JAKE LYMAN
(Director/screenwriter/actor)
JAKE LYMAN: Because I liked the movie so much. I wasn't sure how long it would be, or even if Paramount would be making a sequel, and I wanted to see more of the headless horseman and in the town of Awake Solid, (A.K.A. Sleepy Hollow) so I started thinking of stuff that would be really cool to put in it, and in no time I had a script written out and a crew who was willing to make the movie.
I: As an actor in the film as well as the director, what was your favorite part to do in the film?
JL: I liked doing the sword fighting a lot. I tried working out everything so it would be as believeable as possible with our budget. To get the swords (which are actually long stakes, spray painted silver) to sound metallic, we taped butter knives around the stakes so when we hit them together they would sound like a real sword.
I: How hard was it to do the stunts in the movie, cutting off heads, stabbing with swords, etc?
JL: We did all our stunts ourselves. It may not look very hard on the screen, but it was actually quite difficult. We had to do a lot of preperation for each battle scene; Setting up the set, arranging the positions of the actors, finding the right camera angle, and lots of practicing. So for a scene that would take up about 4 minutes on the screen would take about 34 minutes to set up. Then for scenes when we're on a chase, we're riding on our "horses" really fast down the path and Ichabod Crane is fighting the headless horseman with a knife and the horseman is fighting Crane with a hatchet. We have to have a lot of trust to be fighting someone holding a hatchet who has no head. We also had to wipe out and bite the dust pretty hard sometimes. But our saying is "If it looks good on the screen, we'll go through anything."
I: How did you develop the storyline? (Without giving too much away)
JL: A lot of it just came to me. I started getting brainstorm ideas for it and just kind of pieced them together and revised it many time and made lots of changes. At first it wasn't very deep of a storyline and I wasn't happy with that so I sat down and thought carefully of some stuff I could add to it to make it not only horror/action but a comedy as well. So I would say this movie has about the most variety of genres out of all our movies so far.
I: How did you do the sound effects?
JL: Well, aside from the clanking of the swords, we did most of the sound effects of the stabbing and head chopping ourselves. You would think that from just telling you like that it would sound like they suck. Well, if you do them loud enough and believable and on cue, they sound pretty good. Sometimes we didn't even have to make the sounds. Like for a scene when the Horseman impales his hatchet into someones back, he threw it but it hit a bunch of dead tree branches (off-camera) and it sounded similar to a slash into someones back. But also I think the music helped a lot to make the scene look pretty cool.
I: Do you think you will make another sequel after Awake Solid?
JL: I'm not sure. It depends on how well this one turns out, since it will still take a while to be completed with this one. But I would love to make another one. Like I said this has been my favorite movie to produce so far. So I suppose if we get a good reaction from the audience and the crew is willing to do another one, it is a sure thing we will be making a sequel. I can't promise it will come anytime soon though.
This has been an interview with:
JAKE LYMAN
(director/actor/screenwriter of Awake Solid)
