Dark Country - Production

Production

I called Mel Gibson and he talked to me on the phone for an hour, and said that when he was getting ready to direct and star in his first film, he was nervous and he called Clint Eastwood. Clint Eastwood talked to Mel for a long time and told Mel that he was really nervous and he called Don Siegel, who had directed Clint in a bunch of movies, and Don told Clint, 'Don’t sell yourself short. Spend as much time on yourself—your own shots—as you do on every other actor, on every other aspect of production. Be careful, because you’re in the movie you have permission to just do one or two takes on yourself and quickly move on—but you need to spend as much time on yourself for your film to work.'

—Thomas Jane on getting directing advice.

The idea for making Dark Country came after Jane had read the short story by the film's writer Tab Murphy. After working for a year on the story, Jane and Murphy brought it to Lionsgate, who purchased the script. Upon learning Jane's intention to shoot the film 3D, Lionsgate backed out of the deal and allowed Jane and Murphy to take the script to Sony Pictures, whose home video division were looking for content for their new line of 3D televisions that were soon to be released.

The inspiration Jane had cited for making the film came from his admiration for the horror films of old and film noir, in addition to The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits and old issues of EC Comics comic books.

"I wanted to make a movie that was for people who enjoy movies that are off the beaten track, you know?" said Jane. "I wanted to make a movie for fans of cult films, for fans of "The Twilight Zone", for guys who stayed up late to watch "The Outer Limits" when they were probably too young to do that."

Before filming began, Jane, together with his storyboard artist, story boarded every shot, approaching the film like they were doing a live-action graphic novel. Wanting to have as many graphic novel elements Jane brought on-board comic artist Tim Bradstreet to work as the visual consultant and production designer in addition to Berni Wrightson, who provided the designs for the character Bloodyface, and Ray Zone as the 3D supervisor. Jane chose to do the film in 3D as a way to prove to the filmmaking community that you could create a low budget film in 3D and have it turn out looking great.

The 25 day shoot took place in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The film was shot in both 3-D high definition and 2-D high-def, with the intention of a limited theatrical run in 3D. The 3D for Dark Country was done using two Silicon Imaging (SI) HD heads capturing at 2K resolution, the cameras were built by Hector Ortega and Stephen Pizzo of Element Technica, and supervised by Geoff Boyle, Max Penner, Tim Thomas and Paradise FX in California. The small size of the cameras allowed for more fluid camera movements compared to the cameras previously used to shoot 3D films.

For the filming of scenes in 3D, Jane wished for the effect to vary in intensity and be impactful. To help in that, Jane devised a color-coded system for his cameraman to know how he wanted the 3D to be visually in any particular scenes.

"If I wanted the 3D to be popping-off the screen in a particular shot – I had a color code for that. If the 3D was to be deep in the background so that you get a real sense of depth, that was another color code. And there were colors for the middle ground. I indicated wherever the 3D would be and map it through the movie – because I think it can be overstimulating."