A small-town police chief pursues a serial killer, helped by a psychic’s visions, while fighting to prove his own innocence and facing his demons both past and present.
Starring Clayne Crawford (The Killing of Two Lovers & Lethal Weapon TV series) Lyndon Smith (National Treasure: Edge of History) Andrew J. West (The Walking Dead) and Adam Hicks (Shifting Gears), this new thriller from director Robert Enriquez is available to buy on DVD and digital in Australia on July 8. Leading up to the film’s release, Nick L’Barrow spoke with director Robert Enriquez about his new serial killer thriller.
Nick: The first thing that stood out to me in Stone Creek Killer was the sound design. Especially how you used sound against the black screen to start feeding information about Karl and his backstory. I’m curious to know how the sound scape of the film evolved from what you envisioned when reading the script to the collaboration with your sound team?
Robert Enriquez: For me, it always starts with my editor. He put some really great temp things in so we could start wrapping our heads around it. It’s always fun to start with that, and then bring in my sound people with those sounds as a guideline. Then they’re always elevating it even more because they get input and have new ideas. Our post clean-up guy, Andrew Williams, killed it with the ADR because we didn’t have a lot of money, so he used a lot of stock material or created stuff on his own. I thought what he did was fantastic, especially with a lot of speciality sounds with the… well, I don’t want to spoil anything… but the flashbacks and things like that. And then again the editor, Robert DeBoucher, really created the tone and mood. Our composer, Karam Salem, also did a fantastic job with tying the different story elements together with different scores, and not using conventional instruments. He was using these weird reed type things. Seed vibrations or something.
Nick: With mention of the flashbacks, I wanted to ask about your process in creating the visual language of the flashbacks and also the psychic visions for the more supernatural elements of the film.
RE: I was trying to explain how I personally see things in dreams. I don’t know that many people usually do that, but Bobby [the film’s editor] and I tried to explain how dreams visually look to us. Then when it came to working that into the film, it was adding or taking away little things to make the audience wonder whether what they’re seeing is a dream or not. It kind of puts you in that world of, “Oh, did I really just see that? Or was that just in someone’s head?”
Nick: How do you narratively pull off the twists and turns in a film like this? Is there a balance you feel you have to maintain of not leading the audience too far down a path that won’t have a payoff, or making sure your reveals feel earned?
RE: For this film, I feel we were very successful with that because the main twist is a big thing to hide, especially with a small cast. You only have so many options – well, four options really. So for me, it was focusing on that slow burn vibe, but at the same time keeping the tension on because that makes the film feel like a live wire that has the potential of shocking you at any time. You as the audience can’t make a concrete decision, because the next thing you know, there’s something else coming at you. I think what also helped us is that we didn’t push red herrings too hard.
Nick: Lyndon Smith’s performance as Meredith, who is the psychic we’re talking about, brings a lot of nuance to the character which makes these supernatural elements feel quite grounded. How did Meredith evolve once Lyndon came on board?
RE: You know, we saw her work and we knew she’d be great. I think she’s very telling in her eyes, or at least she tells us want she wants us to know in her eyes. It was great. We didn’t meet before we started shooting. We just went off of footage and photos, and just taking her word on her resume! But, our lead actor, Clayne [Crawford], was a big fan of hers. He worked with her on Lethal Weapon. So we thought that sounded good to us. I liked what she brought to the table.
I was reminded by something Donald Sutherland once told me. There was a project I was putting together with him years ago, and he said, “You don’t have to direct if you cast the right people. You just spend the time putting the right person in front of the camera, and then take all the credit for it!” And that’s pretty much how I felt with most of the cast. They delivered some top-notch material.
Nick: One of my favourite Clayne Crawford performances is in The Killing of Two Lovers. He brings so much of the nuance he had in that film to Karl in this film. What did you see in Clayne that made him right for the role?
RE: It was similar for me. I wouldn’t have been sold just from his work on Lethal Weapon. It was actually The Killing of Two Lovers that sold me, for sure. That guy is more along the lines of what I was looking for. There is this toughness and this vulnerability that was all there. When we got Clayne, the script was about 100 pages, and we went through the process of trimming it down to 80 pages. And a lot of it was about Karl, and we worked on getting this particular shots where if someone was watching the movie with no audio, they would still know what was going on. That was part of the collaboration process. He knew I would like to hold the camera on on people, and it was fun trying to capture this back and forth of whether he is a killer or not.
Nick: Not only are you directing this film, but you’re a producer and you have a role in it too. You’ve directed and produced other projects before this – do you find that you have to separate those different creative aspects on projects? Does producer Robert ever have to reign in director Robert’s ideas?
RE: I really like the whole process. I haven’t done very large films, so I don’t know how different it would be in that world. But in the smaller world, it’s actually been a huge benefit to be able to make all of those decisions. I’m conscious of getting finances back and making fiscally smart decisions. But I also get to do that creatively. It’s about balancing both of those things while moving forward at a fast pace. You don’t have to go back and fight with a committee. I mean, I’m not usually fighting myself [laughs].
Nick: How do things like smaller budgets and short shooting windows, like you had on this film, affect you creatively? Are there pros and cons to those kinds of restraints?
RE: Creatively, I like that you’re forced to make a decision. For better or worse, a lot of people make decisions by committee, which is okay to do. But I like that for pre-production. I like all of those conversations we have in the lead up to shooting. But once we’re on set, situations change. And because I’ve “watched” the movie a million times in my head, I find I don’t have to dwell on decisions too much. We can just go capture it and move on. I want to get to post. I want to edit. We had 10 days to shoot this, so we had to move fast. You don’t want to overkill your actors or your crew, so if you can make those decisions quickly, it helps everyone.
Thank you so much to Robert for his time, and to Eagle Entertainment and Hold Fast Public Relations for organising the interview. Stone Creek Killer is available to buy on DVD and digital from July 8.
