The KAOS Brief has received a warm welcome from festivals – including Sci-Fi London – with critics noting the chemistry between the leads, and the way that writer and director JP Mandarino has taken the “found footage” genre and done something rather different with it. The day after its European premiere, Paul Simpson spoke in a transcontinental call with Mandarino in Barcelona, Charlie Morgan Patton (Dakota) and Akanimo Eyo (Tren) in London and Drew Lipson (Skylar) in LA…

 

The KAOS Brief starts going one way then heads off in another. JP, what was the spark for it?

JP Mandarino:         I had wanted to make a feature, and realised that “found footage” would be a little bit more achievable budgetarily. I started doing research on found footage films and realised that there was nothing that resonated with me about what it was like living in a modern world, with cameras on every device, cameras recording our every move. I thought that would be a really good way of motivating a found footage film.

Kids recording every aspects of their life I thought it be a fantastic way of motivating it. Then, the extension of that was the alien abduction, because we’ve already seen the paranormal activity, seen the ghosts, the witches.

What was your reaction to the script?

Drew Lipson:           I loved it. I got this script from my manager – just got the sides. Originally when I went to put myself on tape for the audition, it felt very modern day and unique. I was excited to do it.

Charlie Morgan Patton:    One of my favourite things when we did come to shoot the movie was how to motivate the cameras, and how involved we were with shooting it. That was a great part of why I liked the script so much.

Akanimo Eyo:          I liked that it was very modern; it was the same thing – it was interesting, it was cool, and true to today.

The film is quite short, but the characters are built up very quickly and effectively – did you work a lot together before starting shooting building the relationships or did it come out as you were filming?

Charlie:          I think it came really naturally. We all just fell into our roles and our personalities naturally. It was really easy for me to be Drew’s sister and give him shit the way I would my brothers, and how I would feel about my brother’s boyfriend.

They cast it very quickly and then we began shooting so we didn’t have a lot of time/ It was really just over the course of filming. We did all have to stay in the same house while we filmed, which helped a lot – waking up, grocery shopping, cooking breakfast together, getting coffee – when we weren’t filming.

Drew:             We had just one beach day before we started filming when we just hung out as a group, and we attempted a script readthrough. I don’t think we got very far – we just started hanging and chatting as friends. It sort of built off of that. It was very like non-professional from the start – more friendship-wise than on screen, and as Charley said, our personalities meshed really well. We all sort of got each other.

JP:      It was just so organic the way the casting came about and the relationships between the characters. They had the same sensibilities and they were all very talented. It was the perfect storm that led to the chemistry that every screening we have of the film is commented upon.

The problem with these sorts of films is you don’t believe these characters’ relationships before whatever shit it is that’s coming at them starts, whereas here those opening scenes – setting up the blog and the crap as they’re going on the trip – feels like B roll footage of them to build the characters.

JP       I can imagine it does feel like that – this film is built on the likeability of all these characters as well. Most of these films you can’t wait for the characters to get knocked off, they’re so obnoxious. In this film I wanted to have characters that you liked.

I like horror films where you like the characters and you feel an emotional link; I wanted to achieve that and I think we made these characters likeable, very relatable in personality and I think it makes much more of an impact when something happens to them. For me it’s always a thrill when the audience gets upset.

What did you think of your characters? Would you get on with them if you were hanging out with them?

Akanimo:      Absolutely. My character Tren is very similar to myself. I like what Tren is bringing to the table. I like his personality, I like his mannerisms, the way that he is, so I think I would definitely hang out with Tren a lot.

Charlie:         Yes I would definitely say so. We all had to put a lot of ourselves into our characters. Me and Akanimo did – I would definitely like her.

Drew:             Yeah. I think my character was exactly who I am minus the homosexuality. I loved him. Everything Skylar did, that’s me. I’d hang out with him.

Would you keep on doing your vlog even if it was pissing everybody else off?

Drew:             Definitely! I’ve got an older brother, younger sister, I’ve always been the middle child. I’m not as tech-savvy as Skylar but I appreciate it.

What was the most challenging aspect of the production?

JP:      The most challenging aspect as a filmmaker was having multiple angles so I could cut between the cameras. A lot of preparation was required to ensure that.

Charley:        For me, the hiking. That was a little unexpected. I was like, “hey are we going to stop at some point?” It was all very real. They were like, “here’s this broken tree let’s get to the top”, and I’m saying, “I’m not going!”

Akanimo:      The hardest part for me was the scene where I die because I just had to fall back about six times, because we had six takes, and there was no safety net or safety pads. It was just me falling on my head on the hard grass each time. As time went on, the headaches got worse.

Drew              Honestly, a lot of the film there was a lot of improv – guided improv – with the relationships within lines we had. It wasn’t that any specific scene was super-challenging or difficult to do.

The scene where Dakota was abducted and the aliens came into her room… I do have a little sister, and seeing someone go through that… Charlie was so amazing, so deeply affected by that, it was difficult to watch and to feel. That was obviously challenging… and the craft table was really challenging to avoid!

The scene where Skylar attacks Tren seemed very realistic…

Drew:             As a big brother in real life, I am very protective over my sister, and it really did come out in that scene. I looked at Dakota and I thought my sister had been attacked and I thought Tren might have done it – I was being the big brother and trying to find out what had happened and take care of her. That felt very strong and probable, for sure.

JP:      A lot of the stuff that the characters went through was difficult. The scene where Dakota is probed on the bed, that was an emotional and physical challenge for Charlie because she did all of that practically and what Akanimo went through as Tren to have him die – he was a trouper through and through. And what Drew went through on an emotional level…

Acting in part is assuming the experiences of an individual and I can only imagine, having not really acted myself, that there’s an emotional toll one experiences by simulating the experiences. My hat is off to actors, and particularly to these four.

Did you shoot most of the movie in order as the emotional growth seems organic on screen?

JP:      There were a couple of scenes that we shot out of order, but we shot most of the scene chronologically, because that was precisely my intention. I wanted the emotions and the arc of that to happen in a very organic way, and they learn through their experiences as the movie progresses. About 75 percent we did shoot chronologically.

Is there a possibility of a sequel? Could we see these characters back?

JP:      There’s a hundred percent chance potentially of a sequel – make of that what you can! I think everyone involved would love to participate in a sequel. This was always conceived as a trilogy for me.

Would you like to come back?

Charlie:         Oh yes.

Akanimo:      For sure.

Charlie:         I feel like my character development for Dakota would be extremely rad after seeing whatever happens to Skylar, and her being taken away by the Men in Black. Whatever I go through would be really cool to play.

Drew:             Yeah, assuming Skylar was sucked up into the UFO, if he did survive whatever he went through, I don’t know what that would do to his character. It would be really interesting.

Akanimo:      It would be really interesting to see how Tren recovers from this and comes back and does what he does.

What’s the best thing you took away from the experience?

Akanimo:      Everything was fun. One of the cool things is the chemistry on screen – we’re still friends today. That’s something that was really cool – the four of us keeping up with each other.

Drew:             My takeaway is realising that technology is such a big part of our lives today in society. It opens a lot of questions as to what the government can see and is aware of, and how easily it can impact everybody and what we do. It’s something to think about for sure.

Charlie:         My biggest takeaway would all the memories and the really great experiences. I think we made relationships that are going to last the next 20-30 years of our lives and that’s a really good feeling to walk away with.

JP:                  My biggest takeaway was a huge learning curve as a filmmaker – how I want a story to unfold and how actors inject their own versions of characters into films. It was about learning to trust the actors’ instincts, and how the actors were able to embody the characters I had created both on the page and in my own head, and be able to trust that that’s going to unfold in the way that it’s supposed to.

It was a really great experience for me to be able to trust myself and my directorial instincts, which has so much more to do with trusting your actors, trusting your art department etc. I tend to be a micromanager so this was a great lesson in trusting people to exercise themselves and their craft and their artistry.

For more details, go to http://thekaosbrief.com/

Thanks to Gem Pinkney and Charley Cullen Walters for their help in arranging this interview