One of my favorite films to discover early in this year’s Seattle International Film Festival is Time Trap, a sci-fi adventure set in a Texas cave where time moves at a much slower pace inside the cave than in the outside world.
Time Trap is a wildly inventive movie that makes the audience feel like they are part of the same adventure we’re watching on screen. A lot of what makes the film so watchable is the feeling of claustrophobia that comes with much of the film taking place confined to cave. Yet the film looks and sounds great, particularly in a movie theater, and the cast is excellent, with strong performances from a young cast.
The story involves a small group of young people (from young teenagers to millennials) who go on a search party for a beloved professor who has gone missing and something seems amiss. When in the cave, they find that what feels like a few minutes in the cave can be a much longer time period outside. There are some unexpected plot twists and subtle humor that makes the film so enjoyable.
When Time Trap made its World Premiere at SIFF during its opening weekend, I crashed its after party at a Queen Anne lounge to ask some questions of directors Ben Foster and Mark Dennis (also credited with writing the film).
Let’s start at the beginning: how did the idea of the movie come about?
Mark: We were trying to get another movie made and we kept waiting weeks upon weeks to get another actor to attach themselves. We sent the script off to Billy Bob Thornton, made an offer to him, waited two weeks, didn’t hear back. Sent it out to Pierce Brosnan, waited a couple weeks, didn’t hear back and we hadn’t hit that level yet where we could get people to pay attention to us, they wouldn’t even read the script and it was really difficult to deal with that, the fact that we weren’t there yet.
So, I had the idea, just randomly, what if I just went into a closet and I came out and it was three weeks later and we had an actor attached. What if all these deal memos that we tried to get them to attach to, what if it was done? I thought, well that’d be a cool movie what if these people went into a dark place and then they come out a couple weeks later and it’s like- they come out seconds later and it’s actually a couple weeks later. That’s how the original idea came from.
The cave was such a big part of the movie and really became it’s own character. How did finding a location come about and how did you go about working that into the film?
Mark: I grew up in central Texas. In central Texas, is a ton of caves: Natural Bridge Caverns, Cave Without A Name, Longhorn Cavern, Cascade Caverns, these are all within fifty miles of where I live, so I guess I was just used to caves. Whenever I wrote the script, I posted on Facebook, “Hey, does anybody have a cave?” And Ben posted, “Does anybody have a cave in their yard?” And somebody was, like, “Hey, I know somebody with a cave in their yard.” And we started to track down caves just by posting on Facebook, then eventually we asked Caverns of Sonora, which is the big show cave in Texas, would we be able to shoot there. We didn’t think they were gonna say yes. We were shocked when they did. It was a game-changer. It made everything work.
It’s just a gorgeous location. It’s like the central character of the film almost. How did the cast come on board?
Mark: Olivia Draguicevich started as- she had a longer audition process than everyone else. We had cast her in our previous movie, Strings, and I wrote the character with her in mind, but I didn’t want to give her the part, I wanted her to audition, and I wanted to make sure she was the best for the part. We auditioned her and- we actually auditioned a bunch of girls, but it was between her and one other girl and then one day we did an audition with Olivia with a group cast, like a group audition and she just knocked it out of the park. Ben and I both knew that she was the best one.
From there, the other ones were cast through a casting director named J.C. Cantu from Rising Phoenix Casting and he sent us a bunch of actors and said, “What do you think about this person? What do you think about this person?” Then, we started getting pretty close and I started doing Skype interviews. Ben was organizing the shoot and I was doing Skype interviews with the actors and I did a little interview with Brianne (Howey) and we talked to her to see what she was like. We got along great, she was awesome. I’d seen some of her other stuff, I’d seen some of the other projects that she had done, like some TV show and then same thing with Cassidy (Gifford). I did a little Skype call with Cassidy that lasted half an hour, she was like the coolest person I’ve met in my fucking life. She was so sweet, so much fun.
I thought, “Okay, we can make this work.” And then, Reiley McClendon actually auditioned twice. He auditioned once, and then, we kind of gave him some notes- or no- he auditioned once and then he messaged back and and was like, “Hey, do you have any notes? I’d like to audition again.” And I was like, “Okay, sure.” He auditioned again and that second audition, it was like, okay this guy is obviously dedicated to it. And then, Max Wright for Furby, we had a group of kids that came in and did auditions and our- video auditions, because we were in Austin and they were all in LA. Max didn’t even open his fucking mouth. As (cinematographer) Mike Simpson said, he has the most beautiful eyes and this long 90’s stoner haircut. He just had this look and when he auditioned, the first thing I noticed was that he was too nice. He was way nicer than the character, he was just a sweet kid. So, Ben did a little audition process with him and brought the character out between the two of them, because I wasn’t too sure, I was like, “I don’t know if this kid’s gonna nail it, he’s too nice. He’s not a little fucker and Ben-
Ben: But a lot of it hinges on him being sweet and nice like that, if he was a total fucker the whole time, then you wouldn’t be able to feel for him when he’s stuck up there alone and miserable. He was able to get a little gross.
Reiley is just thorough. I think, is how I would define Reiley. The work ethic on that guy is pretty crazy and the amount of things that he- the questions that he would ask on set were, a lot of times, really annoying, because we were like, “What does that matter?” He really gets to his point where we’re like, “Oh, I see.”
Mark: He pissed us off a lot, because he was so- he though so much about the script and thought, “Well, why this and why that?” And a lot of the times, the reason he pissed us off was, because we realized he was right and that we had to make changes to make it better and that sucks. It sucks to be going down a path and then, all the sudden, your actor come in and go, “Well what about this?” And then we’re like, “Fuck you, you’re right.”
Ben: Luckily he was, because he saved us reshoots and re-editing and-
Mark: He’s a smart guy, man. I don’t wanna make another movie without him looking at the script first and saying, “This is what’s wrong. This is what’s wrong. This is what’s wrong.” Because he knows what he’s talking about.
I know you talked about it in the Q and A, but can you talk about what the process was like? I think you said you were you able to go and shoot and then work on it and then, shoot some more and-
Ben: We had two big phases of shooting where we shot for- it was about five weeks, our first shoot. We shot- no, four weeks. Was it four?
Mark: It was twenty-two days of shooting, so that would be over-
Ben: We shot for five weeks and there were parts of the movie that we knew that we couldn’t pull off in those five weeks and we knew that we would do pick-ups and inserts and so, we saved, like when she goes up for the wasteland and we saved that for later. It was kind of just on the back burner and some inserts, we put those off. The goal was to get our actors shot out and the story told with those actors as best as we could in those five weeks. And then, as we edit it, we came up with more ideas and found ways to fix and expand on things.
Mark: Here’s the interesting part. Once we had the movie completely edited, we still needed money for VFX. Ben went and got money for VFX and that money was supposed to finish the movie, but we started having ideas, some more writing, some more script pages that would make the movie work better and instead of putting that money into VFX, like we were supposed to, we shot new scenes and made the movie way better, so that the movie just worked, but it still didn’t have the completed VFX and then we had to kind of patchwork the VFX to make that happen, but it worked. It was kind of a- it’s called revenge betting when you continue to bet when things aren’t working out, but eventually it worked for us.
Ben: We had a lot of really talented people working on it that were doing- this was like the step-up movie for everybody in our crew. Like, everybody’s doing the job that they’ve been sort of underneath for a long time and now they get to make it their own. Like, now our art department girl is now our props master and our assistant set decorator is now the actual set decorator. So, it’s- you know, we had some really skilled people that were able to do the thing. And then, Mike Simpson. He’s shot a few feature films, he shoots more commercials and his ability to light has been unparalleled, especially on the budget that we had.
He had a major story note for us or just general notes early on. We were gonna do this as a found footage movie for very little money and Mike’s first thing was like, “Why don’t you guys do this as a cinematic movie, it really wouldn’t cost you that much” he was totally wrong about that, but- He was right though. You’re still bringing a camera to the cave, you’re still gonna have to have lights to do a found footage movie, you might as well make it cinematic and spend more on some gear. I’m glad we did that.
Mark: It was the best note we ever got.
What’s going on with the film after the premiere?
Ben: We’re out to more festivals. We’d love to play back home in Austin at some sort of venue, I don’t know where. I’d love to get a New York and an LA screening, but this is the first time- this movie was- I was looking at the movie tonight and there’s an effect that wasn’t in the movie a week ago, so this is hot off the press. This is a very fresh movie. We were in the editing- we made edits two weeks ago and then I added VFX the night before we made the DCP.
Mark: It’s also out to our foreign sales agent has it out at the Cannes film market and they sold it to, at least, a dozen different countries right now.
Ben: They’re trying to make our foreign sales, so we’ve made some. We haven’t sold any major territories, but the smaller territories have a cap on their budget either way. We’ve made those sales, which is great. We haven’t seen any money from that.
In a perfect world, we would get seen by Amazon or Netflix or Hulu and they would acquire the movie. For a price, of course. We’d love to see it live on a platform where most people can see it and we can cover our asses on our investment.
How did it feel seeing it for the first time in a theater with an audience?
Mark: Good.
Ben: Mark was saying during the screening, “They’re laughing at the small jokes.” They never laugh at the small jokes, but it takes a crowd.
Mark: It’s really tough to understand which, like- there’s a joke every ten seconds and sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t, it’s not a comedy, but sitting in the middle of the room and I can hear the person next to me, the person in front of me, the person behind me laughing- I turn to look and I’m like, “Is this somebody that I know?” And it’s not somebody that I know and I’m, like, “Oh, shit. That joke fucking worked.” Maybe the rest of the room didn’t laugh, maybe they thought internally it was funny, but somebody laughed and I knew that it was finally working and I could tell what was working and really what wasn’t working and very little wasn’t working this time, which was great and I get up three quarters of the way in and go and stand next to Ben and we kind of watch from the back and then, we talk about the rest of it and people are still- only three people got up to move to use the restroom the entire movie, which was- we’ve never had that happen. It’s pretty rare.
Ben: We’re not the kind of filmmakers that disappear into an editing room and come out with a movie that’s our art or whatever. A film and a story is an interactive thing… The best jokes in the world aren’t told for the first time out of a comic’s mouth, they go to rooms and they work- they work on them, they figure out where the timing is and all that stuff and that- you can’t figure that out without interacting with the audience.
So, I’ll just ask you, is there anything else that you want people to know about the film while I still have my tape recorder on?
Ben: I don’t know. One thing I was thinking in there is that this is- It really is a truly independent film, this is made for cash. There’s no incentives that we were really able to cash in on, because of our budget level. It’s an independent film with people who are, overall, outside of the Hollywood system. We had our casting director. There’s no studio behind us, but I think we’re able to create something that feels like maybe there could’ve been or there’s potential for fun. You could make an independent film and still make it a fun ride.
{There is one more screening of Time Trap at SIFF, and it’s tonight: Tuesday, May 30, at Shoreline at 6:30 PM. Director Ben Foster scheduled to attend}
