A squadron of trained gunmen lay siege to a supermarket at closing time. What first appears to be a robbery soon takes on other worldly dimensions.

BD: How did Raiders come about? What inspired the film? Was it hard to get off the ground?

BR: Alien Raiders was a movie made by Raw Feed, who has an output deal with Warner brothers. There are three partners in Raw Feed: Dan Myrick, John Shiban, and Tony Krantz. In each round of Raw Feed, of which there have been two thusfar, each of the partners pitches ideas to Warner, and develops their project once WB gives them the greenlight.

So the development of Alien Raiders was all Dan Myrick, who was my main executive on the project. He developed the script originally with David Simkins, and when I was brought on as director (Dan didn’t want to direct this one because he was too busy with The Objective at the time), David passed the script on to Julia Fair (his wife had just given birth to twins, and he was… Preoccupied).

When Dan brought me on, it was about seven weeks before our first shooting day, the script needed to be brought down to budget, and I had about three weeks with Julia before the WGA strike started. Good times. Oh, and I knew we only had fifteen days to shoot the whole movie. No pressure.

So in a sense, it was the opposite of finding a script you love, nurturing it to perfection, and then finding a place to set it up. It was more like this: Here’s a script that we all know needs work, you have three weeks to get it where it needs to be while you’re in casting and preproduction. GO!

I knew that whatever I made, it was going to get released so it was a race to make that as cool as we could make it in the time allotted. Luckily, because of the WGA strike, we were able to bring a lot of great people into the fold and that really helped us in the long run.

BD: Was it always the intent to tell a story without going into a lot of exposition about the aliens or even the team?

BR: Before we even started the rewrite, Julia and I sat down and discussed the morphology of the aliens, the history of the team, and got our backstory straight. Once we had it all straight, we decided we didn’t want to have anyone talk about it too much. I wanted a feeling of being in this fight, not knowing what was coming next.

The Ritter character (Carlos Bernard) parses out information on a need-to-know basis to the hostages, and the other hostage-takers don’t really talk about the backstory. They do what people in crisis situations do: they talk about what needs to be done.

I suppose we could have explained more in the film and that would have been fine, but for my money I prefer to not know what’s coming, not fully understand what’s going to happen next. I think it makes the aliens and the overall situation scarier that way.

BD: One thing I wasn't sure on - how did the team know that their target was in the supermarket?

BR: Spooky, their spotter (played by the late Philip Newby), brings them there at the beginning of the film. The spotters have a semi-telepathic connection to the other infected, but all the spotters are drug addicts so it’s hard to know if their information is accurate. But the idea is that Spooky brought them there, and he knew that the King was one of the people in the store.

BD: I was surprised to learn the film was shot in HD - can you talk about the camera you used?

BR: Walt Lloyd (the director of photography) and I discussed many cameras at the time. The RED ONE (which only had like 25 bodies in the world when we were shooting), the Silicone Imaging Mini (used on Slumdog Millionaire), the Sony F-23 and of course the Sony F-900. We even talked about shooting film, as Rest Stop 2 was shot on 35mm, so it was doable within our budget (although our producers were trying to convince us to shoot some kind of HD). Walt’s an old-school film DP, but unlike a lot of film people he’s not even slightly afraid to shoot HD. So we looked at a bunch of cameras, and Walt really chose the one we used, the Panasonic HPX3000.

It’s really an amazing camera. It’s got a full 1080P sensor like the Sony F-900, but I’ve always personally been more impressed with the color palette of Panasonic’s cameras over Sony’s. Also, it’s a P2 camera, so our workflow was 100% tapeless. I think that speeds things up quite a bit, and there’s zero compromise in terms of picture quality. The codec that the camera uses is called AVC-INTRA, which I’m told is roughly the same quality as D-5. And the beauty of it is that we were able to edit at that quality, so we were looking at the final product the whole way through.

That all being said, the best thing about any camera is the man or woman behind it, and every day I would ask myself, “why did Walt agree to shoot this?” Walt is a DP of the highest caliber, and he brings his experience, expertise, and care to everything he does. I mean, he shot Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Kafka, Short Cuts, Pump Up the Volume, and Private Parts to name but a few of his films, in addition to having been camera operator on the original The Hitcher. He knows how to create a mood, how to create a visual arc to the story, and how to make it work in-camera as opposed to using all manner of post tricks to sell the shot, and he stays there until it gets done right. I can’t say enough good things about Walt and what he did that made the final film infinitely better than it has any right to be.

BD: Was the supermarket real or a set?

BR: We shot the movie in a closed Von’s in Inglewood, CA kind of near LAX. It was empty except it had empty shelves, freezers, and register aisles. It was entirely too big and completely white, so we had to build a massive wall that became the left side of the store, we had to paint it to give it that “tired old store” look and stock the shelves. For inspiration, our production designer Frank Bollinger took a lot of pictures of Beachs, a real supermarket in Downey where we were considering shooting.

The cool thing was that each room in the movie is a real room in the store. The freezer, the storage area, the break room, etc. We had to dress it all up, obviously, but if you were building a set from scratch I doubt it would have felt as “lived in” as the real thing.

BD: There are so many sequel/prequel possibilities due to the lack of extensive exposition - do you have any plans for another film?

BR: As with Rest Stop, I think our chances of making a sequel rest entirely on how well the movie does. That being said, I do have a concept for a sequel that I would love to pitch WB if they decide to consider it. Julia really invented a cool concept for an alien infestation here, one that comes via meteor rather than via spaceship, and I think there’s real potential for a story like this. Cross your fingers.

BD: Are we ever going to see Burkittsville 7 or Shadow of the Blair Witch released on DVD in the States?

BR: That rests in Lion’s Gate’s hands, and nothing would make me happier. I’m especially proud of Burkittsville 7, and I think people would genuinely dig it. When we did the specials, Artisan released them together on VHS (DVD hadn’t fully taken off yet), and I was sad to see that they didn’t include them in The Blair Witch Experience DVD box set.

I think that, since we’re coming up on the 10th anniversary of BWP, it would be cool to do a re-release of the DVD. Zubi Mohammed made a documentary about the movie with a lot of rare behind-the-scenes footage of us making it, etc., and I think Lion’s Gate owns that too. Maybe if they got a lot of pressure they would explore the possibility. We’ll see.

BD: What’s next? More Horror? Can you give details?

BR: I’m always afraid to give details away, lest I look like a jerk if they don’t pan out, so feel free to call me a jerk if none of these happen. I am working with BWP producers Robin Cowie and Gregg Hale and writer Mark Patton on a script called World Famous, a mistaken-identity-serial-killer film which I have high hopes for, but we haven’t gotten the greenlight yet. I’m also working with writer Bob DeRosa (the upcoming Five Killers) and producer Alicia Conway (Rite) on a project called Oblivion, which is a kind of metaphysical thriller. I have a couple other horror scripts, that I’d love to set up – one’s a monster movie called Coyote and the other is a kind of slasher film where political pundits are the victims called Spin.

I think everything I do is grounded in horror, as that’s the genre I have always loved the most. Making Alien Raiders was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream to make a horror film (even if it skews a little sci-fi), and I hope I get to make more!