An upcoming-name in the scene, writer/director Damien LeVeck has moved up through the ranks from music videos and shorts to the feature-length realm with his latest effort The Cleansing Hour. Now, in honor of the film's upcoming release on the streaming service Shudder, I talk to him about his early career, the making of the film and other upcoming projects.
Me: Hello and thank you for taking the time to do this. First off, where did you get the urge to go into directing?
Damien LeVeck: I don’t know if I can pinpoint it at a particular time or moment exactly but I do know that this is something I wanted to do since I was at least 12 years old. I think it was spawned in great deal by the movies I truly loved growing up—everything from Star Wars to Jurassic Park. Spielberg and Lucas were an enormous influence on me. While I wasn’t entirely certain exactly what directing a film was, I knew for a fact that it was what I wanted to do—I wanted to make that. Wanted to give people that experience of sitting in a theater and being entertained for 90 to 120 minutes through a series of pictures and scenes strung together in a particular fashion.
Me: Were you always into genre films growing up? What films specifically got you into watching horror movies?
DLV: Growing up I was into all movies in general. Somewhere along the line, I got into exorcism movies in particular and genre films that dealt with the supernatural. I have a general interest in that subject matter so I gravitated towards the movies that dealt in that realm. I think that The Exorcist was definitely the most profound influence on me in terms of exorcism movies as a subgenre of horror. It's still the gold standard, as it sets the bar for every other exorcism movie. It was sort of the first on the block and it remains the best. At the same time, there are movies such as Ghostbusters which is incredibly entertaining and dealing in the supernatural from a totally different perspective. So I love that as well. I really got into other movies like The Thing and In the Mouth of Madness and the Halloween movies were we're also a lot of fun. I really enjoyed all of those growing up but it was the exorcism and haunted house movies that I found the most entertaining the most creepy in and fascinating
Me: When you entered the university for your studies, was there any kind of push towards a specific style or format?
DLV: I went to the University of Southern California and I studied critical film studies, which was really more focused on cinema history. It wasn't particularly focused on any particular one style, but rather it focused on all styles quite broadly and understanding the way that the art form in the business developed over the last hundred years. As far as my own efforts to make films during that time were concerned, from very early on I made movies with a supernatural bent or involving preternatural subject matter. As far as style is concerned, school didn't necessarily influence a particular style for me. It was really other filmmakers that did that and that style was again very influenced by Steven Spielberg and also the Coen brothers whom I adore.
Me: With plenty of short films and anthology segments early in your career, what tools and skills do you acquire working on those that transferred to future film projects?
DLV: The Cleansing Hour short film was made as a proof of concept for the feature. I always intended for it to be a feature film and making it as a short film was a great exercise to prepare for the feature film itself. A lot of the same challenges that I faced when I was making the short, I also faced when I was making the feature but I was able I was ready for them. For example, we had five webcast cameras on set that were rolling while simultaneously also managing our main cameras that were capturing our film footage. All of the clocks and audience counters on set were also practical and had to be reset before every take. Figuring out the logistics of all of this during the short helped us have a clear plan for the feature about how much we would really be able to shoot in a day, knowing how long each setup took. Another challenge was just figuring out what sorts of coverage you want to shoot in light of the fact that the movie takes place all in one room. I had to ask myself how can you make a room look interesting and continue to hold the audience’s attention during the entire course of the movie?
Me: Coming from the world of reality TV editing, did that prepare you as well for feature-film work?
DLV: It's funny because if you step back and you say to yourself “I want to be a feature film director,” one of the last things that you might do to prepare for that or to pave a way towards that career is work in reality television editing. But you know, I've been editing for 15 years and I have done all kinds of editing from trailers to narrative feature films to documentaries to reality TV and you know the one thing that editing has in common through all genres is storytelling and honing the skill of the economy of storytelling. Editing unscripted TV has certainly taught me a great deal about not wasting a single moment on screen and about how to keep the story interesting. But it's also helped develop my skills in directing because as an editor, I know what shots that I need coverage wise and what I ultimately need in order to put the scene together. And often as an editor you're usually editing something that somebody else shot, so you find yourself looking for a particular shot that doesn't exist. That has a huge impact because now you have to figure out a way to tell the story in another way. So working as an editor has trained me to edit a movie in my head before I even go out and shoot it. I've got a very clear picture of how it's going to come together. I know what coverage and what angles are going to cut whenever I get into the edit bay. I know how it's all going to work. And I have that almost completely fleshed out before I even step on set.
Me: That brings us to your latest film, "The Cleansing Hour." What can you tell us about the project?
DLV: The Cleansing Hour is a horror film that's about two friends--Max (Ryan Guzman) and Drew (Kyle Gallner)--who run a Webcast where they stage exorcisms that they pass off as real. And one day their actor doesn't show up. So the director of the webcast asks his fiance Lane (Alix Angelis) to stand in for the day. She ends up actually getting possessed and holding the entire crew hostage on the set, giving them until the show clock runs out to get out alive.
And meanwhile, you know the number of viewers starts to grow exponentially. And these guys who don't know anything about demons or exercising demons are stuck there trying to figure out how to get rid of the demon that's possessing this young woman. It started as a short film that I made four years ago and it won a bunch of awards and likewise was a great sales tool for financing the feature film and getting it off the ground. It's produced under my company banner Skubalon and it's distributed by Shudder in the United States, Canada, UK, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia, coming out on October 8th.
Me: Where did the inspiration for the film come from? How was it doing a feature-length version compared to the original short?
DLV: I was heavily inspired by my work in reality TV and the way that people who watch reality TV react to it, thinking that it's all real and that it's not actually fabricated (which it is, though some reality TV is more fabricated than others). I was always fascinated by this idea that people think that it's real. And furthermore, when viewers see a video online of people doing an outrageous thing, especially if that video is of lower quality like a cell phone video or something, all of a sudden that video is given more credence as to its validity because it seems more authentic when the texture quality is lower. And so, I aimed to combine these two ideas of reality TV being fabricated along with a lower quality video. On top of that, I have a deep and fervent love for genre films, specifically exorcism films. The Cleansing Hour grew out of all of those ideas and passions.
The short film was financed almost entirely by a successful Kickstarter campaign and we shot it over four and a half days. We had a big crew. It was a pretty big budget short film and it was all worth it in the end because we ended up with an award-winning short film that we took around the world and used as a sales tool to make the feature film. Once we were ready to go in production on the feature, though, I realized it was an entirely different beast. I wrote a movie that basically starts and ends in the same way, but there was obviously a lot more time to fill in between. So I approached this as a completely separate animal and I didn't want it to look exactly like the short film. There was a lot that I tried to do differently from the short film to differentiate it in terms of the way it was shot, the style we use, the look, and even the actors of course are different.
The other distinction is that from the time I filmed the short through the completion of The Cleansing Hour feature, I had three children and I say this without exaggeration--making the feature film is more difficult than having and raising three children. It is without question the most difficult thing I've ever done in my entire life and I cannot wait to do it again.
We shot the film in 19 days in Romania and there were so many challenges in making this movie because it all boiled down to time. We just didn't have a whole lot of time and a lot of coverage to shoot. We had visual effects, pyrotechnics, stunts, special makeup effects, and gags every day that we needed to accomplish in incredibly compressed timelines. So we would sometimes only do two takes on a setup and then move on and luckily for me, the actors would just nail it every time. Truly, Ryan, Kyle and Alix enabled this movie to get made in the time that it did. And I absolutely can’t wait to work with each of them again.
Me: With a cast of experienced and talented indie actors, how'd you settle on the cast getting involved in the film?
DLV: I had a great casting director Claire Koonce who worked tirelessly on finding the right talent for this film. I was especially excited because Kyle is a veteran horror film actor and is just so extremely talented.
Ryan has been in the business for a very long time and I hadn't seen him in this kind of movie before but I knew that he was a talented actor so I was really excited -- he fit the bill for Max and I was excited to see his range as we put him through all of the torture Max is forced to take on set.
And then for the role of Lane, this was actually quite a challenge because we had over 3000 submissions for the role and multiple auditions. Claire watched a lot of tapes and she would send me the ones that she thought were the best. When I got Alix's audition tape, I was completely floored. It was like a light went off. I was like “yes!” that is the best one out of everyone, hands down. And then all of a sudden I started comparing every other tape to hers, saying “OK, is this as good as Alix’s tape?” Over and over I said “No no, no.” And from there, it was actually a pretty easy decision--so Alix it was, almost like she was in my mind when I originally wrote the lines for the possessed girl.
As you will see when you watch the film, Alix nailed it. She did such a phenomenal job. She knew exactly what to do.
That's the nice thing about working with really strong actors--as a director, they often make your job pretty easy because you know they understand the story. They understand the character so well that it comes to life and they give a third dimension to it. That’s how I felt about the trio of main characters in this film--they brought Max, Drew, and Lane to life in a way that you simply cannot write. It’s what makes acting a veritable art form.
Me: What was the set like while shooting the film? How did the cast and crew react to the type of film being made?
DLV: I'm very grateful to have had such a wonderful crew of capable people working on this movie who allowed us to move quickly. We made all of our days, averaging 6-7 pages per day, but it wasn’t easy because the set had a lot of moving parts. Shooting a movie that takes place in one room required a lot to be planned out ahead of time. There was very little left up to surprise. We kind of knew everything we were going to do going into it, which I think helped the cast stay relaxed. They all have such good heads on their shoulders that none of them appeared stressed out (other than when Alix was put through the rigors of throwing up black bile and the like).
That's another benefit I think to working with these particular actors is that they were very respectful, patient and kind to everybody. Making an indie film is such a team effort. It takes a lot of humility because you are constrained by budget and there are limitations and things that can make you uncomfortable at times. But I think that everybody had such a good attitude going into making this movie and they were also excited about doing it, that it made the whole experience fun, albeit hectic at times.
Me: Do you recall having any odd or funny on-set stories about yourself or any of the other cast/crew members?
DLV: There is a scene in the movie where our possessed girl, Lane, begins to choke and throw up disgusting, tarry black bile. As the camera rolled, we pumped this grotesque mixture out of tube that was inside her cheek and our actress mercilessly gagged and choked, pulling off an incredible performance. We knew we had at most two takes of this scene and I rolled camera as long as possible. I am told later that everyone on set was desperate to hear the words “CUT!” as they watched Alix gag and choke and that my producers almost called it themselves. Although it was pretty brutal, I actually ended up using almost every usable frame of that scene.
Me: Lastly, what else are you working on that you'd like to share with our readers? Thank you again for your time!
DLV: I've got a lot of projects in the works right now but one of them that I am especially stoked for is a contained creature body horror. It’s about an ex-nurse and former addict who, while snowed in during a weeks-long blizzard, keeps her daughter locked behind a cage in her bedroom, shot up with methadone to keep her at a sustained fever because she fears that if she drops above or below the fever, a creature manifests.
So these two kids break into the house looking for shelter and then they learn very quickly that nothing is as it seems in this house. The movie has an ending that is so mind-blowing and twisted that it’s on par with Fight Club or Sixth Sense. And the monster is so grotesque and unique--it’s a humanoid Porcupine that is beautiful, but at the same time, horrific. It's like nothing you've ever seen in the movie before and I plan on making this monster with 100 percent practical effects. I also have a classic haunted house movie that's all set in Ireland against the backdrop of the mountains that weaves in Irish folklore. It's terrifying and beautiful and I'm really excited for that one as well.
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