Video:Donald Faison and Ryan Kavanaugh Skyline Interviews

Transcript:Donald Faison and Ryan Kavanaugh Skyline Interviews

Rebecca Murray from About.com Hollywood Movies at the World Premiere of Rogue Pictures' Skyline.

Donald Faison - 'Terry' in Skyline

So this is a low budget film but the trailers don't look that way. How did they do it?

Donald Faison: "It helps to have one of the number one special effects houses in the land the owners of it being the directors of the movie. We kind of knew, once we got the part, that once we got the movie made it would turn into some type of special effects extravaganza. Did I think we'd be showing here with these wonderful people here and posters up all over? No, I didn't think that."

You have to act and there's nothing there. How do you do that?

Donald Faison: "I've been waiting to do this my whole life. While my friends were playing cowboys and indians, I was playing cowboys and aliens. You know what I mean? I'm a huge sci-fi nut; I love the genre. I think I've seen The Empire Strikes Back over 400 times now. I wanted to be Harrison Ford when I was a kid - a mixture between Harrison Ford and Denzel Washington. So you combine the two, I guess you get me. I don't know. I wish! That would be awesome. Oh my goodness gracious, that would be the best. But anyway, yeah, so I wanted to fly the Millennium Falcon. I wanted to travel into space, and I knew I would never make it as astronaut so I became an actor instead."

What took you so long to be in an alien movie?

Donald Faison: "I don't know. I don't know. This is what I wanted to do. I'm happy to be here."

Back to this whole thing where there's nothing there, you guys have to keep up that adrenaline level. How do you keep pumped the whole time?

Donald Faison: "We're actors so it's something..."

It's still hard.

Donald Faison: "Yeah, hopefully we pull it off. It's something we kind of have to do or you don't hired or paid. You get fired for stuff like that. A lot of hard work - and lamaze class to learn how to breathe properly. I'm telling the whole movie is [heavy breathing]. The whole movie."

And they didn't even give you any green screen. There's nothing there.

Donald Faison: "Nothing is there. A light being held by the cinematographer."

Did you ever feel weird reacting to just a light and you're supposed to be scared of it?

Donald Faison: "Yeah, because that's different, right? We're supposed to be afraid of the dark. No, we're afraid of the light in this one which is odd."

Skyline Executive Producer and CEO of Relativity Media Ryan Kavanaugh

The brothers had a very specific vision and a low budget so how did you help them out?

Ryan Kavanaugh: "Well, so the brothers came to us early on and they had this little teaser they'd put together that was like a 30 second thing of, 'This is the look and feel, but by the way we just shot this look and feel in one day so it's going to be 10 times better.' And what they put together was incredible. I felt like I was watching a clip from the biggest movie you've ever seen. So for us it was about helping give them a little more resource and saying, 'You guys are so passionate about this and you're willing to put yourselves behind it, we can play a little bit of a gamble. Meaning we're going to give you a little more money to make it a little bit bigger, and we're willing to let you kind of spread your creative wings more than we would if it was a $100 million movie.' And what we got was what looks like, in my opinion, can go up against any $100 million movie."

The trailers do not look like this was a small budget film.

Ryan Kavanaugh: "It doesn't look like a small budget film. It has as many effects, I think, as Avatar had - I think more, actually. And we're marketing it - because we're running the marketing on it obviously - like a $100 million movie because I think the people who walk in will not walk out going, 'That was a low budget movie.' I think they'll walk about going, 'That was Independence Day.'"

I don't think anyone would know unless the word got out there in the first place that it's a low budget film.

Ryan Kavanaugh: "Yeah. But what we're trying to also show is there is a way to make movies that feel and look like a $100 million movie that we didn't have to spend $100 million on. If we can change that dynamic in Hollywood, it changes the whole dynamic of our business."

What's happening with Snow White?

Ryan Kavanaugh: "Snow White is going to happen. We're starting production actually very soon. Tarsem [Singh] is obviously directing it. And having seen 30 minutes of Immortals, I believe Tarsem is one of the most brilliant visionaries of our time."

He's unique.

Ryan Kavanaugh: "His esthetic ability is so insane that when we were deciding on Snow White we were like, 'Who can actually create Snow White as an image - which is one of the most iconic images that we grew up with - in a way that actually is better than what we all remember, which is so good?' And it was him."

More on Skyline:

Skyline Photos

Skyline Trailer, Poster, Interviews and Cast List