The six years it took Michael S. Ojeda to make Savaged included raising the money; hooking up with production companies like Raven Banner, Cart Before the Horse Productions and Green Dog Films; and shooting scenes for a trailer to raise the rest of the funding. He edited the film and created most of the visual effects himself to make the film I saw at Screamfest. Hanging around outside the theater on a dark San Fernando Valley night, I spoke with Ojeda about directing Savaged.
CraveOnline: I understand we’re at Screamfest, but do you really see Savaged as more of a horror movie than an action movie?
Michael S. Ojeda: No, I see it as a supernatural action movie but it has a lot of horror elements that are going to appeal to the horror audience and the genre audience.
It is brutal like a horror movie.
Exactly. Surprisingly, when we did a test screening, I was amazed to see how many women loved it and also people who did not normally like horror films loved it.
I hope you take this the right way. I don’t mean that you copied anything else, but it is the female Crow movie I always wanted them to do.
I’m not taking it the wrong way because The Crow was one of my inspirations as well. I love that movie. Remember, I’m not a 25-year-old filmmaker so in the ‘90s, when that came out, that blew me away.
I might know the answer to this, but why did you name the character Zoe?
I don’t have an answer to that. I just liked the name.
Oh, she wasn’t named after the actress from Ms. 45?
No.
It is a good name. So I know when the car flips over her head, that’s CGI. I think what makes it work is that everything around it looks real.
It was.
Is that the secret, that you have a lot of real elements and one shot that’s an effect?
Exactly. Even the barbed wire, we had practical barbed wire on the arms but those are visual effects cuts. The car is a little tricky. That’s the only sequence I didn’t do. I’m not going to take credit for the car flip.
But I give you credit for editing it in a way that makes use of the real footage. I think a mistake a lot of films are making is going all CGI.
I’m old school in that way. I’d rather use as many practical effects as I could. If I could’ve flipped a real car I would have. That would’ve been the way to do it, and then composite her in front of it. Compositing, I don’t see that as CGI. Compositing is compositing. If you flip a real car, slide her in there and rotoscope her out after the car is flipped or before, then you’ve got yourself a shot that really looks real. So we had to go with visual effects for this film but hopefully for the next we can do more practical.
I’m surprised the barbed wire cuts were CGI because they looked like prosthetic makeup.
No, those were visual effects. There were some practical there but the ones that were opening up were visual effects.
Did you have any big ideas you couldn’t pull off in the film?
To be honest with you, the whole showdown was supposed to take place in a house. So in a way, even though it was a low budget film, we looked for houses in the Los Angeles area, old big houses, for the showdown where she kills everybody. Well, we were looking for a house. It was so damn expensive to shoot in L.A. at these movie ranch houses, that I drove an hour north and I saw a gold mine on the side of a hill and I said, “You know what? That would be amazing.” We got it for $700 a day instead of the $3000 a day we would’ve paid for a house in L.A. On top of that, the production value went through the roof because of the mine.
So in a way, I can’t say that I didn’t do anything that I wanted because of the budget. I actually got more by going out there and searching and changing the script a bit. I will say there are flaws in the film because of the budget, scenes that had to be cut that just didn’t work because we didn’t have time. You pick your battles on a film like this. You need to know you’re putting your money into this scene and into that scene, and there are other things you’ve just got to move through. Unfortunately some of those scenes we had to cut.
How many actresses did you see for the role of Zoe?
Don’t ever put down Craigslist. When we shot the scenes to sell this film, I put an ad on Craigslist. She was the first headshot I received.
You found her on Craigslist? Wow, Craigslist works.
Yes, it works.
How will you make sure the next film doesn’t take six years?
I’ve just got to hope and pray that this one will give me enough momentum to get financiers behind the next one.
You did one other feature in 2002 called Lana’s Rain. What kind of movie is that?
It was a drama, a crime drama, about a brother and sister from the Balkans, hiding out in a shipping container. When they arrive they lose all their belongings. The brother pushes his sister to prostitute so she can survive and it’s basically her struggle to break from his grip and she reads children’s books and eventually rises on her own. Another female protagonist story.
I don’t know if Lana’s Rain is available but if I saw it, would I be able to tell it was the same director as Savaged?
Yes. Not as much action but there is some.
Do you want to do another action movie next?
The next one is science-fiction horror action. I like combination of elements. I don’t like just straight horror. Straight horror is good but I want to be moved on many levels. I want to be thrilled, I want my heart to melt and I want to be scared. If I can combine those, that’s a killer combination if you can do that. That’s my hope is to do movies like that.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
