STACK Jan 123

38 / 68

DVD&BD
JANUARY 2015 JB Hi-Fi
Q&A
038
visit
Tell us about the two sets of characters in
Into the Storm...
STEVEN QUALE: At the beginning of the
film, there’s the father and his sons, and the
other people from the small community of
Silverton who are doing their normal thing. The
threat of a storm is coming, but nobody knows
it’s going to become something as big as what
it eventually ends up developing into. Then,
on the other side, we meet a group of storm
chasers who are actively seeking a tornado but
can’t seem to ever be at the right place at the
right time.
There’s a lot of suspense leading up to when
the storm finally hits, and then, once it does,
the third act is just non-stop where you’re just
fighting for survival. And when the two groups
converge – the storm chasers seeking the thrill
of the tornado and the people who are just
trying to survive – it’s interesting to see their
dynamic together and how they come to help
each other out in the end.
How did you work with the actors to
communicate the massive visual effects
components they’d be interacting with, while
also bringing naturalism and spontaneity to
their performances?
Well, what was important for me was in the
whole film, from visual effects all the way to
the characters and performances, was to have
a sense of realism. When I did research for this
movie, I found that tornadoes are so spectacular
in their own right that you don’t really have to
augment it. What’s there in Mother Nature is
stunning and horrific, impressive and awe-
inspiring ... lots of adjectives when you see
these images and video of real storms and
tornadoes in particular.
So, I filtered that down to all aspects of the
film. I wanted the performances grounded
in total reality. I wanted the characters, the
situations, the conflicts not to feel contrived, but
to feel believable. With all the actors, the idea
was to try to make it feel as real as possible.
We developed back-stories for each of the
characters that aren’t included in the film, but
gave them ways to relate to what they were
doing. Then we just worked as a team.
Part of what helped keep it grounded was
the fact that we shot the film using handheld
cameras for the most part, and in a kind of
relaxed environment. Yet it had to be very
structured because of all these visual effects
that we would be adding later. We also had
practical special effects with wind machines,
and so forth. So, we had to maintain what
you normally have in a movie, with rehearsals
and hitting your marks and all of those normal
things. But we let it be a little looser as far as
the back and forth between everybody.
What went into creating the massive
tornadoes onscreen?
Well, when I first read the script, I thought
there was an amazing potential for the
tornadoes. We have four major tornadoes that
hit and, in some cases, merge together, and
my fear was that you could potentially have
a feeling of repetition. But it also occurred to
me that the tornado is a character, so like any
great character in movies it can be very diverse
and have different attributes. So, as I did the
research for this film, I found that tornadoes can
be radically different.
There are the really thin and narrow rope
tornadoes, which can have multiple vortices
in the same tornado storm system. And then
you’ve got the more traditional tornado, which
is just a big wedge that goes up into the sky,
which we’re most familiar with. And then you
have these mile-wide or two mile-wide wedge
tornadoes, which are enormous tornadoes that
can spin with rotational speeds as high as 300
miles-per-hour.
Then there is a fourth one, actually, the
fire tornado, which is probably one of the
Director Steven Quale
talks about the challenges
involved in shooting the
handheld disaster movie
INTOTHE STORM.
I wanted the
performances grounded in
total reality
Director Steven Quale