Behind the Couch

BTC: Caitlin McIntosh delivers a fantastic performance of great conviction – and conveys so much with basically no dialogue. What made you decide to cast her in the role of Laura? How did you go about assembling the rest of the cast and crew? WW : Caitlin - what a find she was. She came from the main agency here, Talent Plus, and she actually came in to read for the part of a 17 year old girl, but when she walked in, she CLEARLY wasn't 17!! She was very healthy and buxom and in her 20's. What had happened was that she had a very old headshot that hadn't been updated, so she came in dressed like a kid, her hair all poofy. We immediately gave her the pages for the Laura audition and had her read for that part instead. After auditioning all of the actresses, I reviewed the tapes over and over and just kept coming back to Caitlin. I met with her again at a coffee shop to talk, and this time she knew what she was going for - she showed up with her hair down, and when she took...

BTC: Why do you think the vampire is such an enduring figure throughout cinema? WW : Just like the mythological creatures they are based on, the fictional vampires we create are very adaptable. The vampire is one of those cinematic images that has done well with updates and re-makes. The basic story and character are solid, so every time there is an advance in sound or colour or technology, an update works very well. Vampires have gone from being talky melodramas to Technicolor blood fests and then more recently, action vehicles and teen romances, and we've even seen minority vampires. Vampires aren't " Citizen Kane " or " Casablanca " - they can be re-worked again and again without offense to classic cinema, constantly updating with the times and changing. " Interview with the Vampire " is a brilliant practical example of this theory, a story of how a vampire changed and adapted over time, with the inclusion of many different architectural an...

Shadowland is director Wyatt Weed’s feature debut. A strikingly original vampire film, it combines gothic horror and tragic romance with Buffy inspired action. It played at Belfast’s first annual Yellow Fever Independent Film Festival last August and went on to win the award for Best Director. I recently caught up with Wyatt to chat about filmmaking, the allure of vampires, shooting on a shoestring and the desire to create something really original with his feature debut… Behind the Couch: How did the idea/story for Shadowland come about? What inspired it? Wyatt Weed : I was walking through LA one night and I passed by a construction site. There was this enormous dark hole in the ground. There happened to be about three or four statues of angels on nearby buildings and steps, and they all seemed to be watching over this deep pit. My mind goes racing off, and I thought, "What are those angels keeping watch for? What on Earth is down in that pit?" This inspired the ima...

2009 Dir. Wyatt Weed While renovating an old church, construction workers unearth an ancient stone cross and what appears to be a wooden stake. Removing the stake from the ground they inadvertently revive Laura (Caitlin McIntosh), an amnesiac vampire who crawls out of the earth and sets off across the city trying to remember who she is and what happened to her. As she desperately tries to piece together her tragic past, she is pursued by the mysterious Julian Hess (Jason Contini) who is aware of her true nature and hell-bent on sending her back to the grave… Shot on a miniscule budget over several weeks, Shadowland marks the feature length debut of writer/director Wyatt Weed and was recently screened at Belfast’s first Yellow Fever Independent Film Festival where it received an award for Best Director. The film unfolds as the epic tale of a woman who has suffered a terrible trauma and seeks to uncover her past to piece together her life. The fact that she is actually a latent va...