Interview with the director

How do you got the idea for Blood Red Fear?

Over the years, a few things became painfully clear to me. First and foremost if I ever want to become a director, I have to come up with my own project. No one will be hiring me. But if I do show up with my own thing I must be able to realise it under a very low budget. For my story this meant no big car chases etc. Instead I must write about small things. And second I must be able to shoot it quite quickly. In short: my script had to match these conditions, or otherwise there is no need writing it. I would be wasting my time.
After this background became clear to me, I had to think about it for quite some time. Than finally I got the idea, if I can have only a few roles in the movie, than why not set the story after a big disaster when everyone else is dead? (Laughs) At the same time I also read in a magazine that movie making means showing the world the directors oppsessions. So I started to write down some of my own experiences from high school. Than after playing a little around with both ideas, the disaster and the high school experiences, I knew I had something cool and my chance will come.

How was the shooting?

I think I donīt underestimate at all if I call it my biggest challenge so far! And I had many diffrent jobs before. Since I was in charge for this production, someone said during negotiation: `Failure is never an option.`So I was warned ... .
One of the first things I had to learn is how to communicate with the crew in the most effective way. For shooting this meant the first two days were extra tough. But I can learn very fast and did overcome these problems quickly. Never the less I still got scared every morning. Do I have the right ideas? Will I make the right decisions? But as soon as I arrived at the set I put these feelings away and concentrated on the job. I remembered one very important lesson I learned from my photography works. The end result is always better than what I had imagined before, since a work like this is always a group effort. Thanks to the taiwanese side, I had a very cool crew for Blood Red Fear who helped a lot.

Why Taiwan?

Very simple! Costs and attitude! As I mentioned before I had to shoot it under low budget. But even if I write about small things, I still need a crew. Taiwan was the ideal solution for this problem, since shooting there is much cheaper than in most other countries. Also the island is very pro-business and this helped a lot for an insane project like this. Everyone involved had to be a little crazy. But this shouldnīt mean that everything is easy in Taiwan. The biggest problem for a production there are the very tough weather conditions. This problem is not limited for the taiphoon seasons. To succeed I had to change the script by moving as much indoor as I could, but I must confess this made the movie stronger. Never the less we were incredibly lucky that we got the remaining outdoor scenes.