M. Night Shyamalan recounts how complex it was filming Old in the midst of the pandemic and during hurricane season. His upcoming thriller is about a group of people going on a holiday vacation. When they find a gorgeous secluded beach, they decide to spend the day there. They soon realize that something is causing them to age extremely quickly throughout the course of a day.
When the worldwide pandemic hit, the entertainment industry was one of many that had to shut down. Movies in production and many completed projects were forced to suffer large delays. Once film productions were allowed to get back on track, precautions to protect the cast and crew from COVID-19 proved to be an issue that only further complicated many productions. There is not necessarily a guide to how to proceed, as this was uncharted territory for the whole industry. Even massive movie theater chains, like AMC, struggled to find ways to survive.
During a panel at the 2021 Tribeca Festival (via Indiewire), Shyamalan spoke about the difficulties of shooting Old. The film shot in the Dominican Republic in September, which made things increasingly stressful to the point that Shyamalan said he was close to breaking into tears. Not only was there a global pandemic taking place, but they filmed on a beach during hurricane season. Check out Shyamalan's full comments below:
“We were the first movie to shoot and cast in the pandemic and the way we were making a movie was very new. I was making up the rules because I was the first one. So I said, ‘We’re all gonna stay in this hotel. I’m gonna pay for everybody. The cleaning ladies, the caterers, the reception person, the person parking our cars. Everybody is staying with us, and if they commit to these 10 weeks, I’ll cover everything and we just go from the hotel to the beach, back and forth everyday. And we stay safe. We didn’t have a single positive case, which is fantastic, even if it’s very scary. But because of this we had to push from May into hurricane season.
“Because of people’s schedules, I couldn’t have this cast if I waited. I wanted to make the movie with [this cast] and we took the risk. Of course there was a hurricane and it took the sets and just destroyed them. We decided to build again but the biggest concern was that the beach had eroded. There was no beach for our beach movie. We got very lucky; by day one, part of the beach came back, so we shot on that side and then we became very versed with nature, like the tides and storms out 100 miles away and how many times the water comes up per day. You had such respect for nature, being out there. … Because of the movie’s premise, they’re aging and it’s one day in the movie, so if an actor was playing Alex’s character young they would be in the morning, then another would be in the daytime, and then there’d be another actor later. There was all these prosthetics and it was a very complicated thing.”
The world may still not be cleared from the pandemic yet, but the film industry has been forced to operate however it can. Will film and television productions ever be the same in a post-pandemic world? The new rules and regulations that have become more standard practice are unlikely to be going anywhere any time soon. Hopefully, future films have an easier, less chaotic experience in production. With studios feeling comfortable enough to confirm their slates of other horror films, distribution is starting to look a bit healthier.
Old is actually based on a graphic novel by the name of Sandcastle by Pierre Oscar Levy and Frederik Peeters. The story has an overall sense of helplessness and dread, which seems to be what the cast and crew experienced over the course of filming. Due to the delay of so many productions, a lot of talent became available, allowing for some projects to scoop up actors who normally would be booked. While Shyamalan went into filming under bad circumstances that he knew would be factors in play, he managed to pull through and finish the movie without anybody on his cast or crew getting sick. With theaters opening back up, audiences will have the opportunity to see Shyamalan's Old on July 23.
Source: IndieWire
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