That's right, folks: gone is the dangling disco ball, the poodle perms, Leslie Nielsen, and the plot for bloody revenge.

The reimagining, directed by Prison Break vet Nelson McCormack, and starring Brittany Snow as the cute blonde high schooler whose teacher (Johnathon Schaech) is obsessed with her, is a Prom Night in name only.

Read on, and find out why.

Staci Layne Wilson / Horror.com: Hi…

Nelson McCormick: The first thing that I have to tell you is that I was called to audition for this on the phone. When I had the first phone meeting I was doing an episode of Prison Break in Dallas and I was in a hotel. My wife and my two kids were with me and my wife's cousin was kind of like our nanny on the trip. It was exactly like this suite. This was our room. Our kids slept in both beds and our bags and all that kind of stuff in this room. And in that room over there was where her cousin slept. With Gary's little added touches and stuff here, but this is basically how the rooms were. So I was originally in the film before I even got the job.

Staci Layne Wilson / Horror.com: Prison Break is excellent, by the way. I love that show.

Nelson McCormick: Oh, God. It's so much fun. It's really addictive, and the characters are just wonderful in it.

Q: So in this film's characters, who are your main focuses? The heroine, I guess, and the stalker? I mean, do we get to know him at all?

Nelson McCormick: Yeah we do, you know, it's, I think that the more human that he becomes the more scarier. I was kind of thought that in Seven with Kevin Spacey. So scary. He really only has one scene in that film. When you think about it. That's the police car ride from the station out to the desert and in that scene he really gives you his full mental download on why he's doing all this and there were moments there when you said, "you know what that kind of makes sense", it's a little twisted, but I kind of get what why he's doing that. And I have had that thought sometimes and you can kind of relate to him as a human, so that when you see something in yourself. It kind of makes him more relatable in some strange way.

We thought that with John's character Richard Fenton, the interesting thing about this film is that he is not my shark in Jaws he's not my creature in the Alien, he is driven by a obsession. He doesn't have a bloodlust, he just wants her. He's got… oh God, there's a word for it - it's the same disease that John Hinckley had with Jodie Foster. When you sort of delude yourself into thinking that you have a relationship that doesn't really exist only in your mind doesn't exist. And that has driven himself to rage. What I think is kind of neat is if you ever wanted something so better life that you kind of cross the line in some mental boundary into something that border lined into slightly irrational behavior. You can relate to this guy. It can be like he really wanted that parking spot, or you really wanted that job, we really wanted that it less shirt on the counter that got bought by somebody else. You can sense that feeling. That's what this guy has, times 100.

Q: So, this isn't really a direct remake of the original Prom Night?

Nelson McCormick: Yeah, it only bears resemblance in name only. I saw the original film, with Leslie Nielsen and Jamie Lee Curtis in 1980, and it was somewhat a 'supernatural revenge of the dead' sort of vibe there I was kind of relieved to hear that this was a different take on that idea. Anything about this title in the states as you guys know is that this is such a coming-of-age rite of passage turning point in a team life. There is almost something grammatically correct to this night in the youth of America and our film.

For a lot of people, their prom night is a bittersweet night. It's like the last great night of your high school year. It's like the last chance you could really be a kid, because you're right on the corner you're about to enter the workforce or you're about to go off to college or you're going to go off and join the Army. Who knows what that is going to be, but associated with, this is a lot of unknowns. And attached with that unknown is a lot of fear. We don't know what that world is going to be. This is the last night of living in a safe world where we know what to expect. And a lot of these people are never going to see each other again after this night.

Q: What is it about girls and their proms?

Nelson McCormick: Oh my God, there is this documentary you have to see, you guys it's called the world's greatest prom, and there is this town in Racine, Wisconsin that it's almost like the Academy Awards. It's a huge feature event the arrivals at the prom are covered in live local television and kids show up in all types of vehicles and army trucks, motorcycles with sidecars. This one guy was driving a truck towing a boat and in the boat were all of his friends on arrival to the prom, So the arrival is a big deal, and people are announced as they walk in, and there is a red carpet, and it's like for smaller towns in America is a huge thing. Inviting your date to the prom has its own custom. Normally it starts around February, because the prom is normally around May.

There's books about this, and I did some research on this and there was this one girl who she wanted this guy to ask her to the prom so she created a crime scene around his house with tape and the outline of her victim. And left a note I'm dying to go to the prom with you. There was this one guy wanted this girl to go to prom with him so bad that he had a huge chunks of ice that he put on her desk in homeroom. And she had to chip through the ice and inside was this note saying that now that you have broken the ice when you go to prom with me? So it's a big deal associated with a lot of customs and traditions in smaller towns. I think there is some obsession it's a rite of passage it's a custom it's a tradition.

We only touch on that in one of our characters are. And that's our character named Crissy Lynn for whom this night is everything. For whom this night is the defining turning point for her youth. If she can be crowned prom queen then, she is set for life. She will be the girl that ends up with seven versions of plastic surgery throughout her life, and five kids and husband 30 years older than her who's extremely rich and she will be fine.

Q: Is it challenging to do this as a PG13? Have you seen Disturbia, because they get away with a lot on that…

Nelson McCormick: You know, you're the second person is told me about that. I really want to see that. A friend of mine directed that, DJ Caruso. I was actually glad to hear that this was going to be PG13, because it forced me to think of designing the stairs and kills in a way that you had to imagine the rest and I think that's more elegant filmmaking. As we were thinking about how to tell the stories visually, what came to mind for films like Psycho, Deliverance, Dead Calm, where the violence was real, but you had to sort us you felt it more internally, and it wasn't just sort of visually in your face.

This film rides the rails of a teen horror sort of film. However, it also is a cross genre film with a cop film. There is a killer on the loose and the manhunt for him and stopping him before he kills again kind of thing. So you've got evidence of films like Seven and Silence of the Lambs mixed with the traditional sort of like teens in distress sort of movies. So the approach was that all the kills and this scares with a sense of what is going to leave you wanting to see more or imagining more, and there was times where we shot a scene and we said that this is probably more R than PG13 so we will pull back on the blood, we will be a little less gory or descriptive but oddly enough, what that created was, it's like imagining that we covered. Some of the kills where we were looking straight into John's eyes as he was killing us, as if we were the camera, as if the camera was the victim.

There is a great Michael Powell film called Peeping Tom, where he goes around killing people with the tripod and his camera and the tripod is like a knife. And so the victims are looking straight into the lens is they're getting stabbed to death. So we kind of took that visual language. So we had the victims looking straight into the lens as they are getting stabbed to death and I have to tell you this much more horrific because you're imagining it on a deeper level. It challenging. It's also I think adding something to it a feeling.

Q: Why, in your opinion, is horror still so popular year after year?

Nelson McCormick: I think it has a lot to do with what is going on in the world. I think if you look at the cycles of horror, it parallels the extremeness of violence and hate and just blood that you see every day. I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but after Vietnam there was a huge wave of Friday the 13th, the original Halloweens, the original Nightmare on Elm Streets. I guess that was kind of more or less in the 80s, but it was an aftermath of having experienced all that and you can't escape a day without seeing '14 dead in a car bomb, the school blast kills nine,' in some of the newscasts you see bloody parts. You see blood and guts everywhere, so it's happening in a way that we're aware of it. And we need to compartmentalize it so we can process it and I think somehow these films allow that.

These films give us a place to kind of like okay that's a terrible thing happening. You can sort of associate with that and see it. I think that may be somewhat philosophical, but I think that has something to do with it with the trends. But you know, listen it's always going to be a popular genre for the 14 to 18-year-olds age group, because you're at that point in your life where you want to see how far you can go towards experiencing the worst thing you can imagine, because you kind of feel like you're ready to take on the world. I want to see how bad can it get to know so there is a little bit of that, I think.

Q: How do the victims die in this movie? Does Fenton have an M.O.?

Nelson McCormick: Well, this is the kind of situation that people are dying due to the unfortunate coincidence of running into Fenton. His goal was not come here and wipe out, you know, rack up a body count. His goal was to wait for the perfect opportunity to seize her and take her with him and do whatever he was about to do. In his deluded mind a state. So I think unfortunately, people like Michael. People like Clare, people like Lisa, wrong place wrong time. Now he has no choice. He is becoming a little bit of a machine in terms of being comfortable with the idea of killing when it is necessary.

And that's why he takes the life of.. but I shouldn't give away secrets, but I guess it doesn't matter if he takes the life of a maid because he realizes well, if I get her passcard. That's the master card that's how I can get into that room. You know, if I can disguise myself as a hotel employee. Then that aids my mission so therefore it's logical and make sense, but unfortunately, this guy's idea is that it's not personal. It's just my mission. My mission is the only reason why I exist. So, you know it's justified.

Q: Did you purposely steer away from having any 'big name' actors in this film?

Nelson McCormick: I'm sure there were a couple… we would've loved to have had Jessica Biel. You know these films have to appeal to an actor as much as we are going to want them to be in the movie. We can't just go after somebody for a payday and just have them kind of walk through it. We wanted people to kind of come to it with "this could be really cool this could be a lot of fun", and we want them to be as passionate about it as we were, because it's for me it's my first feature film so it's all or nothing. There's no going back, so there's this sense that I wanted to people around me that cared about it and wanted it to go the distance as much cited and having said that I can't, you know, I guess when you cast that I get to the point where once you have your cast you can't imagine anyone else.

But those people, because you become associated with them and they seem so right for it. For the role of Donna we always felt that she's the center of goodness. She's innocent, she's youth, she's hope, she is always things that are good about being young and has suffered through this tragedy of losing her family and has gone through a three-year recovery period to where she is just at the point of being able to move on with her life. When she runs into this guy again soul there is a lot of invested sort of sympathy that I think they'll have for her. So it had to be a person like Britney, who comes with such a coming. You've got to get to know her. She's just a really good person. She is possessive of a lot of the elements of this character.

Q: There's also something to be said about the power of casting unknowns. Because it almost seems like the audience is looking at the story unfold. And they're not going, ' it's Jessica Biel being chased by a killer'. It's somebody new, somebody I've never seen before, and I am relating to them a little bit more.

Nelson McCormick: Right. The best thing about Jessica Biel in Texas Chainsaw the level that the cameraman markets and was chasing her rear end. That was another film that we studied for this, because that has a level of horror, I mean, the violence that is kind of real.

Q: It sounds like you're taking Jonathon Schaech through a lot of rage. How are you getting him to those levels? Does he bring a lot of that of himself to the table?

Nelson McCormick: John sees this as a delicious opportunity. He relishes in these moments. Initially that part in the film his name was quote, the killer. That was his part, and I kind of thought, wouldn't it be great if he had a name. First of all, so that we can kind of relate to him as a person. And secondly to get the best actor that we possibly could, can I think it's going to be hard to get that person. When you say hey, come play part of the killer. So we gave the guy a little bit more of a back story and gave them a whole definition of how he got to this part we gave them a name. And then added a scene where he gets to sort of give a confession of the night of his arrest. But it's not a confession to the crime it is a confession of love. It's a confession of his devotion to Donna and how you guys can arrest me all you want, but you can't stop me, because you know, we were meant to be.

You know, I've read the confessions of Ted Bundy and Mark Chapman and Hinckley. And these guys and they are so convinced that what they are doing is grounded in reality. And grounded in almost a mission in a purpose that is so targeted and laser focused. It's kind of fascinating. So John sort of took that and just relished it and he's really committed. He shaved his head. He created a whole look and he is just the nicest guy too. That's the greatest thing about it.

My concern was that I'm going to get this great, great Method actor, who is going to be impossible to deal with, because he's going to be rude to people. And in his own head all day, but he's got the natural tendency to add to be able to turn it off and turn it on. So it's a real pleasure. I'm really blessed with a great cast and crew, but all of my actors are people that are just wonderful to be with really committed to these parts don't have any really maintenance issues. Just from speaking from the job directing aside from the genre. I'm kind of lucky that way with John.

Q: What's John like between takes? Does he try and stay in character?

Nelson McCormick: John is one of the family, he is one of the crew. He hangs out with us and he doesn't have that need to associate like that.

Q: It's your first feature film. You've spent a lot of time working on television, so has this been kind of a different experience for you?

Nelson McCormick: Yeah, it is. The thing about television that you are always sort of struggling with, because you are so governed by time and limitations and how much you can show. You know, there is a network restrictions and what have you and I go home every day with that extra sense of satisfaction. I was able to get that extra shot or get that performance just right.

The biggest sense is that I don't feel like I'm compromising. I don't feel that were giving up some of the goodies that was going to make the film great or was going to make the film special. You deal with that a lot and television you sort of have to draw a compromise line in your head, where I will stop at this line because it's good enough. And it'll work on TV, it'll say what the story needs to say and what the producers wanted to say. I know I probably could have gotten a better and I probably could have gone with more shots. But in the interest of time and storytelling, this will work. So you have to kind of adapt that, which is not the most satisfying artistic way to proceed you with your work, but here we've got time to do it right we've got the people to do it right and it's very rewarding. I can elect to stay in this little group.

Q: What horror movies do you take some of your cues from?

Nelson McCormick: Look at my shelf. I've got them all. I've got them all. I've got Friday the 13th, all the originals and all the films that really inspired me in the genre. Like I said, Dead Calm and Deliverance and also like, The Exorcist. I studied a lot of David Fincher movies because there is a certain commitment to execution. You know when you are watching a Fincher film.

This film felt to me like it had something classic about it. Visual language is normally driven by psychology of the scene. So we are on dollies a lot. We are in sort of classic frames a lot this film is widescreen 2:35. So we use the frame quite a bit then it involves into a steady cam then it involved into handheld then get crazy with shutter rates and shutter angles and frame rates and all that kind of stuff, which is more contemporary language. But there was a real commitment to wanting to respect the genre. I sort of felt that the genre of thrillers and horror films and scares really requires you to understand the architecture of a scare in the steps that lead up to scares the false alarms, awaiting that's what makes the real scares so much more pleasurable. So it like any film that had any of that in it.

Not only the great films, but sometimes the bad ones to, because you learn from those films twice as much, because normally what happens as you guys know in a weakly executed horror film. They didn't take the time to savor the beats leading up to the scare. They rushed it or, they didn't give you the point of view of the victim. So you can feel what they are feeling. You know, stuff like that is what I sort of study. And I always had to turn the sound off, because that is what makes horror films really scary. The creaky sounds and the music the stings it gets to me every time I am a sucker for that stuff. But having come from television, I tell you something that was interesting.

Q: What's going on with what you're shooting today?

Nelson McCormick: You should see, you are going to love this part - we're talking about just this PG13 question. You want to see some multiple stab wounds like about half a dozen or so. It's not like what we did before with the maid, and then we'll dress it in more what we did for specific shots. But then that would dictate where we want the blood splotches the actual bed.

Q: Okay, so no prosthetics whatsoever?

Nelson McCormick: No. Yet with the discovery of the brother in the very beginning, that was one that the ratings board had already said, you know, we don't see any blood on him. We don't see anything on him. So I have to kind of like a safe version and then a little more for the DVD kind of thing. They call it a director's cut, but it's just a studio cut with a few more frames here and there but the thing I was going to say was how Halloween was shot in 20 days. Texas Chainsaw the first remake was like 9 1/2 million. Psycho was made with Hitchcock's TV crew on hiatus up at Universal. So, part and parcel with some great horror films is kind of the working pace and the working level that you're at a television.

I sort of felt coming into this I know how to get to the day in a TV show. So that it's been a benefit me because I can see how these films after he made somewhat thrifty and use a lot of ingenuity in the execution of that. It was kind of fun that way, but again a lot of my favorite filmmakers have been in this genre and started in this genre. So it's, there's something that if you were suspected I think it will serve you, rather than just breeze your way through it. It's very exact in a way it's probably akin to the time that it takes to pull off comedy. That's like scary to me. It's like how to make something funny is almost as hard as a filmmaker as how to make something scary, because it's timing its rhythm is a lot of sort of subjective stuff.

Q: Do you set this up for sequel?

Nelson McCormick: Not really. I'm kind of surprised, I thought one would want to do that for sure. Like in When a Stranger Calls, and there is great opportunity, but as it is now it's pretty definitive. It's a pretty close and thing you know how Hollywood is wholly convinced and he's dream.

Q: You could show it to a test audience and all of a sudden they'll say well, can you change the cut of the ending just a little bit.

Nelson McCormick: Right, be a little more vague. We thought we saw John Fenton laying there dead. We panned away and came back and 'Poof,' he's gone.

Q: You were talking about sound design and score, so would you talk a little bit about what you're planning for this?

Nelson McCormick: Yeah, at this early phase. You know, we're only three weeks into shooting. We don't have a composer on that normally nowadays doesn't happen until later this film is going to be released until February 1 of next year. I imagine the film is going to start about 10 weeks out. There's a lot of candidates and a lot of people, like the guys that are really great at this are huge in terms of the price tag.

Q: What kind of mood are you hoping for?

Nelson McCormick: I want to be driven internally first. I don't necessarily think that the score as to foreshadow or telegraph what's about to happen, because I think that the suspense is going to be internal. There was a very interesting film I saw I think it was last year or the year before, called high tension, where he use a lot of like tonal almost sounded design. It wasn't so much score, and they did that in Exorcist 2, it was almost like high pitched hums and then they would stop. And sometimes the lack of music is even more suspenseful than the music, because then you have no foundation anymore it's like, uh-oh.

I think of this hotel as where I went to high school in South East Connecticut. There was this place called Mohican Hotel, which was in an old whaling town near New London Connecticut, which is where I am from. And that hotel was old, it was built in the late 1800s and it was creaky, and it had unique moldings and textures and stuff to it. I think of this hotel as the same kind of thing.

This story takes place in a fictitious town in coastal Oregon in kind of a midsized town. So this hotel was probably built roughly in that same era. So when you are in the elevators, the sounds are different. It might be a little older, you might hear some clanking. When you are in these rooms, there is the sounds of an air conditioning system, starting as an engine winds up could be sort of this weird hum and that kind of thing. I intentionally wanted floors that were hard wood and then carpeted. So you could get that thing going like in the shining. When the kid was writing the big wheel and he went over carpet. And then hardwood and then carpeting again. So our girls are walking around in high heels. So you'll go from the elevator click click click soft soft soft click click click. So there will be elements to that. There will be a very specific sound to the door latches. The pass keys. When you insert the key in it so there will be like a thump an there will be like a click thump sound to it and he's like, you might hear it while you're in here, and he's like "is somebody else coming in this room?"

There are several doors that access the hall here, so you don't know where and it's that level of the sound of somebody entering the room across the hall or your hall. Those metal hangers in the closets were chosen intentionally. So that if you did any movement in the closet, you hear the tinging almost like triangles that little sound, and we will probably make that kind of disturbing and kind of weird. It's like that kind of stuff is what we were thinking. And then think of the counterpoint that you're going to have to cut to, in a lot of films once you descend into hell. It gets darker and darker and darker, you know I'm going to have the pageantry of the prom to counterpoint to you're going to go from kids dancing having the time of their life to silence up here. We're saying we're on the third floor. If you heard anything music at all I would be surprised, because it's pretty quiet up here and then you go downstairs and it's like a rave.

I mean that's going to be a spectacle in and of itself. I told all the kids playing Donna and her friends. You guys should look at this like it's a film about the best prom you ever had. You're ignorant of the fact that your lives are going to end tonight you think that this is a film about you guys having a great time at the prom. So we're going to add in elements while we shoot the prom like shout outs and there will be a couple times where Lisa and Ronnie are going to have the floor to themselves to dance. And we created the St. Paul virtual yearbook where people get to. We thought, wouldn't it be great to kind of get the sense of seeing these kids in high school, without having to go through the process of shooting at a high school and going to a location and a film crew there and all that kind of stuff so we sent a still guy out with all of our kids. And we created these sort of vignettey places to shoot them.

Then we are going to edit that together in what were going to call a virtual yearbook. In this montage that's going to be on this big video wall at the prom. And it will be like cut with people being asked questions like, what are you going to miss the most about high school? And you'll see their answers and stuff. So you'll get an experience of more than just this night and stuff like that which will be kind of fun.

Q: But will you have the famous disco ball from the first movie?

Nelson McCormick: I know, isn't that funny? [laughter]

Q: It's so random because I just watched it again last night, and it was like wow, I really don't remember this giant disco number in the center of the film.

Nelson McCormick: And you can see the 35mm camera in the background getting the shot, while a steady cam operator is walking around Jamie Lee Curtis. You see the camera operator and the 35 mag sitting there. And then the head comes rolling out. Not really, we're going a step beyond reality in our execution of the prom. For me, I kept hearing in the documentaries and the books I was reading about high school proms that they kept referring it to their Academy Awards. This is like there big night.

So I kind of said, well, what if it feels like it's an awards night then. So at the moment of the coronation of the prom king and queen. It's like let's see who is going to win best actor. You know, that kind of thing, so what we are going to do is we're going to have this big flatscreen, this big video wall. As one of our chaperones says "okay now it's time and I'd like to announce the nominees". And you're going to see a face up on the screen, like their nominees, and for Crissy this is like her Academy award. So we're going to kind of embrace that idea and the way we're going to, you know, and the platform and staging of it.

Q: What you doing about the music to the prom, then, to make it not seem dated?

Nelson McCormick: We don't have a band playing, it's going to be a DJ. What we're going to attempt is the stuff that sort of contemporary and fun. Now, although I'd looked at a song that was from a proms last year and some of it actually was back a few years some of the songs they play. I mean there after, you know, Baby Got Back songs that get everybody… what they call ass shakers. What gets everybody in the floor and gets people dancing.

And then there is the classic love ballad song that everything slows down and a lot of proms end in couples becoming… I mean dates becoming couples. It's like of that moment, we have a Donna/Bobby scene where they kind of fall deeper in love while they are dancing to a song. So we're going to have those moments to it but what tends to happen in these things is I'll have a lot of great stuff that we will attempt to do. And then it can be replaceable right up to the week before we release the film.

So there may be some new artist or some new hot album that's out. That will say okay, now let's take a song from that and put it in place of here. And then it will feel more contemporary and dramatically in tone with where we are in the film.

Q: How difficult has it been to wrangle thousands of extras? Glenn [Gainor, producer] told us that you guys got thousands! [laughter]

Nelson McCormick: He doesn't suffer from overstating at all does he? I wish we had thousands on any given time will have probably a couple hundred to sort of fill out the room. It's shot in a way so that you're very rarely going to see the wide expanse of the whole place. But even if we did, I don't think that placed a hold much more. Is that the Park Plaza? Downtown, you know where I was going to MacArthur Park, and there was this one big ballroom down there. So I bet I could hold maybe 500 tops. And that would be like a crowded New Year's Eve kind of venue, but a couple hundred is going to do a pretty good job in their given the size of our dance floor in the way. We are going to stage the tables and all that kind of stuff. I think that's going to be fine.

We're also going to bring in a handful of real professional dancers. And so were going to really embrace the fun of the prom and that kind of thing.

Q: Will there be no awkward dancing?

Nelson McCormick: Oh no, we have the gamut of styles of characters you know, attending the prom. As soon as you enter the prom. You kind of go up the stairs and in there is going to be a photographer set up to shoot the picture of all the couples as they come in. In the execution of all those shots, we're going to have one couple that shows up basically dressed in jeans and a tuxedo top, there will be a guy in an Army suit because he just signed up. And that's kind of real. I actually heard that there was this one prom where the guy dressed like the girl in the girl dressed like the guy. There will be somewhat nerdier looking types, we will run the gambit of people and types there are so that will be kind of fun.

Q: Can you tell me a little bit about the police thread through the story as well? Idris Elba plays one of the cops?

Nelson McCormick: Yes. His intention is not to draw alarm and certainly not to let Donna know that he is there because he was the one that arrested this guy three years ago. He was the officer who found the body. This is that type of town where you can go your whole career in law enforcement. The only dead body you would ever see would be a deer on the road or something. This guy saw a triple homicide in one night so that would kind of make him somewhat of a revered detective and kind of a legendary kind of guy.

There is an actor named James Ransone who is going to play the part of detective Nash, who is the junior detective, that works with Idris's character who is named Detective Winn. There is almost a hint of the Morgan Freeman/Brad Pitt relationship. Where Freeman was a guy who had kind of seen it all and knows better than to call this guy a psycho because he's methodical he's exact he's patient. Brad is the type of character who has think he has seen it all. But hasn't he thinks this guy is just a nut bag, a psycho, a malicious bad. You know, and it is learning the process of having to respect this killer and they finally sort of emerge. So there is a little bit of that in this, and it's kind of fun.

Q: When did you move out here and get your crack in the business? Would you mind talking a little bit about that?

Nelson McCormick: Yeah, I can. I came to this business, it's curious. Way before I got into commercials and television, I was a combat cameraman in the Air Force. My father was in the military and I traveled around a bit. I was kind of comfortable with that world, but knew at an early age that I wanted to be in this end of the business. As a kid, when we were stationed overseas, they had these American forces radio and TV stations. Almost like the radio station good morning Vietnam. If you ever saw that film, so it's there to provide programming to the local residents. So I could volunteer at those stations as a kid. I was 11 years old, and I had my own DJ show on a Saturday afternoon. I could run news cameras, and I just got the bug in knowing that the military had this sort of great candy store to play in. I was not only a film major, but I went into ROTC and went into the Air Force and came through the combat camera division, which was essentially documentary filmmaking. I wasn't a pilot, but I flew in aircraft covering exercises covering war covering all sorts of events. When it came to news shooting. I would be in Korea one week, Honduras the next week. You know, just covering events and go to this place cover these exercises. That kind of thing, so that was my initial introduction into filmmaking.

It was basically covering things that are happening for real and getting only one take to do something and having to sort of interview the people. And then figuring out how to put it all together and then I made the move my last assignment was out in California, and I thought this was where it is. So that was the transition for me and at the time for me at the launching pad for features was commercials. It was a place where Michael Fay and pincher and these guys were coming out of and of course Scott brothers came from that too and Adrian Lyne and I sort of felt that that's where you kind of get the chance to focus on attention to detail. That's where you sort of get a chance to create a visual imprint or a style by working commercials, because you spend all day just trying to get one shot just right. You wait for the sunset to be just right. So you get a chance to enjoy that luxury.

I spent about four years at commercials. Just doing nothing but that in the door opened in television before it opened in features. Television was probably an avenue that I wasn't even considering as a viable means towards features. But what had happened from the time I got out of the service was there were all these great shows that were taking TV to new limits. Like the X-Files for instance, that was so cinematic and so rich in stories and mood and I just couldn't wait until the next episode, and it was kind of like you know, that looks like a lot of fun. The other Chris Carter show Millennium also embraced a certain level of darkness and storytelling that appealed to me. So I thought that could be kind of fun. So I threw my connections met the right kind of people who did that kind of stuff and was offered in episode. I started doing TV movies first, they kind of dried up off the landscape. Networks used to always have a TV movie night that's a pretty much gone, but the first of the DP that I'm doing this film with his name is Checo Varesse.

Checo and I did a really fun UPN sci-fi action horror flick called primal force with Ron Perlman and essentially it was Alien meets Jurassic Park. You know, this plane went down on this deserted island and we have to rescue the people who survived and it just so happened that on this island. We experimented with genetically enhanced baboons, and Ron Perlman used to be the hunter who worked on that island and he is the only guy that can get us off. And you know, it was a lot of fun. The funniest thing was like watching these. We had everything from gymnasts to midgets in the suits these baboon suits with enhanced features and stuff and it was kind of in the warm season down there. And we built these hairdryers to blow into their mouths to cool them off in between takes. And if you didn't press the button right. You were actually blowing hot air into the mask.

So anyway, I don't know, I got off the track there but television proved to be a great training ground for this kind of storytelling. You've got eight days to do one hour episode. You've got to really, really focus on preparedness. The advantage to you is that the actors their parts. They know their roles they're very interviewed in the sense of what the story is about what the world, is it that you are creating the art department and the camera department. They all set the visual signature in the style of the show. So what you are kind of called upon to do is to be a session musician. You are called into kind of play their music, but add something that you do that is unique to you. And so it has a little bit of flavor to it.

So I've had a chance to go play in a lot of great television shows. You know, television is like this great casino, where there is great stuff happening on all these different tables. You can go play here for a while or over here and over here. And now I'll, of course there is the influx of a great deal of feature personalities in television so that the line is blurred. It used to be that TV was you know, that is less than. I think the gauge is kind of gone the other way now. I think there is a lot of stuff in TV that is better than some films in some ways. Just in terms of the levels of writing in stories and stuff. I've done a lot of seven minute talk, and I've got to tell you that there are some moments of that than I think I would hold the bar against anything.

Q: But do you feel that you're coming now onto a film that has such a slower pace? Is it hard to rev your actors up to two the scenes now?

Nelson McCormick: Well, I have not treated it as such. I've treated it like I'm going to work the same pace that I've used to working at will to 40 or we'll do 50 set ups a day. We will just really crank through this stuff, because I think energy begets energy. The faster you go, the better your thinking, the better sort of amped up you are.

I don't feel a difference in pace I just feel a difference in the quality of satisfaction in the execution. Because I can go a little bit further, I can get a little bit more.