Back in summer 2005, this writer had the pleasure of appearing in a short film called SOMETHING’S WRONG, a TWILIGHT ZONE-ish tale of two campers who come across two corpses that are eerily familiar, with things going awry from there. I was very impressed with then 20-year-old director Matthew Nayman: He was confident on set, could think on his feet and had a knowledge of film beyond his years. It was clear we would be hearing more from him someday.

That day has come as Nayman’s newest creepy short, BLIND SPOT, plays at this year’s Toronto After Dark Film Festival, screening Tuesday, October 25 at 7 p.m. before Xavier Gens’ THE DIVIDE. Fango spoke with Nayman about the new film.

FANGORIA: What is BLIND SPOT about?

MATTHEW NAYMAN: BLIND SPOT is about how small, innocuous things can distract us from the bigger picture. The film is designed to be both familiar and alienating. It takes place in a car stuck in highway traffic—a familiar situation for most of us—and is told in real time without any edits. Our protagonist, who is stationary and in focus for the entire movie, struggles with the banalities of changing his flight booking over the phone. While he remains motionless relative to the camera, the world behind him—in his blind spot—is constantly moving and changing. As he progresses along his route, the world outside slips from the familiar into the surreal. Essentially, BLIND SPOT is about how easy it is to miss a terrible truth until it is too late.

FANG: Where did you get the idea?

NAYMAN: The basic concept has been with me for a while. I find the idea of watching a disaster unfold from a distance quite terrifying. The only thing worse is not seeing the event happen until it’s too late. I also had to address the realities of getting a self-financed indie short made while working a full-time job. I needed a story which took place in one location, had only a few characters in it, would be filmable in a weekend and would be short enough to be competitive on the festival circuit. This particular story both appealed to me and filled those requirements. It’s tempting to try and make a mini-feature when producing a short, but I really wanted something precise and self-contained—maybe something that an audience member will go back and watch again to see what they missed.

FANG: Tell us about the movie’s production.

NAYMAN: We shot BLIND SPOT at Pie in the Sky studios in Toronto. It’s a great facility, and they were very generous. We had a small crew and spent half the day nailing our interactive lighting, and lighting the greenscreen, and the second half filming. In total, we only used nine hours of studio time for the entire setup, filming and tear-down. Our lead actor, Brandon Brackenbury, was fantastic, and nailed the five-minute take we used on the second go-round. We shot on a Sony EX-1R, recording 4:2:2 over HD-SDI to a Convergent Designs nanoFlash recorder. We also shot a witness pass for the reflection in the driver-side window using a Canon HV40 shooting HDV tape.
The most difficult part of BLIND SPOT to complete was postproduction. The movie owes a lot of its power to my wonderful postproduction supervisor and co-producer, Mike Boers. He’s a fantastic visual effects artist, and was integral to bringing this film to life even during the scripting stage. We spent about five months working together on the CGI and compositing, using some beefy home computers and a lot of state-of-the-art software. Five minutes is a long time for any visual effects shot to hold up, and ours had to fill two-thirds of the screen for the entire movie. I am very proud of the effects we achieved for BLIND SPOT on such a minuscule budget.

FANG: What are you working on next?

NAYMAN: I’m trying to adapt a wonderful short story by author Mike Krath, titled “A Most Ambitious Experiment.” It tells the story of a man who invents a time machine for his own financial gain, but discovers that time isn’t so easily altered. Mr. Krath has given me his blessing to get the film made, and I’m really looking forward to starting another sci-fi short.

For those not able to make it to Toronto After Dark, they will be able to find this short at Nayman’s website shortly, and they can see some of his other work there as well. The Toronto After Dark Film Festival runs Oct. 20-27 at the Toronto Underground Cinema (186 Spadina Avenue).

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