Manborg was released to DVD this week by Dark Sky Films. Directed by Steven Kostanski, the movie has characters and a style straight out of a 90's video game, and was inspired by his love of 80's and 90's genre films. I had a chance to interview Steven Kostanski, who told me about the challenges of getting this project finished, the movies that served as his inspiration, and his surprise that Manborg already has a cult following:
Thank you for taking the time to talk with Daily Dead. Can you tell our readers about your work in special makeup effects? Specifically, what have you done on Silent Hill: Revelation 3D, and Resident Evil: Retribution?
Steven Kostanski: I started working in prosthetic make-up effects right after graduating high school. I worked on lots of low budget horror movies and a few tv shows before moving out to Toronto where I got work at the various shops around town. I worked for Paul Jones at PJFX on Silent Hill: Revelation (for about 3 weeks) and he was nice enough to ask me back for Resident Evil: Retribution. Both times I worked in his shop making molds and stuff, and it was a great time all around. It’s really cool getting to work for somebody like Paul who has years of experience working on awesome movies.
What made you decide to take this on as your feature debut? Why did you decide on a feature length version over a short?
Steven Kostanski: Actually, I made a feature while I was in university called Love Journey, which was an action comedy. It played one festival, and it will never be screened again. The reason I decided to make Manborg a feature instead of a short was because there were too many ideas to cram into 10 minutes. I wanted to make something that I could fill to the brim with every action/sci-fi/comedy idea I had at the time.
Aside from directing, you also co-wrote the script. Can you tell me about how you and Jeremy Gillespie came together to work on this?
Steven Kostanski: Jeremy was the one who suggested I make a movie called “Manborg” in the first place, while we were hanging out watching the Charles Band classic Eliminators. I wrote the original draft of the script, and Jer added the romantic subplot between The Baron and Mina.
How long have you been carrying this idea around and what are some of the games/movies/TV shows from your youth that inspired this?
Steven Kostanski: Elements of Manborg have appeared in other films of mine. I did a short called Justice 3000 that has a hover bike chase, and a similar futuristic cityscape. Some movies that inspired this include: The Eliminators, I Come In Peace, Robot Jox, Guyver 2: Dark Hero, Starcrash, Judge Dredd, Spawn, The Keep, Captain America 1990, Nemesis, Cyborg…and about a million others. My childhood was built on watching vhs movies.
What kind of budget were you working with and what was the biggest challenge in getting this project filmed?
Steven Kostanski: The movie cost about $1000 bucks to make. The greatest challenge for the movie was that my ambitions exceeded my abilities, and I had to figure out how I was going to accomplish many of the elaborate effects in the movie as I was doing them. Being a one man FX team was very time consuming, not only because I had to do the computer side of things, but also because I was building all the miniature sets and shooting FX inserts as well. I had no intention of making a movie that would take three years to complete, it just ended up that way as the movie got bigger and bigger.
Can you tell our readers about the process of getting this movie filmed? I understand that this was filmed over the course of a year.
Steven Kostanski: It was a long torturous process trying to make this movie. It took about a year to shoot, and then 2 years of post-production. The biggest challenge of production was dealing with the conditions of the spaces we were in. We shot in my garage and the dusty basement of a store. Neither were very habitable and it made filming a lot more difficult than it needed to be.
Your special effects background was obviously a big help in achieving this 80's/90's look and working with practical effects. Can you give our readers a little overview of what was done to achieve the overall look of this movie? How much time was spent in post production to put together the finished movie?
Steven Kostanski: The whole movie was shot on green screen, and all the backgrounds were miniatures that I build out of junk. Post production was especially challenging because the quality of video we shot on was so low, it made keying out the green screen a nightmare. It was a good learning experience that I hope to never repeat. In the end it worked out fine, and the movie has a unique 90’s CD-ROM game look that I guess is charming to some people.
Manborg is being released to DVD this week and has grown quite a following from festival screenings. Are you surprised with the cult following this movie has already achieved?
Steven Kostanski: Very surprised, considering I have trouble sitting through the movie myself. It seems to have really connected with some people and I think that’s great. Hopefully it inspires young filmmakers to go out and make their own sci-fi epics.
Is there any interest in creating a sequel or another film that has a similar visual style?
Steven Kostanski: The pressure is definitely on to make another film, but the plan is to make something that looks a little bit more like a real movie. I’d like to stay away from green screen for a while, or at least keep it to a reasonable level.
Are you already looking at another project to direct? Can you tell our readers about upcoming movies you'll be working on?
Steven Kostanski: I’m working at Mindwarp Productions on the TV series Saving Hope right now, as well as developing a few of my own projects.
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