Signe Olynyk: Interview With the Writer/Producer of "Below Zero"

Signe Olynyk & Bob Schultz at the Austin International Film Festival


As promised, here is the interview with Signe Olynyk! A couple days ago we brought you a bonus DotM episode that contained an interview with Olynyk and her business partner Bob Schultz. Yesterday we had an in depth interview with Schutlz that dove into a little more detail than we were able to get into on the podcast. Today, is Signe's turn!

Olynyk is the writer and producer of the new horror film, Below Zero, starring Edward Furlong and Michael Berryman. The film can be seen at the Phoenix Film Festival at the end of this month. For more information and to purchase tickets please visit the official Phoenix Film Festival website.

Enjoy the interview!

Christopher Coffel: What do you hope people take away from Below Zero?

Signe Olynyk: As writer, I wanted to write what I hoped would be a ‘smart’ twisty thriller, and I think we’ve achieved that.  Something that people would watch and enjoy, but maybe have to see again to look for things they didn’t catch the first time.  Like Bob, I love a great horror movie, but my tastes tend to run a bit more mainstream.  I love anything Stephen King – ‘Misery’, ‘The Shining’…  I loved ‘Fargo’.  But to me, it’s not about the body count or extreme gore, or seeing how many ways I can disgust or torture people.  As a writer and as an audience member, I love scary movies.  But I prefer suspense to gore.  And I like little moments where I can catch my breath as a viewer and laugh for a brief moment, and then jump right back into the fear of the moment.  I tried to weave these moments into the script, and ensure that the story is always motivated by character, and not a story dictating what my character should do.  I think it’s always more interesting when the story comes out of character, and not the other way around.

CC: What has the experience been like, not only from working on the film, but taking it around to various film festivals?

SO: We have been busy attending festivals – all around the world.  Next month, we’ll be in Hong Kong, Australia, Scotland, New York and Boston – all within three weeks.  It is exhausting, but awesome.  I do some of my best writing from airport waiting areas and on long flights.  When you tour like this, you meet people from all over the world, and you find your paths crossing with many of the same filmmakers.  These filmmakers become your allies - you trade war stories with one another, you learn and share lessons with each other, you develop close friendships.  When you make a movie together, you go to war together.  During production, it is often the producer’s job just to keep the troops marching in the same direction.  Film festivals allow you to meet others who are at similar places in their careers, and you end up touring together.

CC: How did you get into producing? Was it something you always wanted to do?

SO: I used to call myself a Writer/Reluctant Producer.  The only reason I produced was to get what I wrote made.  Nobody cares about your script the way you do, and often, you have to be the driving force behind your projects in order to get them made.

CC: Are there any new projects you're currently working on?

Olynyk at the Calgary International Film Festival

SO: Bob [Shultz] and I run the Great American PitchFest & Screenwriting Conference, which is the largest screenwriting event in Los Angeles with more than 2,000 writers attending each year.  We also work closely with other writers to develop their scripts, and have developed a slate of films that can be produced for around $1M.  Between raising money, running the conference, touring with ‘Below Zero’, and producing our other projects, the days are pretty long.  We would sleep on planes, but then that would cut into precious writing time.  Writing is what keeps us both sane, and connected to what’s real and important.

We have a slate of films we were developing.  The PitchFest has really helped us to meet a lot of other great writers who are just looking for someone to give them a chance.  Fortunately, we’ve been able to work with many of these writers to develop their scripts and add them to our slate of projects.  Bob and I also have some personal projects we are writing between racing to festivals, running the GAPF, and everything else.  Watch for us at an airport near you.

CC: How did the idea for Below Zero come about?

SO: Someone once told me I was always trying to ‘make Ben Hur in five minutes’, and that’s probably fairly accurate description of me.  For this film, I wanted to write a low budget concept that I could produce myself.  It had to be a script we could shoot for around $1M, we had to be able to attach recognizable talent, and it had to be a thriller or horror so that we could try and maximize international sales.  So I started to look at the elements in my own life that I could find and use in the film, and how I could incorporate those into a script.  I felt like a chef in the pantry, gathering random ingredients.  Often the best stories are the simplest, yet they can also be very difficult to write.  How do you make a 90 minute story about a guy locked in a freezer compelling?  How do you keep the story moving, and keep an audience on the edge of their seat with such limited characters, limited locations, etc.  Well, you learn how others did it, and study what worked and what didn’t.  ‘Open Water’, ‘Buried’, ‘The Disappearance of Alice Creed’, ‘Misery’, ‘Saw’.  And you try to find new ways of exploring the ‘man in a box’ idea, which is not an easy process.  The result for me, was an extreme case of writer’s block.  It didn’t matter how much I outlined or studied other films.  I even tried physically strapping myself to the chair in order to stop fleeing the keyboard.  The only way I could overcome my own writer’s block was to arrange to have myself locked in a meat freezer.  I spent five days in there, writing the script.  I am a big believer in research, and wanted to fully relate to what my character would be experiencing.  We shot the film on-location, in the very same freezer where I wrote the script.  The authenticity of that experience was very important to me, and the film really captures that.  Bob wants my next script to be about some guy trapped in Club Med.  Or the Playboy Mansion. He’s already volunteered to help research.

CC: How closely did you work with director Justin Thomas Ostensen?

SO: Justin is a very talented DP (Director of Photography) and together with our cinematographer, Norm Li, developed a very stylized look for the film.  It was an extremely difficult shoot with a small crew who had never worked together before, a very limited budget to work within, and we only had 18 days to shoot the entire film.  Eddie Furlong, who plays Jack the Hack, our lead character, is on 101 pages of a 104 page script yet we only had twelve days with him.  It is a small miracle what was accomplished with this film, especially under such difficult circumstances.  Many people have asked me if the film is what I imagined in my mind, and the truth is, no.  It does not.  But that’s a good thing.  Making a movie is such a collaborative experience, and everyone involved brings their own interpretation – especially for a script like ‘Below Zero’ where there are two worlds at play.  Justin developed a color palette for both worlds, and then our amazingly talented Production Designer (Michael David Carr) created the looks that you see.  While the world of Jack the Hack is filled with stainless steel and was created to look very sterile, the world of our movie story is very rusty, and the walls look like the inside of a rotting beast.  Lots of decay.  Which, unfortunately – isn’t far from the truth.  We had such a limited budget that we couldn’t afford to paint the set.  So our Production Designer borrowed from our craft services table, and ended up layering the walls with a combination of mustard, instant coffee, and liquid Tide.  The set smelled like rotting food a lot of the time, which wasn’t great.  But it really contributed to achieving the look of the overall film.  Without pain, there is no art.  I’d like a little less pain on the next one though.

CC: How did you get into writing? Any plans to move behind the camera and direct?

SO: I think in any field, it is important to recognize your strengths, improve where you are weak, and master your craft to the very best of your abilities.  The best leaders surround themselves with great people who make them look good.  Bob and I are an excellent team, and we work hard to find others who are a good fit on that team.  We are not always successful, but it is also a process.  Whether I direct one day or not, I am the filmmaker behind my scripts, and will continue to be, as long as I am the one driving them forward.