Reese Eveneshen on making his acclaimed Sci-fi thriller, Defective

Last February, we witnessed the ruthless result of minor wrongdoing with the acclaimed sci-fi, thriller Defective. From writer and director Reese Eveneshen, director of Dead Genesis, and genre specialist Uncork’d Entertainment comes the highly-anticipated Defective, premiered on VOD February 13.

In the near future, the Corporation S.E.A., has implemented North America’s first and only police state. Uniformed, anonymous Preservers of Peace investigate, judge, and sentence people for even the smallest of crimes. The punishment? Instant public execution. Rhett Murphy and his sister Jean must escape certain execution after witnessing the dark secrets of the nefarious corporation.

Colin Paradine, Raven Cousens, and Ashley Armstrong star in a Reese Eveneshen film, available now on VOD from Uncork’d Entertainment.

indieactivity: When did your filmmaking careers kick off?
Reese: I’m still waiting for the kick! I was making movies with friends in high school over fifteen years ago, it still feels like an extension of that. Except… you know, the budgets got a bit bigger, technology got better, the movies got better! I hope. Once I graduated and threw myself into the battlefield of working on actual movies, that’s when this ride really started. I would have to say the first time I got paid to write a screenplay was the time that it stopped being a dream and became an actual job. In a good way!

indieactivity: What was it about movies that had you fixed on building a career around making them?
Reese: I’ve loved movies for as far back as I can remember. There isn’t a time in my life where movies haven’t been some big part of it. As a kid I would lock myself in my room with my toys. I would set a timer for about two hours and act out little nonsense movies for myself. I certainly didn’t have any other friends doing that, I just started doing it because I wanted to. I loved sitting in a theatre with a big audience and watching them react to what was happening on screen, that was the coolest thing in my eyes. That love and that “playing”, it never went away, I was never interested in anything else, it just naturally progressed into a career.

indieactivity: Most cite “Star Wars” as the films that spurred them to a career in film. What film was it for you?
Reese: It’s always been Jaws. It seems to be a popular answer among other filmmakers! But it’s the only movie I can think of that I was actively obsessed with as a kid. I owned the books, every available version of that movie, magazines about Spielberg, etc. And I was young, very young. But the feeling I got from watching that movie was unexplainable. Every single thing about it made me buzz with excitement. I wanted to work in the same industry where movies like that were getting made. Don’t get me wrong though, Star Wars is awesome.

indieactivity: What was the first thing you shot?
Reese: There were some classics from my childhood such as JAWS 5… or ALIEN 4 (pre-Alien Resurrection) all shot on a crap camcorder with my action figures. The first movie I actually shot and finished was an overlong feature when I was 16 called, “A Day in the Life”… I was going through a Teenage-Tarantino phase (pretty sure every filmmaker has that).

It was a crime movie with a non-linear plot, lots of horrible dialogue and moments of over the top violence… Yep. A real winner. But it was exciting! I had never finished a movie before. We would gather big groups of friends together in my best friend’s loft (which had a big screen television) and we would have screenings of it. It didn’t matter that it was horrible and people were laughing at it, everybody had a good time watching it, and that’s what mattered most.

indieactivity: And how do you think you’ve improved as a filmmaker since then?
Reese: Oh my God, hopefully I’ve improved in every aspect since then! In all seriousness, the biggest thing that’s changed outside of all the obvious, is that I’ve learned to work with the people I surround myself with. Back when I was 16 making that first movie, I wanted everybody to do exactly what I said. I was a Director with a capital D for “Dick head”.

I didn’t want to hear any other ideas about scenes, characters, or dialogue. Even though it was just a high school movie with friends, those ideals still matter. I can’t imagine being that way now, you have to collaborate with the people you work with. Everybody is bringing something to the table… everybody. At the end of the day there still needs to be a leader. But the best idea will always win.

indieactivity: Is there a sequence in the latest movie that you’re truly proud of, one you can genuinely step back from and say ‘wow, that looks great’!?
Reese: It’s tough for me with Defective. It hasn’t even been a year since we wrapped fully on it, it’s still fresh. It was a hard shoot with very, very little money. We pulled off some miracles during that production. I look at the cast and crew we had, and how hard they worked, I see that and I feel proud of us as a family unit. I can also feel proud because we actually managed to finish that damn movie. It was a little touch and go there for a bit, especially when we started shooting without the full budget! I am pretty happy with it, but I’m still too close to it.

There are scenes that I like… plenty of scenes I can’t stand, and in between those there are moments in Defective that I say “that looks great”. I’m pretty happy with a little action sequence set in a basement near the end of the movie. That was a slog of a day and I wasn’t sure if any of it would cut together… but it turned out pretty damn swell. I’m also quite happy with how our Suits (The Preservers of Peace) turned out. Those costumes were finished a few hours before the first day of production and we were learning how to work with them every single day of that shoot!

indieactivity: How did you get the cast? All auditions?
Reese: We held a big casting session for a couple weekends in Toronto, Ontario. Pretty much our full cast came from those two weekends. People like Colin Paradine and Raven Cousens were cast because I knew them before and wrote the roles for them. All the other little bit parts were actor friends we had worked with before, or referrals from other actors.

We actually had an actor in a fairly major role who dropped out on us during a break in shooting. That was a big hit to us, especially given our small budget. I recast that role with another actress and rewrote the role from male to female in a matter of a couple days! We were re-writing that character often on the day of shooting the scenes.

indieactivity: Did they have much time to get to know each other before the shoot began?
Reese: Because Colin and Raven were playing siblings, it was important for me that they spent some time together. And they did, they would come over to my house and we would hang out for hours. We did a little bit of rehearsing, but mostly we just went over the different tones and concepts within their scenes. Other then that, most of the cast were all meeting on their first day of shooting.

indieactivity: Where did you shoot the movie? Do you believe the city is as much a star of the movie as the human players?
Reese: We shot all over Southwestern Ontario. We didn’t commit to one city or landscape because we wanted the state/city in the movie to be anonymous. In a few of the downtown sequences in the film we’re often cutting between two to three different cities. We were fortunate enough given the limited budget to be able to do so many location changes. But a lot of that came from the fact that we we’re often shooting close to home and had a bit of an homegrown advantage. But I would say that the three primary cities we shot in were stars of the production as well. We only built a handful of sets on the shoot, the rest were existing locations that we re-dressed and re-purposed for our little sci-fi opus!

indieactivity: What do you hope audiences get from the movie?
Reese: I mostly just want people to have fun, I want the audience to have a good time with it. I’ve read a few reviews here and there that put a lot of emphasis on some of the more political/social commentary aspects of it. Which in this day and age and the current political climate is understandable. And while I won’t deny that some of it is purposely in there, the intention was never to preach. This a movie with people dressed up in Robot like costumes, it’s a sci-fi action movie with plenty of bloodshed. This isn’t rocket science. You sit down with a loved one, a friend, a group of friends, turn off the lights and just enjoy the ride!