I vividly remember becoming obsessed with aliens when I was around nine. COMMUNION and FIRE IN THE SKY were my go tos and rented them over and over again. Ever since then, I have had a soft spot for alien abduction films.
Because of this, the PROXIMITY trailer intrigued me. I was lucky enough to watch an advanced copy (review coming this Friday, May 15th). I can't say much but what I can tell you is that I loved it! A character-driven sci-fi adventure that harkened back to the genre films of the '80s and early '90s. Demeusy said this about PROXIMITY's themes of growth and discovery, "It becomes the bigger existential questions in life, and that's what was exciting about this story about sci-fi. Its that it allows you to dive into that stuff."
Eric Demeusy first popped on my radar when we wrote and directed the fantastic STAR WARS short THE NEW REPUBLIC ANTHOLOGY, which felt like more of a STAR WARS film than half of the cannon. Passionate about science fiction (as most of his short films are in the genre), I have been waiting to see what he would do with a feature-length film. The wait is finally over as PROXIMITY (WATCH IT HERE) launches on VOD everywhere Friday, May 15th. Arrow In The Head was able to talk with Eric about his new film, his love for sci-fi, and being an accomplished effects artist. Check out our full interview below!
PROXIMITY felt like a throwback sci-fi film compared to what we are used to today. Can you talk about your influences?
“I mean, there are a lot of inputs. Literally, every movie that I’ve seen and that I love influenced it in some way. There're aspects of, you know, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, but also Donnie Darko, The Matrix, Star Wars, THX-1138. So many different movies and different parts I think influenced it. I don’t think you can really help it as a filmmaker, you know, watching all these movies that you love, it sort of becomes a part of you. It starts to kind of creep into your own work.”
I felt PROXIMITY differed from most other alien abduction types of films because of its positive message. What about this type of story direction interested you?
“That was something I was talking about with Jason Mitcheltree. We both sat down and came up with ideas for the story, and one of the things I was talking about was other alien movies, and getting to the point of why the aliens come and why they’re here. It seemed like a lot of alien movies were kind of doom and gloom. The aliens were here to take over or it was some kind of attack. It was always like the aliens were portrayed as villainous characters. So we wanted to kind of just put that on its head. We think of extraterrestrials or intelligent life as this thing that’s way above the human race. We’ve all seen stories where the aliens come and tell us some piece of information that we need to know, and we thought that it was a really interesting idea that they come because they’ve achieved all that we aspire toward as far as technological advancements, medicine, and science, but that they were actually searching for something that humans had and they had a question for us. We thought that was just a really interesting concept to deal with.”
Your background is in animation and effects, but Proximity was less effects-driven and more about the characters. Was this a deliberate choice?
“So there are definitely like ideas for visuals that that that occur early on, but it was me up against the wall with another project I was developing that we didn’t have the resources to go out and make. So I was looking for something that was that we could just go out and shoot. Something that was smaller and more contained and didn’t have a lot of visual effects. Something that was more character-focused and the idea of somebody falling into a rabbit hole of obsession was a really interesting idea. Being able to set that in a world where you say UFO conspiracies and all that is real, and this character came in contact with extraterrestrials, kind of gave us the ability to make it character-focused, but also set it in a supernatural kind of backdrop. By doing that allowed these really cool ideas for different visuals that we could do. So the approach was to try to make something more contained and grounded and to try to see how far we could get with some of these bigger sci-fi themes and ideas mixed in with that.”
One of the things I loved most was the retro robot henchmen and your execution of them. Where did the idea come from and can you give more information on their background in the Government agency?
“When we realized that one of the obstacles for the main character was going to be was this unknown organization that would take him into questioning because they’re testing for psychokinetic abilities. That kind of gave us the opportunity to push the science fiction a little bit, and we thought it would be really cool and interesting if the agency had developed the technology enough to have these A.I. robots or androids that they would use for questioning. Because if they’re dealing with people that have mind control, it would make sense to have a robot to take these people in rather than a person because they couldn’t be manipulated. And so that was the idea of having those characters in there. When it came to designing them and what they would look like, we didn’t have the budget to do a full CGI robot. So I started thinking about how we would achieve this effect. I started thinking about what these figures represented, and I always thought about them like police officers. When it came to concepting and designing it, I was referencing a lot of CAPTAIN EO, actually. To me, it’s a mixture of CAPTAIN EO and C3PO.”
Is there something as an effects artist you are proud of from PROXIMITY that may go unnoticed?
“I think a lot of it is usually invisible visual effects that hopefully people don’t recognize. For instance, when the androids are on the motorcycles they can’t wear those helmets because you can’t see out of them. So, you know, we have stunt riders on the motorcycles, with normal helmets on, and then we have to add in 3D helmets. For the parts when their driving in Costa Rica, we replace the entire environment to look like Costa Rica because there’s a lot of stuff where we didn’t have a lot of resources for.”
PROXIMITY came from your short film VIDEO. Are there any of the shorts or yours that you’d like to turn into a feature-length film?
“I have a feature film idea for 3113, which I’m working on the outline for. The feature would be kind of far away from the short film. The short was a little more experimental and visually metaphorical, and the feature film would be more of like a kid’s family-friendly adventure film. That’s probably the one out of the few that I have done that I would want to turn into a feature.”
You were responsible for the well-received STAR WARS: THE NEW REPUBLIC ANTHOLOGY short. Did Lucasfilm/Disney ever reach out to get you involved in a STAR WARS project?
“When I put that out, I got a lot of meetings, and I was talking to a lot of people because of it, but The problem is that it’s a Lucasfilm property, a Disney property. There were people alongside me that wanted to help get that into a longer form, Like a 20 minute short or something. I reached out to Lucasfilm and Disney, just to see if we could do something through Kickstarter to do a fan film, and it’s it was something that was not going to work out.”
Is it safe to say there won’t be a continuation?
"Probably not. I mean, I do have an outline for that If there was any interest in a Boba Fett movie still, but you now have THE MANDALORIAN which is filling the needs for some people, but I would still love to see it."
PROXIMITY launches on VOD
Friday, May 15th and you can watch it
HERE.