Radio Silence Justin Martinez has an "interview" on Reddit

A while ago Justin Martinez posted on Reddit /horror about his movie Devil’s due. With his permission we are bringing you the shorter version of the conversation with the readers.


I'm on reddit a lot, so if you have a question after today, I'll still answer it at some point.

You've got a great cast (good to see Zach Gilford working again in something not cringe inducing), and I, too, loved your segment of V/H/S. My concern, as with all modern horror, is that all the good parts are in the trailer and the other 88 minutes will be like a Woody Allen movie without the comedy

I'm right there with you man. I hate when trailers show all the good s*t. So far, this trailer hasn't shown too much and luckily has not shown the best shot of the movie. Not sure how long that will last since there are more trailers to come. Steal it. Haha.

Did you switch narrative devices for this film (found footage to traditional storytelling)?.

We don't stray from the found footage story telling style in this movie. We do find clever ways to make it work though, or at least we think they're clever. I'm personally not a fan of switching narrative devices during the film. To me, it feels like starting off as a comedy and then switching to a horror movie. But that's just me.

Another question, what was the production budget for "Devil's Due" (no post costs included)?

I can't give you exact numbers, but I can tell you it's less than 10 mil. Which by studio standards is dirt cheap. For us, it was almost too much. We made our segment of VHS for less than 20 thousand.

Now let me ask this, and this mat be a silly question, but this trailer isn't like a Paranormal Activity trailer is it? Where most of the cool stuff we see in the trailer isn't in the actual movie. I ask because there were a lot of cool looking scenes in this trailer.

Every visually cool thing you see in this trailer is actually in the movie. Since this is a work in progress, some of the cool things you see will be better by the time it hits theaters. I'm working on that right now. Does Paranormal really do that? Sounds f*d up?

Yeah, they made "fake" trailers. The point was to surprise people in the theaters, I understand what they were trying but still a bit misleading.

So how is this different from The Last Exorcism? Just curious cause it seems very similar.

Damn. I haven't seen The Last Exorcism yet. However, I can tell you that this is not a movie about exorcism. It's a movie about a young couple and how their lives are ruined by the DEVIL!

You're a poet and you just don't know it!

How'd working with a major studio effect the team dynamic? Was it tougher to designate roles?

Surprisingly, the studio was very supportive of our working dynamic. We basically made this movie just like our short films. The difference was that we had a bigger crew to work with. We all have our specialties and it transferred to the studio experience. The s**iest thing has been the credit situation. Matt and Tyler are credited as the directors of the movie because the DGA doesn't allow 4 directors. Too bad, directed by Radio Silence would have looked pretty bada*s on the big screen. Not that anyone even cares about the director in these kind of movies anyway.

Is the entire movie found footage, or do you break it up with more traditional camera work?

It's found footage style, but we're not trying to make people believe it's real. We actually want to call our version of found footage, Point Of View movies. Basically the idea that the movie is told through cameras that exist in the real world.

They may market this like a paranormal activity movie, but we did everything in our power to make it something unique. Not easy to do with found footage horror because people will always compare it to Paranormal or Blair Witch. I think the movie plays closer to the found footage style in Chronicle, with the added bonus of really good actors.

I have seen several movies in the past few years that are really well written until the end. Then it seems they loose motivation or something towards the end and so they decide to poop on the pages. How is this movie any different?

I fully agree. The Paranormal Activity movies are the worst when it comes to bad endings. I feel pretty good about our ending, but I'd love to know what you think after you watch.

what goes into the planning of the in-camera effects shots? I'm thinking both of stuff I saw in VHS and also in this trailer. Did a lot of it have to be orchestrated on set, or is it pretty easy to handle that stuff with CG later?

As for the planning of in-camera effects shots, we didn't do very many in VHS. Most of the FX were CG that I did. The train at the end was an in-camera effect. We found some abandon rail road tracks, rigged a 2K light on top of a truck and powered it with a generator in the back. Then we just had the truck drive right up to the car. In Devils Due, we tried to do as much stuff in-camera as possible. The shot of her breaking the windows was planned weeks in advance. We knew we didn't want to do it as VFX, so we had to work with our Special FX department to rig explosives on the windows that would shatter them as she hit. There was a lot of timing that went into that shot, and it made it even harder because we were doing it found footage so we didn't have the luxury of cutting to another angle. There's stuff in the trailer that wasn't planned on set, nor was it ever in the script. When we got to the editing stage, I decided that I wanted to make the symbol glow bright. Same thing with the shot of the door flying at the camera. Wasn't planned, I just decided that I wanted the door to blast off it's hinges so I made a 3D door and put it in the shot. However, this is not something we like to do. I'd much rather write a script that needs a door blown off and find a way to do it for real on set. It always looks cooler.

So who made the trailer? I'll be honest I wasn't the biggest fan, but I've also come to realise that even an amazing trailer (cough Prometheus) isn't indicative of the outcome of the final product.

There are companies who specialize in trailers. Studios have a few different companies make one and they pick the best trailer.

Hey loved V/H/S the way I came about watching it made it that much better. I was wondering since that this is a found footage film is it only from the husbands camera or does it show survalence footage as well?

Hey Thanks. We like to call this style of movie making, a Point Of View movie, not abbreviated POV because I associate that with porn and that would be weird. If the camera exists in the real world, then we use it. Husbands cam, iphones, etc. I won't spoil it, but we get creative with our cameras in this movie.

Can i ask you what you thought of The Conjuring, from kind of an insider perspective?

Devils Due might be the first found footage movie in a while that makes you care about the characters in a real way. We were less interested in the horror gimmicks you normally get in these movies and tried our hardest to do things that you haven't seen before. About The Conjuring, I still wanna see it! I haven't been able to watch much lately, except Gravity. That movie is insanely awesome.

So can you share with us how you managed to avoid the trap of looking like Rosemary's Baby and Blair Witch and the other similar films?

I think we stayed clear of Rosemary's Baby because the two movies are only the same in the fact that they're about a woman who is pregnant with evil. As for Blair Witch and others, we approached this project as a Point of View movie, not a found footage movie. With that model, we weren't concerned with tricking an audience into believe that it's found footage, which allowed us to put some really great actors into the rolls and include big movie ideas in our story. It's more like a horror version of Chronicle than Paranormal Activity and Blair Witch.