Director Steven Soderbergh joined screenwriter David Koepp to talk about building a palpable sense of dread in their new feature, 'Presence.'
approached the screenwriter David Koepp to collaborate for the second time in five years, it was to make a movie utterly in keeping with Soderbergh’s directorial legacy: brazen, experimental, and totally distinctive.
SODERBERGH: I always encourage it, because stuff does come up. But you’re not the only writer I’ve worked with who has expressed deep disinterest in being on set. When I asked Paul Attanasio onif he wanted to be on set he said, “I can’t imagine anything more boring.” You and I are not prone to walk onto set with scripts that aren’t in their final form. That has a lot to do with it. Plus, in our case, you get to see the cut stuff, if not that night, the next day.
SODERBERGH: Well, I can filter more quickly. You’re shrinking what it could be from an almost infinite set of variables down to what it wants to be. The process of eliminating all those other versions that aren’t optimal only advances through being on the floor and going through it. There’s no real shortcut to getting better at that specific aspect. So I just filter faster now than I did then. Sometimes a specific project will really move you downfield, likeKOEPP: That was a television show.
KOEPP: I have noticed that you, both in our work and your work with cast and crew, are not interested in doing everybody’s job except those jobs that you have actually taken over. But I heard you say to an actor once who had a question about something, “Well, I hired you because I like what you do. Why don’t you do what you do, and then I’ll react.
SODERBERGH: Our innate voyeurism when you start seeing the images is powerful. You could read it and understand the gimmick, but when you start to really feel the implications of that by seeing an image, it goes somewhere else. By design, the movie is not overly long. We both felt there was a limit to what you could do with this idea before it starts getting stupid or you have to do things that are just not possible.
SODERBERGH: The longest take is the sort of penultimate shot in the film, and the second longest is the shot that comes just before it. But the big shot, the climax, is about 10 minutes.SODERBERGH: The stairs were a challenge. The rig isn’t that heavy. The whole thing with the camera on is probably 10 or 12 pounds.SODERBERGH: It’s a Sony A7 camera mounted on a small Ronin stabilizer with two handles sort of on either side of the camera.
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