What happened with Final Destination was that the movie was in post-production for a long time and I think they changed a lot of the deaths, so a lot of those things were last-minute additions. Everything we shot is in the movie and it's all been designed. We didn't change anything. It's been a year of making those things happen, exactly as we had pictured them.
Paul W. S. AndersonThere's something very terrifying about that and very primal about it. It's my belief that what horror does for people is that it provides that primal fear that, when we were wild hunter-gatherers, we had as part of our natural lives because maybe something was trying to hunt and gather you as well. We don't have that anymore in life and that's one of the things that horror films and action films provide for us.
Paul W. S. AndersonI'm a very collaborative person, so that's not the way I work any way. Once VW got over the idea that I was going to blow their cars up, then we shot the thing really fast and it came out really good. Like I said, it won a bunch of awards and that really was the start of working in commercials.
Paul W. S. AndersonCommercials are also any opportunity to meet new crew and work with new kind of rigs. You can explore working with different people without having to make the full commitment of having to do an entire feature film with them and see whether you like them. Also it's great for testing out new equipment, like on the last spot we just did, I used a lot of drone technology, really cutting edge drone stuff, more than I've ever done before, and it worked out really really well.
Paul W. S. AndersonWhen we wrapped Resident Evil, we were a 3D movie, but it was no big deal. And then, Avatar came out and the whole of Hollywood was like, "Look at these grosses! 3D is huge. Let's all be 3D!" We just got on with doing what we were doing, which was making what we think is a really quality, kick-ass 3D movie, and we'll really be the first live-action 3D movie of the year.
Paul W. S. AndersonI think people were a little nervous to work with me to start with, because the movies I've done they thought that I wouldn't be able to control myself at all. I'd have to blow up the cars or something like that, and I think also people are scared of working sometimes with feature directors, because they feel like you're not going to listen to their opinions.
Paul W. S. Anderson