WITH DIRECTOR/WRITER WES TARCA:

Q. How did the idea come to you for this film?

A. It was a combination of things; the first idea came to me when I was doing some lighting tests. I had a clamp light on the bathroom door and when I took it off it left a residue. And the stuff wouldn’t come off. I scrubbed it with water, I scrubbed it with soap , finally I got some rubbing alcohol and I was rubbing it real hard and then the idea came to me like what if this was blood and I was trying to get it clean. So I guess that was the first thing…the germ. At the same time I was watching a lot of crime shows like the First 48, The New Detectives, The Wire and I was noticing in the real life people do dumb things. I kept thinking about that, like you know in the movies people are mostly smart and they have plans and shit so I was thinking what if they didn’t have a plan, what if they did something really dumb and made a rash decision? How would that affect them as time goes on? Would they get away with it? Could they live with that? So those two things were basically the genesis of the film. From the start I knew I wanted Julian to be an anybody, have a regular job, nothing special…a nobody. You know like if you saw him in the street you wouldn’t think anything about him. To most people what’s happening in his life means nothing. But to him and others involved it’s a big deal. So I wanted it to be a real, intimate, interior movie about reproductions and guilt.

Q. Tell us a little bit about your writing process.

A. Well when I first got really serious about screenwriting I followed all the books, all the how-to’s. You know, I gotta do my paragraph outline, I gotta do my plot point outline, gotta do my inciting incident outline, you know I gotta follow all these steps or I’ll die and it wont work. But what I found with those earlier scripts is they felt very robotic and stiff to me, they didn’t feel organic. It was almost like a paint by numbers type of thing and it was more about getting these characters to plot point A and plot point B as opposed to the characters creating plot point A (if that’s what you want to call it) by their actions. So I was a little lost at that point but I went back to Stephen King’s On Writing and something he said really hit me. You don’t write stories. You have to think about stories like dinosaur bones and you’re an archeologist. And it’s your job to brush away piece by piece until you find the whole skeleton. You know, so it’s like it’s already there you’re just finding it. And I believe that, I mean you can get into what ever you want to on where it comes from, but I believe the story is there and it’s your job to find it. So what he said is, just do it. It’s scary as hell but just do it, just write that first draft and let it be what it is. It can be shit it can be whatever, just let it flow, let your subconscious take over and just write. And then you set it down for a month or so and pick it back up and say what do I want to keep from this? And you do it again and again until you feel you can’t do it anymore, that’s how I wrote A Certain Darkness. The first draft had scenes all over the place and I didn’t really think about doing the flashbacks or having the stories run side by side, I was just writing scenes. If you go back and read the first draft you probably wouldn’t even recognize it after watching the film. It probably wouldn’t make any sense either. So yeah it’s organic and it’s frightening because you don’t know where it’s going or what’s going to happen but I think that’s the way it should be. I once heard if you don’t know what’s coming in your story the audience never will. Oh yeah and you have to write everyday even if you don’t want to.

Q. The film is shot in a very documentary like style. You see a lot of source lighting, a lot of long takes, and jump cuts. Why did you decided to shoot the film this way?

A. Well, two things, one goes back to Steven King, and another goes back to a Woody Allen film, Crimes and Misdemeanors. So lets do the Stephen King part, what I love most about Stephen King is how he takes real people and he puts them in these absolutely ridiculus situations, but because the characters are so grounded in reality it makes the ridiculus situations seem real, and believable. So I wanted to shoot the film in a way where it seems more like a documentary. If I shoot these characters realistically and have these fantasy elements I could make it seem more believable. And that goes back to Crimes and Misdemeanors, which is a brilliant film on so many levels, when you watch it you feel almost like you’re there, like you’re seeing things you’re not supposed to see, like you become the camera. I was blown away by that. The jump cuts, the long takes, and the lighting, I knew I wanted to shoot A Certain Darkness that way, even before I finished the script. I felt there should be some areas that are dark and the light should just be what is there in the environment, regardless of exposures. Give it a rough edge. Nothing should look fake, in order to make it believable and suck you in, it had to look like it was happening for real and you were observing it. So basically all handheld, source lighting, and long takes.

Q. Did you rehearse the shots?

A. We rehearsed the shots a little bit. But mostly it was just do it and I’ll shoot it. I think it helped the actors too, because it was more like a play, you know, I would set the general markings and then they had free rein. Go where you gotta go and I’ll follow you.  And that’s the way we did it, and I’m pleased with the way it came out.

Q. This being your first feature film, what was the scariest thing about taking on something like this? And how did you deal with it?

A. The writing is pretty damn scary. I mean the writing was probably scarier than anything else. In terms of the film itself, the scariest thing for me honestly was worrying about getting the actors paid, that was scary. But thankfully I had people that knew a little bit about money help me out with that. At the beginning not knowing where I was going to shoot was kind of scary. Was I going to have a school? Could I get kids for the school? Could I shoot in the museum, on the train? All that stuff. But I just took it one location at a time; I said how are we going to get this location? And I asked everyone I knew about that one place and it turned out someone I knew had access or knew someone who had access to everything I needed. It still amazes me how all the locations came together.

Q. What about the shoot?

A. I don’t know I wasn’t really scared there. It was almost like something took over and uh, I don’t even remember doing it to be honest, maybe it’s like war instincts or something all my previous training kicked in. I never looked at it like I’m making this whole film. It was like what do we have to shoot today, and then what do we have to shoot tomorrow. That’s the way I did it. It’s the old cliché one day at a time but I basically made fifteen short films, fifteen ten minute films. I guess that’s how you gotta do it. I had my plan; I had all my shot lists and followed them. It was all about those shot lists. The shot lists were big.

Q. How long did it take to shoot the film? You said fifteen days?

A. Yeah, it was fifteen days. Not conclusively though, I think there was like a ten day connective period but some days were split apart because we had to wait for spring and whatnot. But that was kind of a good thing because it gave me time to edit. Most of the film was edited before it was even done shooting. And that let me to re-shoot things that didn’t work, so that was cool. The days we did shoot were definitely full time though.

Q. Did you work while filming?

A. Well, luckily I had an amazing job and an amazing boss that was one hundred percent behind me with this film. She let me take a month off and not only that but she helped with the film, holding the mic or helped set up the lights, she even put in some money. If I didn’t have that job it would be a lot harder if not impossible to make the film. And I really can’t even say how much I thank and respect her for what she did for me.

Q. What was the total cost of the film?

A. I think I had it listed at seven thousand…seven thousand two hundred or something. And about five thousand of that went to the actors through SAG. And the rest of it went towards the purchase of a new light kit and a nice boom mic. I already had the DVX100 and the Letus35 adapter so I don’t really count that towards the films budget. Tape is so cheap today I think I got one hundred tapes for like two hundred and fifty bucks, which is crazy. I had the computer and all the editing equipment, you know most of the stuff I had. I didn’t have to pay for any locations or build any sets. I did have to pay for some wardrobe, but I got everything at Salvation Army, spent like fifty or one hundred bucks. We didn’t need a lot of props just used what we had. I bought some 150 watt fluorescent bulbs from Home Depot. So seven thousand really isn’t that much, and that’s the biggest benefit that this digital revolution…films are basically free. Say I wanted to make another movie right now…it would only cost me about five six thousand dollars, maybe less, and in terms of film that’s a zero budget.

Q. How would you say the casting process went?

A. Casting Joe was pretty simple. We were already good friends so I gave him the script to read just for his opinion and he was like what are you doing with this? And I didn’t really know. I knew I wanted to make it but I didn’t think I could do it myself. I was thinking I would need a lot money to make it and he said, why do you need that? He broke it down and said how much would it cost you to make this? Really? So I thought about it and did some numbers and realized it wouldn’t take much. He also said he wanted to be Julian. And since we met we always said we would work together but it would have to be the right project. I have enormous respect for Joe as an actor and when he said those things I was like you know what, I need to seriously think about this. I asked some other people and everyone said the same thing just make the movie. You’re twenty five and you might not get another opportunity like this…make the movie. So Joe and I said let’s do it, you’re Julian and we’re going to make this shit. But we still needed the four other roles. Joe was a big help with that too, especially with finding the best places to put out ads. We did Backstage Magazine, Craigslist, NY Castings and a couple others I can’t remember. You know, I put some sides on the website and the response was quite large. We narrowed the field to around one fifty and held an audition. I’m talking casually about it but the whole thing was pretty intense. The craziest thing about it was that Lynn came to the audition and she actually knew Joe for quite sometime but she never said anything to him about wanting the role. Regardless of that she was still head and shoulders above everyone else at that audition and I had to go with her. But that was definitely weird. Torrance and Paula also came out of that and they each brought in something unique to the role and that’s what stood out for me. With Lyman, Joe came through there. He said he had a perfect Rich so we all met up and just by talking to him I said you’re the man. He bought us steaks too which is always a good thing. That whole process took about a month total to finish but was worth it in every way.

Q. What’s next for you?

A. What’s next for me…well, what’s next for me is another movie. And I’m trying to figure out what that’s going to be. I’m going back to that extremely frightening black hole that is the blank page with a few ideas and we'll see what comes out of it. Hopefully this film will afford me an opportunity to make that next film whatever that next film may be.