Total Eclipse of David Slade

Total Eclipse of David Slade



Take away the screaming fans outside the barricades, and the making of the mega-hit vampire romance Eclipse has a lot in common with the harsh indie drama Hard Candy, says the man who directed both movies.

David Slade is returning to Vancouver, where he spent a year working on this summer's blockbuster hit Eclipse, to talk to an audience of new filmmakers at the Vancouver Film and Television Forum about crafting a movie scene.

"It's kind of similar, whether you're working for a big studio or on an independent film. It's never a playground," says the British-born Slade.

The director will talk about the filming of a couple of scenes from each movie Oct. 2 at the industry-themed component of the Vancouver International Film Festival. The forum hosts filmmakers at the Vancouver International Film Centre from Sept. 28 to Oct. 2.

Slade started work on Eclipse when the second Twilight movie, New Moon, was finished but before it had been released.

"This huge, enormous zeitgeist of a thing hadn't quite happened yet," he says, adding that when the tide of screaming fans did build around the film set, he was too busy to pay much attention.

The film's security people would erect fences at exterior locations to keep fans far away, and Slade would be at work in the back of a car for the ride to set each day. "Just getting it done became a thousand questions - swatch cards, costume approvals, storyboards. I would have my head in my notes."

He remembers seeing fans with flowers standing in the rain as cast and crew left work after an all-night shoot in the woods one night. "I've got a lot of respect for those kids - God that's tenacity. I have a lot of time for the subcultures that bring kids together, regardless of subject matter. Often it's just a good solid source for people to bond."

Slade says he saw Eclipse as more of a romance.

"Within the two pulling forces of romance and terror, I wanted to try and sample both," he says. "I don't think they really did it (in the previous Twilight movies) so much. I wanted Rob (Pattinson) to be scary. I wanted him to have a visceral quality, where a flash of his eyes kind of made it look like he could kill."

Slade says he approached Eclipse as a stand-alone film. "There are films that came before, and you inherit cast and crew ... but I really didn't spend any time studying the other movies."

He says he met more than once with each actor individually before starting rehearsals together: "background cast, all the Cullen family, the wolves, all those guys - as many as I possibly could in the time that I had."

He got them to talk about what they liked and didn't like about the earlier films, and in subsequent meetings he talked with them about what he wanted.

"You have to take the best of what they've done, acknowledge that it's good, and what's not good, (then) take them to a good place to start work," he says.

Another thing he did was to move video monitors away from the set, so the actors wouldn't worry about what they looked like.

"They concentrated on the moment, that I felt worked," he says. "Particularly people who are doing the same role several times ... they could be (saying) 'Am I doing that look again?'"

Slade talks about scene structure, saying most scenes have the same three-act form as an entire movie, and quotes Plato on the balance between craft and form.

"I'm going to sound like a wanker now for mentioning Plato," says Slade. "For Twilight, we're not talking about the greatest art, but about trying to create something that works, that people respond to."

For 2005's Hard Candy, Slade introduced a young Ellen Page to U.S. indie audiences, as a teen who torments a supposed sexual predator (Patrick Wilson).

Slade says he and producer David Higgins saw some 300 actors before seeing Page's taped audition. They put up their own money to get the actress a plane ticket to L.A., so they could persuade their backers to hire her.

"Ellen was astonishing," he recalls. "Incredibly articulate and smart. She was the main help in us getting Patrick; he saw a solid performance that he was going to work against."

As to what's next for Slade, he says Internet reports of him working with Hugh Jackman on an upcoming Wolverine sequel are premature.

"I can say that I've met with Hugh Jackman and he is a very nice fellow, but you never know with these things," the director says. "There are several projects I'm interested in now, and that's one of them."