happening in it just keep me entertained, and that's what I wanted to do to the audience as well. And technically, I might add why it's so fast, it is because our cameras they were crappy canon rebels, which meant we couldn't change the focus during when we were shooting. That means we have a picture storytelling structure where we have to edit so much. So that's made the process way lots of cuts, but
it made it simpler. The viewers these days are actually more customs fast editing, so it helps us long and I don't know, I think it works well all in all that it went the way it did. Yeah, although in terms of color correction, where I said two years, that means that that means that there were three thousands of five hundred shots that I had to engineer from scratch, basically rebuild one by one, and that was a lot of work that make.
Them thick with each other. Yeah. So the fast edit, yeah, it was a nail. The process behind that.
I was in an Adobe premiere where I did it, and it was like a shot and then another another twenty eight or thirty video layers on top of each one containing all sorts of video facts as well, and so combining them together, and then I for one minute of the film, I put it to render for eighteen hours, come back the next day and find out, Nope, it's all crappy. To do a middle minor for a judgments, and then then again eighteen hours and then you see it.
And I went through the whole thing that way. Yeah, yeah, it's very manual.
But what he did with the picture, there's no like a filter just slapped on and okay, we're good.
No, see, you fine tuned every bit of like.
Old movie scratches and stuff like in which scene it should be more and in which the shot it should be less, and he did them.
Yes, that was never the plan though. Yeah, I was never planning on doing so much stuff alone. It just went this way because we didn't have a budget, and the budget we did try to put together, if we started paying people. It turned out that it's just so much the genre rich content in the film, which requires heavy sound editing and the visual effects and everything. It was just so much that any professional just didn't have time to invest in such a huge project. So that's
why weight it went the way it did. But I think it gives it character that it's done at home. This way, it's certainly different.
One week before the shoot, or or a few days before the first shooting day is when we got together is okay, we are not doing great with the preparations, so shall we do it next year or just go for it?
And we decided to go for it. So everything was very chaotic during the shoot.
Yeah, and as a director, he hasped scratched out a plan, so he was like shooting day by day. Like when we had done one day, then you can see him on the porch with a cigarette, just take it. Look at the next day's material, like how the director slept two hours then straight to do it.
And the survival mode. It was survival moment and it was wared. It reminded us of going into battle. But the reason I think that it looks the way it looks and it has that sort of energetic. The chaotic element to this is because of the decision to go forward with doing it that year. Yeah, because if we hadn't done that so seriously, our started aligned there. Everybody was just available and wanted to do it during this summer.
The next summers they were all gone, so that was our window and just to go all in and we risked it. It took about too many years of my life, but I'm glad we did it then. But yeah, sorry if I'm talking too much about in detail, but I just recalled. So the first day was rough. We filmed a bunch of stuff, but we felt maybe we could pull this off. And then almost all of the footage got deleted, which was a very bad start to filming process. And we had a meeting and it was like, let's
just keep on going. We're not gonna lose anything here. But then we picked up the pace and then found out that you lose some footage, you can always just reshoot it. Yeah. The one we deleted was one with the flower killed in the eye. That got the leted.
Okay, but we'll try to It's quite a minimal. Yeah, you wouldn't like have suicidal thoughts in the edits, so I should.
After this arduous process, are you going to be able to handle shooting another film?
I have to get a long outro out of this film because it's taken literally ten eleven years of my life and nothing else. Yeah, just thinking about doing another project. I don't even know what my life is going to be after we finish selling this and showing this.
Just to give you an example, he has been with windows covered up fully in his room for several years.
So he's not even accustomed to the light the same ways. Oh yeah, that was funny yet because I have to drive out all of my working station and it's in residential building, so it's like a film vampire. In one of the interviews with Dead with the Estonian, I actually told them that I don't know it. Throughout the years, the neighbors would hear screams, chainsaws, gunshots and fucking singing. I think it must have been so weakly. Yeah.
Is there a good place mine for people to keep up with you guys and with the film?
Yeah?
Change Thus we're singing if you search or they are all in the Facebook, Instagram, Twitter.
Yeah, and also we have our website www dot changeaws for singing dot com, which sort of combines all the screening informations there and all the linkster and social media handles are also there. So fine. Actually, yeah, our webite is the best source information.
Yeah, fantastic. I want more people to check out this movie and see it on the big screen if they possibly can, because you guys have a lot to be proud of for this one.
Oh, thanks so much, Mark, I mean love.
Thank you so much for your time. Fellows, this was really nice talking with you.
Yeah, youto, thanks for having.
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