OR: I do have to ask you about Mr. Kojima- if you’ve played any of Mr. Kojima’s games, anywhere from SNATCHER through Death Stranding, one of the overarching themes between all of his games is ‘connections’. You often start with a protagonist who’s isolated from everybody, he has built a family of his own.
How does that relate to GHOSTS?
JS: With horror movies, making that connection with an audience is paramount. You need people to believe that the protagonist is really in danger and the audience is witness to that. With GHOSTS, the cast is not isolated at the start like in a Kojima game, they are together and it’s through the journey of the game they become isolated in body, but united in spirit. [OR Note: This first part of the response was lost due to a recording issue, and so Mr. Shepard was kind enough to send this part over in writing post-interview to summarize what he had started with.]
And that’s just natural storytelling – how storytelling works, especially in horror movies.
His games are very cinematic as well. The METAL GEAR games, POLICENAUTS, stuff like that. It’s very cinematic. And I’m just a big fan, so I can’t help pulling some of the things like that from his games.
But boktai is the one who really got me because of the unique storytelling technique and the tangible nature of the game where it makes you get up off of your seat [and] walk outside into the sun. It was like Pokémon GO! before Pokémon GO!. And that aspect, the blurring of what is real and what isn’t real- Kojima does it so well. It entices me back to Kojima stuff.
OR: In an interview with GamesRadar, one of Ghosts’ actresses, Haley Bishop, stated:
| “We’ve all only been told our own little bits about our own individual characters,” she says. “We actually don’t know anything about each other’s characters, and what kind of special things are happening to each other throughout the game. And so I think there will be a lot of surprises that I’m just very curious about.” |
Why did you choose to not give the cast the full script or allow them to know about each other’s characters? Could you talk a bit about how that affected your directing and filming process?
JS: I like natural performances, and again- these are my friends. There’s a level of trust. They know I wouldn’t do anything that would endanger them or put them into compromising positions. So they have a level of trust with me that, potentially, you wouldn’t get with people that you don’t know.
I like the idea of giving them what they need to know and leaving a little bit of space, like ten-percent of space, to play around and improv [in]. Because I think that when things are natural, that’s where fear can manifest. Authenticity in horror films is really important to me. And the way that you get authenticity is by making as much stuff as possible real. You subtract the artifice and you’re left with reality.
Some actors do not like it when they are not informed of every little thing, because they feel like their performance would benefit from knowing absolutely everything. And in some cases, yes. But I think with this type of horror that I’m trying to do, there is space for experimentation and improvisation. And they are great at it- you saw it in HOST. There was improvisation in there [that] was made to feel natural. And I would rather have me tell them roughly what they had to do, and put them in a direction, and they experience these things for the first time. So, for instance, they’re not going to see the Long Lady until absolutely necessary, because I want to see their reaction on camera. Because, this is going to be the reaction of the person playing it. I really want the person playing it to feel like they are there with them, they are experiencing the Long Lady- the first look at all of the other stuff happening- and it is just an excitement there and the kinetic energy that you can’t put your finger on. So they will know as much as they need to know to give the best performance that they possibly can, but I love question marks and I love experimentation and seeing how their stories cross over with each other organically without it being forced.
So I’m thinking of it like a theater production, where they will be running through their storylines and it will crossover into other people’s storylines too. And this is really exciting stuff. And some of them know, and some of them don’t know- It’ll be all the better for it.
OR: HOST clocks in at a 56 minute runtime, which is shorter than your average theatrical release. When you were asked if there was anything you wanted to do storywise that wasn’t possible due to the “restrictions you had” during an interview with Horror Obsessive, you said:
| “No, we don’t see them as restrictions at all, we just see them as something we have to deal with, and I think the ‘restrictions’ made it stronger because we had to use our friends, we had to use the people we knew and because of that, it made it better.” |
For HOST, this was about a discussion about the need for authenticity of found footage and the long-standing relationships between your cast, yourself, and HOST’s director Rob Savage. Does this philosophy still hold true for GHOSTS? What restrictions or “something to deal with” -as you put it- have occurred in GHOSTS’ development? Could you talk some about how it impacted the game’s development?
JS: Budget is always a restriction, because we don’t have infinite money. So that’s always a big restriction. But, I like the thought of something that’s realistically low budget as being an opportunity. I see obstacles as opportunities- opportunities to learn, opportunities to dial back on any artifice and kind of do what you need to do. For instance, I was always going to use the girls from HOST, because they are my friends. And that was never a question that I was going to use someone else. And this is the third time I’ve used these five in combination. Before HOST, I did a short film- it hasn’t been released online yet, but it’s called Multiplex and it stars the five girls from HOST before HOST. So this is the third time I’ve used them.
And I guess the restriction there is that if I’ve used just three out of the five, it would feel like something is missing, I think. But of course, the success of HOST definitely helped. So it’s a little bit different because I could literally go to anyone and ask them if they want to be involved and they would most likely say ‘yes’, which has been great.
And so, obviously- and I’m sure we will come to it- speaking to Trevor Henderson who designed the Long Lady and Jim Henson[‘s Creature Workshop] who is making the Long Lady- these probably wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for HOST. I like to think that they would, just from my natural charm, but I think HOST is a big factor in that because they are obviously HOST fans.
So the restrictions we had for HOST was a lot different than here, because I am choosing to use the same crew again, I’m choosing to use the same stunt crew, the same view effects, the same costuming person, the same heads of department, the same cast- because I think if something isn’t broke, then don’t try to fix it.
So the only real limitation is budget.
OR: What has your game development experience, positive and negative, been like so far?
JS: There hasn’t been any negatives, it’s been going exactly as how I want it to so far. But we’re still in the process of making the game. We’ve still got stuff to do throughout this year. There’s a lot of things to do, in fact. So, I guess the negative thing is that it is a new world for me that I’m exploring. And I’m learning every single day. And I guess I just don’t know what’s going to come, since I haven’t experienced making a game before. So I guess there is the unknown to deal with.
But I don’t really see that as a big negative, but as an exciting prospect. It’s mostly all positive- 99.99% positive because I’m just excited to get this opportunity to make the game I want with no one telling me that I can’t make it. I’m in this weird position where I can just say ‘Let’s make this now, let’s make this game.’ And I can put it together without much difficulty. And it’s really given me the confidence to do other games as well and non-film things, because I know I can make it work. And I just surround myself with good people who do know what they’re doing in game development, and yeah- we all work together in it, which makes it a real positive experience.
Yeah, I wake up everyday really excited about GHOSTS.
OR: Before we get back to GHOSTS, I have to ask- you mentioned other mediums a moment ago. What other ones are you exploring?
JS: So besides the film and television [realm], obviously merchandise. That’s a big thing for me. I think, if you have objects in your home that’s associated with a particular game or film or TV show that you love, it just makes the game experience better because it blurs the lines between reality and gaming.
If something from the game is in your house that you see everyday, it enriches your experience of playing the game. So I’m very, very big into creating merchandise that isn’t for the money but is to enrich the gaming experience. You’ll see the crossover between things that are in the game and things that you can buy in real life.
And everything in the game has been specifically chosen to enable people who play the game to represent their fandom. For instance, you will be able to cosplay as the girls [for] their costumes were designed to be a way for people to have a relatively cheap Halloween costume. Because, wouldn’t it be cool to have a group of friends dressed like the girls from GHOSTS? It would just be so, so cool. And we got that a little bit with HOST, but not very much because of the lockdown. For GHOSTS, I am making sure that it will be an iconic costume that I’d wear myself. I think they are really cool.
But besides that, I’m exploring comics. But I’m doing a lot of things that you will see will come out, and they are all just tied loosely to GHOSTS as well.
Part Two of this Interview will go live on Friday (May 28, 2021).
Are you excited for GHOSTS? What do you think about the various inspirations behind the game?
Let us know in the comments below!
