After years of acclaim in front of the camera and writing in the horror genre, Kate Siegel is finally making her directorial debut with V/H/S/Beyond‘s “Stowaway”, and bringing Alanah Pearce along with her. Siegel is best known for her frequent collaborations with her husband, Mike Flanagan, having first appeared in his 2013 horror movie Oculus before going on to hold bigger roles in Gerald’s Game, Netflix’s The Haunting anthology series, Midnight Mass and The Fall of the House of Usher. Beyond her work with Flanagan, Siegel also led the twisty Netflix thriller Hypnotic and had supporting roles in The Wrath of Becky and HBO’s The Time Traveler’s Wife.
Pearce, on the other hand, is best known for her work in the world of video game journalism, having begun in her home country of Australia by working for close to a dozen outlets, including Impulse Gamer and the BBC, among others. Upon moving to the US, she expanded her profile both in journalism and game development, having worked for both IGN and Rooster Teeth, and being a consulting writer for Sony’s Santa Monica Studio, including the award-winning God of War: Ragnarök. In terms of acting, Pearce has largely worked in the voiceover world, providing voices for Gears 5 and both her voice and likeness for Cyberpunk 2077‘s cast.
In V/H/S/Beyond‘s “Stowaway” segment, Pearce stars as Halley, a young conspiracy theorist and aspiring investigative journalist who heads to the Mojave Desert to film a documentary chronicling the various reports of hovering lights in the sky. As she interviews locals with a variety of stories about secondhand experiences and direct contact, Halley suddenly discovers and races after a set of lights, with the source being that of an alien spaceship, which she eagerly begins investigating. As she ventures inside, though, Halley finds she may be in over her head.
Ahead of the movie’s premiere, Screen Rant interviewed Kate Siegel and Alanah Pearce to discuss V/H/S/Beyond‘s “Stowaway” segment, Siegel making her directorial debut and working with her husband Mike Flanagan to develop the script and story, Pearce landing her biggest live-action role yet and how she pulled from her own career as a female gaming journalist to explore the story’s themes of ambition, and how Siegel worked with cinematographer Michael Fimognari to capture the feeling of space on a low budget, including with a floating camera.
Siegel Nearly Passed On Directing For V/H/S/Beyond Twice
“I was a little scared…”
Screen Rant: So excited to chat with you both for “Stowaway” in V/H/S/Beyond. I loved it, it’s one of my favorite segments of this franchise. Kate, I’d love to start with you. Congrats on making your directorial debut with this, I know Mike wrote this, but how did the idea for this first come about?
Kate Siegel: Luckily, I don’t get a lot of incoming calls these days for work, but this was one that just came out of the blue one day and landed in my inbox, and I was hesitant, because having lived with a director for most of my adult life, I am aware of how much work it is, and how much of your heart you put into it, and how much preparation is required. I was a little scared, so I may have started with no, and then the call came back again, and my husband and my manager both were like, “This is the time you should really do this. This is worth it.” So, I dove in, as I often do, without looking and kind of never looked back.
I knew that when I was talking about what I wanted to explore, I knew that my favorite movies in this space are The Fly and Contact, and one of my favorite Stephen King short stories is The Jaunt. I knew I wanted something in that world. I liked the female protagonist trying to prove something, I liked ambition. I liked the fact that the terrible thing that happens is that everybody tries their best. I love the concept of relativity, when it comes to time, all of those things. As I would have this conversation with Mike and just kind of bounce ideas off each other, he went away and in about 20 minutes he came back and said, “What about this, blah, blah?” And it was Stowaway.
Pearce Saw The Opportunity To Star In The Film As “Like I Was Taking A Course” In Acting
Siegel Also Had A Unique Way She Approached Her Star With The Offer
So, Alanah, I’d love to turn to you next. I know you have done some voice acting in recent games, but this, I feel like, is really your first big role in live action. What was it about the script and working with Kate that really drew you to want to be a part of it?
Alanah Pearce: It’s kind of a no-brainer when Mike Flanagan writes something and Kate Siegel is directing it and asks you to do it. You’d be crazy to say no, in my opinion. So, more than anything, I wanted to have the opportunity to work with somebody, especially in the horror space. Like you said, this is my first significant live-action role, and I had access to Kate at all times, meaning that I had access to a brilliant actress who is so well known in the exact space that we’re working in that, for me, it was almost like I was taking a course. [Chuckles]
I got to be like, “This feels dumb. How does it look? Why this?” And it was so wonderful to have access to all of that expertise and knowledge and, also, comfort. I was really comfortable with Kate, so I didn’t feel any judgment or any pressure. I wasn’t nervous, because no part of me was worried that she wouldn’t have my back, and that she didn’t also want to make the best thing possible. So, it was just, “Why would I ever say no to that circumstance of things?” But the script itself, I think, is a really fun one to explore, because it’s so relatable.
There’s so many human elements in it. Obviously, it’s in a sci-fi setting, we have a sci-fi paintjob. But I think we can all really strongly relate to needing to prove yourself, wanting to prove yourself against people who doubt you, and what you’re willing to lose to be able to prove yourself. There are a lot of ways that I could say that I’ve related to that in all of my work in gaming over the years with many people who say girls don’t play video games. There’s so much of that in my whole career. So, it’s just a really relatable human story that obviously just kind of ends in, I’ll just say, a tragic way. It just ends a little sad.
Kate Siegel: Yeah, I was so lucky to have Alanah. We were at a game night with a bunch of our friends, and I just kind of sidled up to her, because Alanah, if you know her, has this very unique charisma, which is entirely her own. There’s an energy to her in a room that draws you to her, but she’s not particularly bombastic, which is a very LA trait of actors. They’re like, “Yay, yes!” And I was just sort of staring at her, and I was like, “I think it has to be Alanah.” I just sort of walked up to her weirdly and was like, “Hey, you want to be in my movie?” [Laughs]
Alanah Pearce: You really did walk up to me super weirdly. It was the most Hollywood party thing you could have done. I was leaning against a counter, and you just came and leaned next to me. [Laughs]
Kate Siegel: To your credit, you just said, “Yeah, sure!”
Alanah Pearce: I think it was like, “Are you sure?” I really wanted to be sure that I wouldn’t mess it up. I was really like, as long as you think I can do it, and that I was conscious of not wanting to take an opportunity away from someone else, as well.
Kate Siegel: But it was very, very clear to me after the first take of the first scene of Alanah, I texted some of my friends who are actors, and her friends, and I was like, “Y’all better quit. Alanah’s going to come get you.” It was clear that she was extremely talented from the get-go, and very directable, and so game to just collaborate. I was really, really impressed.
Siegel & Pearce Both Wanted To Highlight The Value (& Danger) Of Ambition
“I love putting ambitious women on camera…”
I actually did want to touch on that note of ambition, as well, for both of you. Alanah, if you’d like to start because, like you said, you come from the game writing world, and that is one that’s very driven by passion and ambition. I’d love to hear how much you pulled from your own experience with that for your character, as well as Kate, bringing this story to life, how much you pulled from your own ambition as an actor to really imbue that into this character?
Alanah Pearce: For me, like I said, I’ve definitely had doubts my entire career. When I started writing about video games in magazines, I was 17 years old, and back then, not as many women did play video games. There’s still doubts on women who play video games now, but there were tons of scrutiny back then. So, the thing that I latched onto that, I think, let me find the human in the performance was thinking about how I could relate to that specifically in the way that I do relate to.
My whole career, I’ve had people tell me that I wouldn’t make it, that people don’t want to hear girls talk about video games. They don’t want to hear women review video games. “What do you know about video games? You’re playing video games for male attention,” despite the fact that I’ve been playing games since I was four years old. So, it was very easy to just put the spin of — I’m even self-critical of how much I sometimes worry that I do things in order to prove that I can do them rather than because I necessarily want to.
I think a lot of the ridiculous amounts of work I’ve done in the games industry has been so that I could keep saying, “I did it again, though. Watch me.” And sometimes, you have to check yourself on that to be like, “Am I doing this because I enjoyed it, or am I doing it because I need to prove that I can do it?” But I think we all relate to different pieces of that throughout just every day. You’ll face something where you feel someone doubting you, and you feel like you really have to put that to somebody.
I think that’s such a human experience. So, it was really easy for me to just take my particular circumstance and apply that to the role. But, like I said, I think there’s something in that for absolutely all of us. I’d be surprised if a lot of people didn’t find that relatable, even though she’s a conspiracy theorist. Conspiracy theorists are really just people who want to be validated. That’s really what it is, and I think we all need that at the end of the day.
Kate Siegel: I love putting ambitious women on camera. I love playing ambitious women, I love writing for ambitious women. I think it is something that is squashed in women quite a bit. And even in my career as an actress, there’s this pervasive thought, “Well, if you want it too much, you won’t get the part. If they can feel how bad you want it, then you can’t have it.” And I hate that.
What I want to do and work with are people who want it really badly. I don’t want people on my set who are sort of like half-a–ed about this project or any project. And maybe that’s a protective stance, because I do so badly want to create, but I don’t think ambition or desire are bad traits to have as a creative person, an artist, a scientist, a mother, anything. So, I just wanted to highlight that, and let it be known that as I plant my flag into what will be my tiny little directing mountain, that part of that is ambition.
Alanah Pearce: I love that you made something where the ambition turns out really negatively. [Laughs]
Kate Siegel: Yeah. [Chuckles] Listen, there’s a bad side to it. I’ve always been interested in those people who would walk into the spaceship. Because there are people in the audience who go, “I would never.” And there are people in the audience going, “I totally would.” And I want to sit with the people who totally would.
Siegel Took Every Step Possible To Make Space Feel Real In Stowaway (Despite A Small Budget)
“…I believed in my heart that the V/H/S audience want to come along for the ride…”
Kate, I want to turn to you to look at the visual approach to this film, because the one thing I’ve always loved about the V/H/S/ franchise is how well they let each of their filmmakers experiment with looks and styles. How did you land on what you wanted this segment to look like?
Kate Siegel: Well, I knew from the script that I was handed that in the back half of this, we have to go into space. [Chuckles] So, we have to go into space, and I also knew that the budget was quite small, and I knew that going into it, as well. So, I spent a lot of time thinking about, first of all, how I was going to make a camera float. It’s a very tough thing to do. We didn’t use a video camera. We used an Alexa, which is a big, heavy-bodied camera. And then, I had two different lens packs, one was an infrared lens that I needed, because I was going to light the set entirely with infrared light.
Let me rewind. So, I knew I needed to make it look like space, so I spoke to a lot of people who were much more experienced than I was. And I said, “If you needed to make a camera float, how would you do it?” Now, a lot of people said things like a bungee, and we talked about switching to a lighter camera than that thing, and it wasn’t quite working. And then, when Michael Fimognari agreed to come on as my DP and my cinematographer, the first thing he said to me was, “Have you ever seen how infrared light behaves on camera?” And I said, “No, what can you show me?” And he’s like, “I can’t show you anything, it hasn’t been done before.” Because Dune doesn’t overlay, and Nope doesn’t overlay. But again, those are huge budget movies, so their infrared starts with a VFX kind of domino chain.
So, he took me to Area Rentals to do a camera test, and we started to look at how infrared behaved on cameras, pure infrared with no filter and no color correction. And I was in love with it. The lens flares were so bizarre, and the way that you could have all of your overhead lights on, so you have a fully open pupil, and then you can turn the lights off, but the light quality doesn’t change on camera, but the pupil will contract. So, you can practically do the effect of the pupil widening, which I just loved. Then, I had to convince a series of executives that this was okay, and they’re like, “Well, what can you show me?” And I’m like, “It doesn’t exist. No one’s done it. I’d like to be the first one to do this for a short period of time.”
And then, I had to go find a bunch of ophthalmologists and be like, “Hey, am I allowed to shine this light at people?” [Chuckles] And we did all of that, so we had that set. We had, “Okay, this will feel alien, the light will feel alien, and there’s like 10 infrared lights in all of California.” We ordered all of them, and then we got a bunch of that strip lighting, and we were like, “All right, here we go.” And then, Ari also had something called a Trinity Head, which is a gyroscopic crane head that we put on a steadicam operator. So, once we saw that move, it could pan, it could 360, and it’s controlled at a monitor, so we could slowly move it. It comes with its own operator, so Fimognari was standing next to me, and we were making it twist and turn.
When I saw those two things come together, I was like, “We got it. We’re in space.” And we did a couple of pretty cheap Twilight Zone tricks to make you believe Alanah was floating, and I believed in my heart that the V/H/S audience want to come along for the ride. They’re willing to suspend, so I was like, “I just need to give them enough that they buy in.” Of course, there will always be people being like, “Well, her hair would have,” or, “her clothes would have.” And I’m like, “Yes, absolutely, but I want you and I to go on this journey together in our minds, that we have created a floating VHS camera.” and I’m very happy with the way it turned out in that section.
Stowaway’s Final Setpiece Required Two Stages Of Prosthetics For Pearce
“There was one day where I was like half accidentally being choked…”
Alanah, we can’t get into spoilers, so I won’t ask the full thing, but you do have some prosthetics at some point in this segment, and I’d love to hear what it was like having all of those put on you, and then seeing them in the mirror for the final effect?
Alanah Pearce: So it came in two stages. Again, also trying not just talk about spoilers, but having them put on, for the ones that were on me, super chill. [Chuckles] The girls who were doing that were really nice. I was just learning my monologues for the next day. That part’s really easy. You just kind of sit in a chair and people touch you. The second component of that is actually that I have to sort of get into something that is prebuilt. Again, trying to avoid spoilers, and that was very uncomfortable. [Laughs]
There was one day where I was like half accidentally being choked, and a second day where I had trouble breathing. [Chuckles] Some of that was complicated, for sure, but I was so excited to see how it was going to look. So, even when I was in those positions, I was just like, “I can’t wait to see how it turns out.” And then, I walk out, and I finally get to see it after we’ve done the take, and I was like, “Oh my God, that’s awful!” It was so exciting to see, so definitely very uncomfortable, but it’s so worth it.
Such an important thing for us to end up doing, and it was really cool to see that whole process of how that all came together, as well, because I did see some pre-production shots of how Kate wanted it to look, and then some in-production shots. And how it ended up looking was such a cool thing to watch from the sidelines, to watch the effects team put that together over time, slowly. And I had to have molds made and all that stuff.
It was a really cool, just totally creative part of the job that I’m not at all familiar with. It was just really, really interesting to see it come full circle. Whereas for me, it was just sort of sit there and stand in something. I had probably the easier job, even if it was very uncomfortable. [Chuckles]
About V/H/S/Beyond
V/H/S/BEYOND, the seventh installment of the V/H/S franchise, will feature six new bloodcurdling tapes, placing horror at the forefront of a sci-fi-inspired hellscape.
V/H/S/Beyond
begins streaming on Shudder on October 4!
Source: Screen Rant Plus
