Catching Up with M. Night

Film & Video Magazine: What’s next?
Night: I’m making notes for my next script, and then after that one I plan to do Life of Pi, based on the novel by Yann Martel, and we’d have to go to India to shoot. I don’t go on many locations outside where I live, so that’d be interesting and a big change.

Film & Video Magazine: What makes you tick as a filmmaker?
It feels like unburdening when I make a movie, so it’s definitely a sense of therapy, working out things that are on my mind. I love to create suspense and a mood that will hopefully linger with the audience long after they leave the theatre.

Film & Video Magazine: All your films are very intricately constructed.
They are, and because I also write them, I’m aware of every single element needing to be in exactly the right place. I remember when we were mixing The Village and adding music and sound effects, I knew something was wrong in this one scene. So I told them to take the whole scene apart, even though everyone insisted nothing had been changed, and it turned out that we’d added a Foley footstep before a line. And that footstep was too strong, which indicates strength, which undermined the line. It had to be more tentative, so in that sense it all has to work like clockwork for me. Basically, when you first see a film, there’s a reaction to the broad strokes, but then slowly over time all the details cause different reactions to emerge, and I heavily invest in that secondary-bloom version of the movie.

Film & Video Magazine: What part of the filmmaking process do you like best?
It changes. On The Village and Sixth Sense I enjoyed the writing the most. On Signs it was the editing, while on Unbreakable the actual shoot was awesome.

Film & Video Magazine: What’s next?
I’m making notes for my next script, and then after that one I plan to do Life of Pi, based on the novel by Yann Martel, and we’d have to go to India to shoot. I don’t go on many locations outside where I live, so that’d be interesting and a big change.

[Film & Video Magazine]