Interview with The Darkness Within director Dom Portalla

Yesterday I posted a review on indie flick The Darkness Within by director Dom Portalla. This was a psychological thriller that scored some seriously high points with ETMC. If you have not read the review on that film, click here.

My guest on today's edition of ETMC is a talented young man who directed his first short My Suburban Hell at age 17 in high school and produced his next short Be Kind Rewind while studying broadcasting at The New England Institute of Art. Upon graduation, Dom Portalla went on to write, direct and produce his first full length feature Duality. Several directed shorts later, Dom created the film that we are going to discuss today.

So without further ado, please welcome to The Man-Cave, Dom Portalla.





ETMC: Hi Dom and thanks for stopping by. Do you like how I introduced as if you were coming onto a late night talk show?

Dom: Genius, sir. Naturally, I’d be the guy who trips and faceplants as I walk to shake the host’s hand, so this actually works out better and spares me the embarrassment.


ETMC: Ok so Dom. I absolutely loved The Darkness Within. I won't give anything away, but it certainly was not what I expected and I mean that with the highest flattery. A real brain tickler that I thought about well after I popped it out of my DVD player. So I want to ask you where the idea for this film came from?

Dom: When I was in college, I had been working on a modern re-imagining of a classic Edgar Allen Poe short story. The idea was to make a short film, probably only 20-30 minutes long, which would take place mostly in one apartment and focus mainly on voyeurism. I had about half of a script written and a ton of notes before I ended up putting it on the shelf to work on Duality, which became my first feature. A few years later, I’m standing outside my apartment talking to my neighbor. In the midst of making small talk, he drops this really creepy comment on me about always seeing me through my windows (I was living in a basement apartment at the time). It immediately triggered a bunch of ideas and made me revisit some of the material I had written previously. From that, The Darkness Within was born.


ETMC: I watched some of your shorts in the Special Features section on the DVD and noticed a lot of same players in those shorts also starred in TDW. How long have you and certain cast members been working together?

Dom: I met both Ken Flott and Jimmy Scanlon during the audition process for “Duality”. Jimmy has since been in several of my short flicks and they're just really easy and fun guys to work with. After shooting together so often with both of them, we’ve developed a strong shorthand and we can pretty much speak to each other in half-formed sentences and still know exactly what we’re asking of one another, which works great in fast-moving, guerilla-filmmaking circumstances.





Sean Pierce also auditioned for Duality and ended up with a small role that was unfortunately cut out of the film. I’ve kept in touch with him ever since, hoping to work with him again. He’s one of the funniest and most unpretentious people I’ve ever met who is shaping up into a really great actor and a great stand-up comedian as well.

Michelle Romano actually worked as an extra on Duality during a nightclub scene. She was passed the Darkness script from a mutual acquaintance and was a big fan of the “Ashley” role. She’s an incredibly hard-working actress and puts a lot of herself into the characters she’s played.

Stephanie Maheu was someone I met for the first time during the Darkness auditions. In the script, when we’re introduced to the Jordan Shelby character she’s described as “a tiny, sonic-boom” which is a pretty fitting description of Steph in real life. She’s incredibly raw and funny and has brought a high level of energy to everything I’ve worked with her on.

David Wilson came in as one of the first people to audition for the Detective Winters role and we knew immediately he was the right guy for it. He’s one of those actors who just has a great voice. We shot all of his scenes in one day, but he’s definitely someone I’d like to work with again in the future. He actually went on to do a great indie grindhouse flick called Nun Of That, which you should try and get your hands on if you can.


ETMC: I am a film tech geek and wanted to compliment you on your fantastic cinematography. How did you create the look of your film? That blue-ish, dream-like appearance for a majority of your shots.





Dom: Thanks very much. There are several scenes in the film that I call the "blue scenes”, because they take place at night and are completely lit with 85 watt blue floodlights. The idea is since you can’t shoot in total darkness, the “blue” effect is supposed to give you the feeling that you’re in an unlit space late at night. I’ve seen it done in movies before and I sort of wanted those scenes in particular to have a very surreal, dream-like quality to them.

There are a few other scenes where the levels have been adjusted in post to give the films color palate a slightly washed-out shift towards blue. It felt like it would be instep with the tone of the movie and just with the genre in general. Ironically, I just read this article on Cracked.com the other day about the unspoken rule that horror films should all look blue and laughed my ass off at how bang-on it was (http://bit.ly/duGPYr).

In terms of the cinematography in general, the one thing I really tried to do was give the film a documentary feel to it. There’s a lot of handheld camerawork that always seems to be drifting and finding its focus. So much of the movie is also shot in extreme close-up with the intention of making a majority of the shots feel claustrophobic. I wanted the audience to constantly feel like the walls were closing in on these characters.

ETMC: What was the most difficult aspect to completing this film?

Dom: Well, in an ideal situation the film would have been scheduled for something like 25-28 days of shooting that would all be done consecutively. When you’re making a movie for $3,000 and no one is being paid, everyone has to hold down a job and shooting then has to be adjusted to multiple rotating schedules. That sort of interrupts momentum. Also, we had an incredibly small crew. Most days it was just Rohn Cinelli (who recorded sound and acted as the grip) and myself behind the camera. If we were lucky we’d have one or two additional people there to maybe mark shots and stay on book. Being that the film is mostly shot in such tight confines, it lent itself to those kinds of conditions. However, when your sound guy has to light & mark a shot and the sole camera operator has to balance DP responsibilities with directing and working with the actors, it all ends up being a pretty big juggling act.


ETMC: I read somewhere that most of this was filmed in your current apartment complex. Is that true? And if so, is there really a spider infestation problem?

Dom: Yeah, the film was shot in the apartment I was living in at the time. I’ve since moved. The spider infestation was absolutely based in reality (in fact, Chad’s “spider-warrior” methods were not all dissimilar from my own). The idea of the spiders was always supposed to be a metaphor for the invasion of privacy that is taking place, but a lot of the comedic elements from that came directly from real life situations my girlfriend and I were dealing with in that house.


ETMC: Nowadays it seems that filmmakers love to shoot multiple endings. Did you film any additional endings or just the one in your released version?





Dom: I’ll tread lightly here. The ending of the film was always conceptualized the way it is seen in the flick. However, in the writing process there were different versions with minor variations of how we got there. Earlier drafts had gorier details, which I opted to tone down. I’m a big believer in implying horror where you can. There is a jump cut in the last act between a line of dialogue and an action that I think is the scariest part of the movie and it’s only effective because of what you don’t see.

The biggest compliments I’ve gotten on the film have come in the form of theories about the ending. One of my favorite films of all time (and one of the biggest inspirations for Darkness is The Shining. The last shot of that movie is so ambiguous and I’ve always admired how it leaves the audience with more questions then answers. In our script, there is one additional shot in the ending scene (that we purposely opted not to shoot that day) which would’ve tied the movie up with a tighter bow. As it stands, I think the flick ends on a pretty ominous note and can be interpreted differently, which is something I’m really proud of.


ETMC: What is the current status for distribution? Are people going to be able to purchase their copy soon?

Dom: Right now, we’re currently waiting to hear back from several festivals on the status of our submission. Regardless of how those turn out, though, we do plan on producing a short run of Special Edition DVD’s which will be available to purchase on our website. We’re hoping to have these out by mid to late November.


ETMC: Anything in the pipeline, Dom? Any projects coming out you want to discuss? Maybe a sequel?

Dom: I’m actually just about finished with the first draft of a feature comedy called Saint Joey, which we’ll be trying to raise funding for at some point early next year. This is the big project on the decks right now because it is going to require a much larger budget and crew then we’ve ever worked with and is something we believe could be a much more commercial then what we’ve done in the past. In between it's financing and pre-production, we’re also planning on producing a short film called Nicky, which is based on a short story by Ken Flott (Mr. Reed). Ken wrote this story back in 2006 and it’s a very haunting piece about a guy who’s never been able to deal with the abduction of his young brother. I personally think the source material is so strong that it deserves a feature film in its own right, but as a short flick it's something we can do quickly and even more inexpensively then what Darkness was produced for. So please keep a look out for updates on both of these projects over the upcoming year.


ETMC: Well I am looking forward to checking those out when they happen. Thanks for visiting The Man-Cave, Dom, and hope you come back whenever you have another project you want to promote.

Dom: Thanks very much for the opportunity and for taking an interest in our film!


If you are lucky enough to get your hands on a copy of Dom Portalla's The Darkness Within, you will really enjoy an example of blockbuster storytelling that can come from a low budget film. And you will have a great chance to do just that when ETMC holds a giveaway starting tomorrow where readers can win a copy of The Darkness Within. So make sure to check back in tomorrow for your chance to enter and win.