EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH FILMMAKER CHRIS SCHWARTZ ~ SHATTER

Thank you Chris for taking the time to do this interview with NVRI. Kindly introduce yourself to our audience.

Absolutely. Thanks for the opportunity to share. I guess you could say I’ve been digging a hole in independent filmmaking for over 20 years and specializing in psychological horror films made on shoestring budgets. I love to explore the fringes of what people are expecting with one toe dipped in the realm of surrealism. If anyone out there has followed the work I’ve done through Red Glass Films, you’d see that one of my core traits is taking your standard genre film and trying to twist it into a story you don’t quite expect. Since I started filmmaking, I’ve been on a journey of self-discovery through 5 feature films, and well near 50 short films.

2. Tell us about your most recent project Shatter, what is the premise of the film and what do you hope that the audience learns?

I would say it’s a psychological crime mystery that takes the viewer through the parallel journey into one man’s sanity and another man's insanity as they each struggle to find the key to unlock their own truths. The movie, at its core, circles around a crime mystery, but I also wanted to find a way to twist all the subgenres into an ending that could tie everything together, but still leave an element of the unknown. During the first draft of the script, I was attempting to stitch a whole bunch of little episodes into a nonlinear storyline that in the end, would be a very surreal trip into madness (or out of it). I was thinking it would almost be like a madman’s dream. However, I think that once I laid out all the pieces, we noticed that a lot of them fit together in a way that loosely worked as a continuous storyline, and we felt that this storyline change would add more cohesion. Overall, I hope the audience learns the truth, but there’s really only 1 or 2 lines in the film that allude to what really happened, so you would probably have to watch it a few times to figure out how everything fits together.

3. How did you come up with the idea for your film Shatter?

A lot of the inspiration stemmed from those old gumshoe detective films I used to watch as a kid, and it wasn't’t a genre I’d really had the opportunity to work with yet. I thought if I could turn a stereotypical crime mystery into some kind of psychological thriller with elements of horror, drama, and comedy, it might unfold as an interesting film to watch. If you see SHATTER and also have a fascination with directors like David Lynch, Darren Aronofsky and David Cronenberg, you will probably be able to tell that these directors and their films had a heavy influence on our film’s style. We even included a number of Easter eggs related to David Lynch in various parts of the film. You should see if you can find them all! I’ve also been a longtime fan of twist-endings and take a lot of inspiration from M. Night Shyamalan here, whose films in my opinion really broke the mold for psychological horror, which is my favorite horror sub-genre.

4. You cast a great group of talented actors, how was it working with them?

Yes, I found them all trapped inside of a magic teapot I bought inside a strange store filled with ancient Chinese medicine books and artifacts….oh sorry, that was a different group of actors. Well, for SHATTER, most of the key cast were actors that I had previously worked with in the past, so much of the film was written specifically around characters that I thought they could play well. This was mainly due to the fact that we try to script everything based on locations and actors that are available. Often, it’s like when you judge a book by its cover. I meet an actor and I think, that person looks like a stereotypical cop, and then I can make a whole story about who they are in my head, just from watching them work. What was great though was that I had already worked with most of the cast, so I knew what to expect. However, I did meet some new people through referrals, and we just had such a great community of actors in our circle that everyone was pretty phenomenal to work with.

5. What was your drive behind making films?

Oh here we go, 'Therapy mode' engaged.…. It all stems from my childhood. When I was about 10 years old, my dad had purchased a home video camera and he let me use it one day. Some workers were doing construction in my neighborhood at the time, which required underground blasting, and I remember taking the camera out to film it. It was my first shot, and I caught the giant eruption of dirt from the dynamite blast on film. When I got home, everyone sat around the TV and watched what I had filmed that day in person. When the emotion from what I experienced live transferred to the people who watched what I recorded, I was hooked. At that point, I wanted to show people all the crazy ideas I saw in my head, since I have always had a propensity for creating stories. I wanted to see if other people would “feel” the same emotions I felt when I first saw a new idea in my mind.

6. Who inspired you the most in the film industry and why?

I would probably say David Lynch – mostly because I am in love with anything surreal. I just find that watching his work really engages my brain on a level that most films just can’t reach. Part of it is the randomness, but part of it is the puzzle of “what’s it mean”? Somehow those two things seem to vibrate my brain cells and result in an amazing experience. To most people it’s just nonsense and noise like heavy metal music, but the weirder the better for me. It’s like those oddly satisfying videos, but with more content and depth. His work is a legacy that I wish I had the talent to expand on by creating more crazy films, because I can just never get enough.

7. If you could put one major celebrity in one of your films, who would it be and what would the film be about?

Oh, that’s something I never even thought about because I never really planned to make it that far. Haha. Honestly, I would love to work with Patrick Fischler. There’s just something about his characters and presence that seems to fit well into this bizarre surreality that I have going on in my head. I can't say for certain though what it would be about, but it would definitely be weird. Since we’re always working on a budget, usually we have to write the script around what is available to us, rather than to write purely spec scripts.

8. What are some of the things you enjoy doing when you are not film-making?

I tend to dabble in anything I can use as a creative outlet, painting, drawing, sculpting, photography, playing guitar, 3D modeling, vfx, short stories, script-writing. I think it’s always great to explore different media and creative outlets, because many tend to also support my film efforts as well.

9. What is next for Chris, do you have any projects in development?

Lately, I’ve been toying with going back to my roots, but with a much different goal. I really got into filmmaking just to share stories and to have fun doing it. So I’m thinking about setting up a film workshop to make short films with people looking to get into filmmaking.