This Friday, Focus Features is bringing up-and-coming filmmaker William Eubank’s sci-fi road trip mash-up The Signal to limited theaters after its impressive premiere at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival. Daily Dead recently spoke with Eubank about the inspiration behind the story of The Signal and his experiences behind the camera as well.
Eubank also discussed working with his highly talented ensemble for The Signal including Laurence Fishburne, Lin Shaye and Brenton Thwaites, how he pulled off some rather impressive visual effects on a modest budget and whether or not he has future film plans for the world that he created.
Thanks so much for speaking with me today. I’m really impressed with the amount of story and ambition you were able to put up on the screen for The Signal. Can you start off by discussing where the story idea came from originally?
William Eubank: Thanks so much! I think the overall idea of the movie came when I dreamt up what you see in the ending and then I just reverse engineered the story to figure out how we get to that moment. I pretty much began working on the idea from the most intense moment of the story and just kept working backward towards the road trip with the three kids at the beginning of the movie. There are a lot of elements in the story, so it just seemed like the logical way to approach everything.
This is your second feature and, not only did it premiere at Sundance, but it’s also getting some really great support from Focus (Features)- all of which rarely happens to filmmakers so early in their career. How did all this come about, in terms of putting The Signal together?
William Eubank: Well, the first movie I made was called Love and I think people really responded to my visual style, so they wanted something else. I didn’t really have something else like Love and besides, I wanted to do something a little bigger to challenge myself too. So I thought about my initial idea for The Signal and told my reps about it who were really behind it. They hooked me up with Brian Kavanaugh-Jones who has worked on the Paranormal Activity movies and I thought that was a rather incredible fit, especially considering The Signal was nothing like those movies were at all. And working with Brian has been so great.
I really enjoyed the performances by the whole cast, but Brenton, Beau (Knapp) and Olivia (Cooke) were particularly great because so much of this movie hinged on their performances, especially once certain story aspects are revealed later on.
William Eubank: They were all such sweet kids and that demeanor is what I wanted centering everything within the story of The Signal. At its core, this is a road trip story about three friends who are facing some major crossroads in their lives who happen upon something spectacular that they must find a way to deal with. Their performances had to ring true of these young kids and the uncertainty that they’re all facing, even before what happens in the movie.
And when we were casting these roles, it really came down to at the end of the day- do I like these kids? Would I want to be on a road trip with them? Would I want them to survive against any kind of horrific events they may face? And that’s the kind of qualities I saw in all three of those kids. They were all instantly likeable.
And Laurence was such a good dude, too. He made us feel legitimate (laughs). No, seriously though- our entire cast was great, but his presence really added some weight to The Signal.
He really does. How did Laurence get involved in The Signal?
William Eubank: I sent it over to him during the casting process and he called me immediately to tell me that he couldn’t put the script down once he started it. That was an amazing phone call to get; to have someone like Laurence say that about an idea from a newcomer like me just meant the world to me.
What’s interesting is that I was originally writing a totally different kind of character for Damon, something you’d see out of a Spaghetti Western or maybe like No Country for Old Men. But then when we actually got Fishburne, I just knew his version of Damon was going to be something incredible, but different too. And it was. It was all just perfect too.
I also loved that you have Lin Shaye in the film playing a really lovable, eccentric character too- were you a big fan of hers before casting her for The Signal?
William Eubank: I was and Lin was just fantastic to work with. She really got into her character and even brought her own jewelry and added so many of her own little touches to make that character her own. And that headspace that her character occupies in the movie was all Lin too (laughs). But I think really connected with that role in a very special way where I think she recognized this kind of beautiful sadness in her. And it was awesome to have someone connect with your story like that.
You guys have a lot of incredible visual f/x moments in The Signal that I was not expecting and thought they really were impressive and complimented the rest of your visuals so well. How on Earth did you guys pull of some of these bigger scenes that have a lot of scope to them?
William Eubank: So much of it had to do with the amount of pre-production we were able to put in. We were an independently financed movie, so we had to make every penny count, which meant all those scenes took an immense amount of meticulous planning. We just storyboarded everything out and then I worked extensively with Colin (Davies) on planning out each and every shot just so we knew exactly how to shoot the movie that would be the most beneficial for him and his team to have to work with when it came time to do the f/x. If you really know what you’re doing, you can make a lot happen with very little.
I won’t get into spoilers or anything but since The Signal’s ending does leave things a bit open to interpretation, is this a world you’d like to revisit in the future if all goes well with this one?
William Eubank: Yeah, I do know we have an ending that produces more questions than answers in a way, but I’m not really sure what’s next. I feel like I have a lot of different stories in my head and I think that I’m a bit afraid that all the stories won’t get told so I don’t know if a Signal sequel would necessarily be next for me, but I wouldn’t be opposed to making one either.
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