“Into The Storm” cast members Richard Armitage, Sarah Wayne Callies, Matt Walsh, Max Deacon, Nathan Kress, Alycia Debnam Carey, Jeremy Sumpter, Arlen Escarpeta, Jon Reep, Kyle Davis, Steven Quale (Director) had a lot to say about their new weather epic.
Read highlights below:
Steven Quale, Richard Armitage, Sarah Wayne Callies
What haven’t you been able to do with technology?
Steven: Well ironically, we have come to the point where you can do anything. And it’s a matter of creativity as the limiting factor. And I think one of the reasons why people are responding so positively to the film is that we scaled back; we could have made storms five times bigger than what they are but it wouldn’t have been believable. By making it believable and feel like it’s really happening and having it focus through the character’s point of view, not spectacle point of view, then it becomes emotional and they’re seeing tornadoes, they’re feeling it, they’re reacting to it, they have their personal problems and struggles and I think that’s the key otherwise it just becomes spectacle and you lose sight of the big picture.
Richard: It’s a scary process because there really does seem to be no limit to possibilities you could create. The thing that I often cling onto is the mistakes that make the moment genius in the film.
On transitioning away from the film:
Sarah: My transitions are pretty quick. I go from living in a hotel and working on a movie set to meal planning seven days a week and going to the grocery store with my two kids and running the household. I just got back from doing a movie in India and we were in this five star hotel and I hadn’t done a lick of laundry and hadn’t made a single meal and within 24 hours, I’m at the grocery store with my kids making pizza from scratch. I find the transition as hard and abrupt and fast as possible because it is a weird world. It is a beautiful world. We create these intense relationships with people, especially when you’re on location with someone.
Richard: I found a towel and a heater was quite a good way to shake off the day’s work being cold and wet. Because seeing a hot towel coming towards you at the end of a tape was like God arrived on set.
How was it physically challenging to do the scenes?
Steven: It would probably have to be the wind machines that were physically challenging. It was huge amount of practical stunts and I think that’s one of the things that people are responding to when they see the film is that we did 50/50. Steve was really intercepting as many practical stunts as possible, even to the point of filming it and then rejecting it and going through it for digital options. Most of the things you see that are close to us are all real.
Well there’s a scene where this red pick up truck smashes down from the tornado and basically we tell Richard, “Okay, you run this way, you stop here, if you go any further, you will die.”
Richard: It was one take, and it was the end of the day. I remember seeing it on playback and it was such a good feeling because it just looked good. It was sharp, it was in focus, had we not got that it would’ve been digital.
Sarah: It takes a gift to do those practical stunts because I can’t think of anything more undignified than trying to act like you’re in a tornado. I mean you would just look ridiculous and so I think in the moment it’s not the most comfortable thing you’ve ever done but to have all of those practical effects – I think your background was really helpful because it gave you a sense of the limitations of actors in special effects. So we got this very visceral practical sense and so everyone’s responding in this unified cast. We are all as wet and cold as we can possibly be. There’s no one who’s imagining.
Max Deacon Nathan, Kress Alycia, Debnam Carey
Do you think you have a different profound outlook on life after the film personally?
Alycia: Well, we definitely have more of a understanding of tornadoes especially in the Midwest and how it does affect those places and the destruction and damage they cause, that’s for sure. Our research for the movie was to look up Youtube videos, it was eye-opening, you know, to see how communities have to go through this stuff. It’s real, I mean this is obviously an exaggerated, very fantastical kind of version, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility.
Max: It’s the most destructive force that that area has hit so it’s enticing because it’s such a visual spectacle but it’s terrifying. It’s a monster that can’t be defeated, you never know where it’s coming from, you might know that it’s coming at some point but you don’t exactly know when and there’s no defeating of it, you just kind of have to survive.
Alycia: We have people who ask if we have inspirations now to become storm chasers and were like no.
How hard is it to prepare for the movie?
Alycia: I think it actually helped us to be honest. It meant that there was less that we had to do, actually, because you just react to it.
Nathan: You accept the elements. You let those elements affect how you would act, you don’t have to stifle down whatever feelings you have because they’re real feelings. The whole thing with acting is being real as possible in the circumstances that you’re in and if having those things happening to you make you act a certain way by all means, do it. So in a lot of ways, it made things easier.
Max: There was really an environment that was easy to encounter where the characters are in these scenes. Because when that does happen, obviously it wasn’t full on tornados, but you were still kind of feeling discomfort. And so your instincts are to protect those around you, that’s what these characters are trying to do, we were getting through it and that’s what we were doing in the movie.
Jeremy Sumpter, Arlen Escarpeta, Matt Walsh
On Storm Chasing
Arlen: Don’t want to.
Matt: Nope.
Jeremy: If there was only a way where they could get me on “Storm Chasers” so that I could promote the film, to chase one of those thing would be awesome.
How good are your camera skills now after the movie?
Arlen: I loved working with the cameras on the film. I got to work with the cinematographers and camera guys and they had these little cups of water. I got to learn how to use the steadicam and the little cups of water that were almost filled almost to the rim and we had to practice running and moving and twisting to left and twisting to the right and being very smooth and balanced. In the film, I take my job very, very seriously, my head’s in the monitor making sure I was getting what I was supposed to be getting and we also had the hand held cameras as well so I loved it. And Steve said if we did a good enough of a job, some the footage would end up in the movie. So he said that it’s in there, but he didn’t say which parts. So I’m gonna say we shot the whole movie.
Jeremy: There might be behind the scenes Daryl and Jacob footage, or it’s a found footage from Jacob’s lost camera.
On transitioning to drama:
Matt: I mostly do comedy so it was different because people are in character before the moment and after the moment it does linger, whereas in comedy it’s pretty light. So it was different for me to be around that. There were certainly intense moments, it did linger.
Kyle Davis, Jon Reep
What made you want to do the film?
Jon and Kyle: When we got this part, I think there was one page and two lines on the paper. So when we put in audition for this, it was actually for a serious part. But when we got the part they were like, “You guys can be the comedic reliefs!”. There wasn’t enough money in the budget, but it would have been nice to have a dramatic scene for us, too. We improv a lot, 90 percent of our stuff is improv. We added probably three pages of our own stuff. Give us our writing credit haha.
Was it physically challenging?
Kyle:The most physical part for me was when we were getting rained on and the wind machines. They were actually throwing debris at us. It wasn’t just effects.
What was it like seeing the finished product?
Jon: I haven’t seen it yet! I’m waiting for tonight.
Daredevils in real life?
Kyle: I was a skateboarder most of my life and got in a lot of trouble when I was a kid. When I was seventeen I got jumped by seven kids and got my face smashed and now blind in my left eye. So I couldn’t join the military. Then my cousin suggested I should be an actor.
Jon: When I was a kid, I got hit by a car when I was on a bicycle.
Did you take anything away from it?
Ron: A new best friend, we shot this thing two years ago and ever since then we have become really good buds.
“Into The Storm” hits theaters this Friday, August 8.
