In a
recent interview, director Sebastián Cordero talked about his upcoming film,
Europa Report and spoke specifically about what made him do this project, what
kind of research was needed, working with Pan’s Labyrinth production designer
and much more.
Europa
Report is a blend of documentary, alternative history and science fiction
thriller, Europa Report follows a contemporary mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa
to investigate the possible existence of alien life within our solar system.
When unmanned probes suggest that a hidden ocean could exist underneath
Europa’s icy surface and may contain single-celled life, Europa Ventures, a
privately funded space exploration company, sends six of the best astronauts
from around the world to confirm the data and explore the revolutionary
discoveries that may lie in the Europan ocean. After a near-catastrophic
technical failure that leads to loss of communication with Earth and the tragic
death of a crewmember, the surviving astronauts must overcome the psychological
and physical toll of deep space travel, and survive a discovery on Europa more
profound than they had ever imagined.
Sebastián Cordero: Well, it was strange. It’s one of those things that came to me very
serendipitously. Before this, I didn’t
have a clear intention to go and make a sci-fi film. As a teenager, I read a lot of sci-fi, and I
had a phase for a couple of years where I read a lot of Isaac Asimov, Ray
Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Theodore Sturgeon, and then there were several
others, short stories mostly, that I was really inspired by. But it was a phase. After that, I went in a different direction,
and the films I’ve done are grittier, very realistic, and set in my home
country, in Ecuador. It happened through
a producer who had seen Crónicas and had really liked it. It was interesting, because I felt that the
group of producers behind the film decided to take a chance, emphasizing that
more than hiring someone who would be a sci-fi filmmaker or sci-fi nerd or
geek, they wanted a director who would be very concerned about telling a story
well and very concerned about the work with actors. It sounds obvious, but in this genre you can
have directors who emphasize and put all their energy into the visual effects
and the form, and ultimately this is a story about six characters in an
enclosed space. The way they saw it was
that, for me, that would be the priority and ultimately the characters are the
heart of the film. You have to root for
them. You have to put yourself in their
shoes. There are a lot of things going
on in the story externally, but I think it has to do with characters. It has to do with the essence and the wonder
of science and exploration. In a way, I’m
really grateful that they took a chance because it doesn’t happen often. People do tend to pigeonhole you and say,
“Okay. These are the projects you do. This is what we’re going to offer you.”
How
does the finished film compare to what you originally envisioned?
Cordero: It’s interesting because it’s been a long
journey and there were a lot of changes along the way, but I feel that the
essence of it is very close to what I originally read and what I pictured in my
mind. It’s strange because the process
of making a film is always there are big changes along the way. Recently, I spoke with Anamaria (Marinca) who
plays Rosa. She was in Romania and she
had just seen the final copy of the film.
She was so thrilled because she said, “It’s rare that I watch a finished
film, and I do feel that that it was faithful to what we talked about on the
first day.” To me, this was a huge
compliment and I was very happy to hear that.
But yes, it changed a lot along the way, even structurally. The non-linear structure is something that
was found during post-production. The
documentary element was there in the script, but we explored quite a bit of
going and putting in more of it and less of it.
Even the way it was shot, there were a lot of things originally in the
script that needed to be adjusted, both in order to work with the fixed cameras
and the found footage element, as well as being faithful to what we know about
the science of space travel and Europa.
Was
there any special research that you did for this? I understand you visited the NASA Jet
Propulsion Lab and Space X?
Cordero: Yes.
We did a lot of research. For me,
I felt I had a big responsibility on my shoulders, and the way to handle it
would be to try to know as much as possible about the topic. So, together with Eugenio Caballero, the
production designer, we did a lot of research in terms of what would eventually
lead up to the design of the ship and how it would all work. We were lucky enough to have two key scientists
helping us with the project who were really passionate about what we were doing
and who had a lot of hopes that the film would depict science properly. They were Kevin Hand and Steve Vance from
JPL. I remember when we started
pre-production, the first trip we took here, to L.A., was to visit JPL which
was an incredible inspiration. We also
went to visit Space X which was also amazing to see how they were building
those rockets. What I found is, in the
science community, there are a lot of people who are obviously huge science
fiction fans. It’s very close to their
heart. But very often they get
frustrated by the fact that many science fiction films drift away from the hard
science just for the convenience of the story, which is very tempting at times. It’s also disappointing when that happens,
when you’re watching a movie, and suddenly both the rules that the movie itself
set up are broken or sometimes the rules of common sense or the rules of
science. To me, there was a big
responsibility involved in that and we investigated. In the end, we probably talked to over 20 or
25 scientists, overall marine biologists, in order to design or to explore the
possibilities of what could be under the ice in Europa’s ocean — just a lot of
people who were really open to give us advice.
In the end, it was really gratifying when they saw the finished
film. The other day at the screening at
the LA Film Festival, Steve Vance, one of the JPL advisors, was there. He told me that everyone from the Europa team
had seen the film and they all loved it.
For me, that’s very, very nice.
…
You
had a great creative team including production designer Eugenio Caballero from
Pan’s Labyrinth who designed the space ship and DP Enrique Chediak, both of
whom you’ve worked with before. Can you
talk about their contributions to the look and style of the film?
Cordero: God!
It was a challenge! All the films
I’ve done before have always been on location.
This was the first time that I was building something for a film. First of all, having Eugenio Caballero, the
production designer, on board was really terrific. We’ve worked together before on two previous
films, but this was a completely different animal. This was starting from scratch, finding the
logic behind the ship, finding all the elements, being faithful to what NASA
has done, what people are familiar with, but at the same time feeling that it
is innovative and that it makes sense.
Besides the aesthetics behind the movie, there’s a lot of problem
solving involved in designing a set like this.
He did an amazing job solving those issues. It was wonderful. One day on the set we had a famous astronaut,
Mike Massimino, who appears in the Hubble 3D documentary and the space walk
there, and we had consulted with him about the space walk for some things. He came to visit the set. At one point, he pointed out a couple of
little details, saying, “Oh yes, when we were up in space, we used to sleep in
the place where the spacesuits are hanging which is a little closet.” It was really emotional to see him connect to
what he was watching on the set, so I felt we had done something right at that
point.
With
Enrique, the DP, the huge challenge was at first, when I first proposed, “Let’s
do this film together,” I thought he was going to say, “Well, I’m not sure
because it’s all fixed cameras that are not going to move anymore.” Basically, he said, the logic behind where
each camera is shouldn’t be an aesthetic logic.
It should be a scientific monitoring logic. Why would this company put the camera
here? What do they need to monitor? What do they need to see? It’s interesting, because when you change
your mind set to putting the cameras that way, suddenly the film acquires a
different language just organically.
That was actually something that really attracted Enrique. He said, “It’s great. I’m not moving my camera. I’m not pushing in to reveal when a character
becomes aware of something. If we need a
close-up, then the staging needs to work so that we get to the close-up naturally,
which is a huge challenge. It’s also a
challenge for the actors for that to happen organically, but it’s really
interesting. What’s cool is that usually
within the found footage genre, what we’re used to is hand-held camera, very
shaky, very degraded, and all looking very amateurish. And here, it had to be very scientific,
crisp, clean, immaculate, and gradually it degrades as the ship itself degrades
or the cameras start failing. It’s a
different aesthetic, a different look, and what can happen off-screen or with
characters being cut off. It’s actually
where I think the more interesting things start happening, which feel a little
bit more random, and where you actually believe more the fact that this is happening
for real, that the camera wasn’t put in the ideal place. The fact that sometimes the camera might go
out of focus and never go back to focus, that’s a tremendous amount of tension
because suddenly you want to see more.
You want it to focus and it doesn’t.
There are a lot of things that you can use to add [suspense]. It’s almost like you have a different bag of
tricks than normally you would, and the usual ones are gone. You can’t count on them, but what you can
have with the other tricks, the other tools, is actually really cool.
…
What
are you working on next?
Cordero: I have a project back in Ecuador that I’m
developing right now to shoot early next year ideally (Sin Muertos No Hay
Carnaval). In my career, I would love to
be able to go back and forth. There are
a lot of stories that I want to tell that are set in Ecuador. I’m from there and I think there’s such a
richness of stories to be told. But at
the same time, I’m also very attracted to what can happen here and I feel that
I was very lucky. In a way, I feel much
luckier having started my career in the U.S. with a film that’s very
unusual. I mean, it’s sci-fi, but it’s
not your typical sci-fi. It doesn’t fall
into a traditional studio movie. In a
way, that’s much more interesting as a filmmaker. I’m not just trying to follow a pattern. I did something that for me was unexpected
and that I think people are also getting surprised about. I’m definitely looking forward to doing
something else here, but I feel that it also has to be the right project. I don’t have a big offer on the table at this
point. Who knows? It might happen soon, and I have to be very
careful about what that film could be. I
don’t want to fall into just something generic.
I feel that it should be something challenging, something that really
grips me. Definitely we’ll do more films
here, but when the time is right and the project is right.
What
are your personal thoughts on deep space exploration and life beyond our
planet?
Cordero: I think it’s fascinating. I got into that world as I was doing my
research and investigation. It’s
inspiring. On the one hand, you realize
we are really tiny and we’re insignificant in this huge universe, and that’s
very intimidating. But at the same time,
you start seeing a tendency. The energy
behind life is so strong that I think it’s not something that is just confined
to this Earth. I don’t know in Europa
ultimately what will be found there, but I think there are real
possibilities. You listen to some of the
great scientists like Neil deGrasse Tyson (American astrophysicist and director
of the Hayden Planetarium) today or you look at footage from Carl Sagan and
it’s so inspiring in terms of, “Oh wow!
The chances of something else existing somewhere else…it might be
completely different from what we know, but they’re there!””
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