He’s really intense on screen as well.
Oh, he’s intense off screen too. Intense sums him up nicely. Very nice. You’re never sure how to play it with some actors, they don’t want to talk so I never talk to them unless they talk to me. If we’ve got an intense scene you don’t want to go and chitchat or you’re putting them off. The performance is the most important, that’s what carries the audience through.
But the other members of the cast are all about to break: Parminder is the lead in Alcatraz, which has now been commissioned as a series, which is tipped to be very big, she's in Horrid Henry 3D; we’ve got Kaya who’s in Andrea Arnold’s Wuthering Heights which comes out in September [2011], Alcatraz is out in November [2011], so they’re about to break. Obviously Kierston’s in so much it’s not true. She’s the lead in a film called The Holding coming out as well, she’s in Shadow Line at the moment. Michael Socha’s in a lot of stuff. Nichola Burley, is of course in Street Dance 3D, she’s working flat out, she goes from us to other film sets.
She’s in Wuthering Heights as well.
Yeah, that’s right. So they’re all at a really good point, a great point in their careers. They’re all very newsworthy. Of course, on the internet alone, Kaya is one of the most Twittery-followed people on earth. She’s very good. Which is why we keep going up to the top of ranking Twitter followers; we get little bursts and we go to the top of Twitter. Whenever Kaya puts something up we get 170,000 people or whatever it is, they Twitter away about it.
You seem to be quite on top of Twitter, I had a look at your Twitter feed, I followed you today, actually. Are you encouraging the cast to get involved with it too? Because Michael’s on there as well.
Michael’s on it. I got Sebastian [Nanena, who plays Vipon] on to it but he says mad things, like 'RIP fallen soldiers' and stuff and 'Gangbangers go down'. So he’s a bit of a Twitter trainee, I think.
But Parminder was going to give it up, then we had a chit chat and she said, 'Oh, I don’t know yet', so Parminder’s sort of picked it up again. Kaya, obviously, is Twitter Lord of the Earth. Nichola’s pretty good on Twitter as well. Most of them are pretty good anyway. Michael’s beefed it up a bit. Jonas is going to get into it now. Jonas Angels. Armstrong Angels.
They've been tweeting us all day, the Armstrong Angels. So what are your thoughts on using Twitter for a film that's still in production?
You have to play it – it makes you value – I’m a big believer in karma and cause and effect, you treat everyone well, people come down and help us out, we’re charming to extras, we make sure everyone’s fed and catered, no one’s treated badly; because you only realise the power eventually – I’d never thought about it actually, then I checked. I only started Twitter a few weeks ago, and I was looking one day and Kaya was on set, in her changing room. It said, 'Cold. Cold and bored.' So I said to her, 'Well, go and get a cup of coffee', and the immediacy of it was obvious.
So I started to scan it to see what mood she’s in and what’s going on and we had all these extras down to be in a nightclub scene, and we read, 'Oh, having an amazing time' from hundreds, hundreds. We had a big burst. All these extras are Twittering live from set, and of course all you need is one person, it’s so dangerous, you only need one person to say, 'What a bunch of dicks. Nastiest people I’ve ever met.' The individual has a massive voice, so I’ve suddenly become very cautious of it, actually.
I interviewed the cast of Tormented, which was a British horror film with a similarly young, up-and-coming cast a couple of years ago, and the director and producer had encouraged the cast if they weren’t already on Twitter to get on it and tweet about the film and stuff like that. It’s a very interesting tool for film promotion.
Yeah, I’m getting in to that. I put up a lot of funny stuff. I put up the sniper rifle and stuff. To give you guys a sense as well, I’m quite manipulative in it, I thought at least that’s a way to show there’s big guns and stuff in it.
The important thing is that there's personality behind your Twitter, it's not just generic stuff.
I try and put up what’s going on, what’s of interest. It’s nice to keep people informed. What we want to do is for people to discover it, get into it early, to follow us early.
That’s what people want. They want to hear from the actors, what they do and say behind the scenes. It’s sort of how people have become a bit more involved in films now.
Yeah. The film experience.