6 Filmmaking Tips from James Wan

Features By Landon Palmer on September 11, 2013 | Be the First To Comment

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James Wan has turned out to be one of the most adaptive directorial
personalities in modern genre filmmaking. It didnt always seem like his career
would turn out this way. Wans Saw was an indie mega-hit, spawning the most
extensive horror franchise of the 21st century thus far. But Wan quickly distanced
himself from the films, attempting to establish himself as a genre auteur of
diverse skill sets. With his underwhelming one-two punch of Dead

Silence and Death Sentence in 2007, he failed to develop a reputation away

from the franchise that found continued success beyond him.
But with Insidious and The Conjuring (this summers sleeper hit and one of the
few pieces of Hollywood entertainment that actually entertained in the past few
months), Wan found himself the modern master of the supernatural haunted
house thriller, a horror sensibility miles away from the torture porn Wans
franchise inception was associated with. This weekend sees the successful
director helming his first sequel, Insidious Chapter 2, and Wan has signed on to
make the next entry in the recently revived Fast/Furious franchise. Point being,
Wan has proved himself against the limitations of the subgenre constraints he
helped create, showing that he is a filmmaker interested in appealing to mass
audiences through a variety of popular genres.
So heres some free film school (for fans and filmmakers alike) from the director
who forces us to ask how creepy dolls will fit into a movie about race cars and
muscle-y bald men.

Real Horror Lies in the Sound, Not the Image

This doesnt sound like something that the person who allegedly helped
popularize torture porn would say. We might not have thought about Wan as a
filmmaker who mastered that terror of the soundscape in 2004,
but Insidious and The Conjuring are nothing without their use of horrific sounds to
fill the minds gaps. The image has the power to display and depict horrific,
disturbing acts, but its sound that allows abject terror to enter the audiences
psyche beyond any gruesomeness (or lack thereof) displayed onscreen.
Wans point speaks to that old Hitchcock adage about letting audience
imagination do the extra work: suspense lies in the anticipation, not the reveal,
and the reveal is best built through sound rather than the image.

Be Sincere About Your Scares

Wan and his longtime writing partner Leigh Wannell explain in this interview how
theyre not fans of false scares, of creating arbitrary moments of suspense that
dont serve the overall arc of the horror story. This is particularly instructive in
movies too many false scares reveals the inherent falseness of being scared in

a movie theater, of being affected by what amounts to a series of flickering

images of staged events onscreen.
Maintaining the stakes of the film with the scares allows the audience to continue
investing in the story of the film, and thus become more affected by its moments
of fear. False scares are gimmicks, and the audience and filmmakers know it. So,
if you cant be sincere about your scares, you arent sincere about your movie,
and your audience wont treat it seriously in turn.

Independent Filmmaking Has Serious Constraints

Wan and Whannell are incredibly candid here about their lack of experience in
making their 2004 breakthrough film Saw, and how that (in their eyes and those
of others) affected the film negatively. I for one still think that the first Saw,
despite many of its sequels, is an interesting post-Seven thriller executed by
people with a strong sense of the genres history. But that said, its refreshing to
hear filmmakers so ready to admit that making movies, especially first movies, is
a learning process that the audience is, in effect, witnessing.
Wan has spoken numerous times about how Saw would have benefitted if the
inventively sparse $1M budget was something similarly modest, like $3-$5M. He
isnt disowning his own property, or claiming an entitlement to a film with higher
production values, but is simply explicating that, while independent filmmaking
does allow certain freedoms, it has notable constrictions in terms of resources
available, constrictions that may cause the filmmaker to compromise their vision.
This testimony is a helpful reminder that filmmaking exists within a pragmatic
economic space in which one is capable of realizing certain things and not
others; even when you have a hit like Saw, it can be a profound artistic
disappointment according to the standards of a filmmaker lacking in experience
and resources.

Dont Give In to Creativity at Gunpoint

It all started when James and I returned from the Sundance Film Festival, where
we had screened Saw to much success. Our representatives promptly told us
that we should get another deal for a film stitched up before it was released. It
was presented as a kind of insurance if Saw was a flop, we had another film to
fall back on. Seems logical. There was only one problem I didnt have any

ideas for a new film. I had barely been able to catch my breath throughout the
whole Sawexperience, let alone dream up another film idea. Instead of telling our
representatives that they had to wait until I came up with an idea I really liked
though, I locked myself in the bedroom of the crappy apartment we had rented in
Hollywood and tried to force an idea out like a particularly stubborn hangover
shit. It was creativity at gunpoint. If I could go back in time, I would politely tell
everyone to go fuck themselves, but back then.no. I paced and paced and
even took up smoking for a while, so stressed out was I.
Just as Wan attests to the limitations of independent filmmaking, Whannell
witnesses the ways in which commercial filmmaking has its limitations as well,
forcing the filmmaker to pursue a product that is, once again, not up to their
personal standards. Realizing a personal vision within these constraints, no
matter what industry (or lack thereof) one works in, is a notably difficult task.

Be Aware of How People See Your Work, Even When Its Not
Your Work
The flack I got for Saw is why I wanted to direct Insidious 2. I didnt direct any of
the Saw sequels, but people thought I did. When Insidious 2 came along, I said,
If anyones going to fuck up my franchise, it might as well be me. [Laughs.]
The Saw sequels went in a direction I wouldnt have gone in. With Insidious 2, I
wanted to push a potential franchise in the direction I thought it should go in.
Wan here talks about taking a hold of ones filmmaking brand, knowing that the
films one becomes associated with through advertising, promotion, and
discourse are not the same thing as the films one actually directs. While
admittedly not a passion project, Insidious Chapter 2 attempts to remedy the sin
Wan sees in the Saw sequels: the gap between his brand association and his
lack of contributive vision. No matter how the sequel to Insidious is received, he
can at least rightfully claim his creative property as executed in his own terms.
Wan also shared this frustration further in this 2010 interview:
Heres the irony: Ive made two other filmsnot including the recent one Leigh
and I just shot [Insidious]that are way more polished and definitely more
accomplished for me as a director. But because those movies do not hit in the
same way that Saw hit, people definitely recognize me for my first film. Thats

kind of tricky for me as a director, because in this town, youre as good as your
last movie I felt people ended up concentrating on certain things that were not
necessarily, for us, what the film was about, like the blood and guts of the trap.
Wan here wrestles with the fact that one grows as a filmmaker with subsequent
works in contrast to the fact that those subsequent works may not be received or
seen as constitutive of a filmmakers identity. Death Sentence may have been a
more polished directorial effort for Wan, but he was more closely associated
with Saw. It wasnt until the success of Insidious that other people saw him how
he saw himself: as a filmmaker genuinely and thoroughly interested in mastering
stylistic tools to build suspense, not creating cheap shocks for audiences with
gore.

Have a Good Time

One might not always think of the set of a horror film as one that should be
amicable and light, but a sense of trust and enjoyment could make for a
filmmaking community that gives their all. Also, this B-roll footage of Insidious is
just too damn cute, so I couldnt resist including it.

What Weve Learned

Wan might be the most learned young working filmmaker weve surveyed in this
series: hes made independent films and studio films, sleep hits and conspicuous
flops, hes about to make his mark on one of Hollywoods biggest franchises, and
he was even tagged to a franchise he had little to do with after its initial entry.
Wans career is, in many ways, an index for the trials and travails of working in
both independent and studio filmmaking. But the good thing is that his tale is also
a success story, and that true talent (i.e., being able to scare the bejeezus out of
people) can prevail over the aforementioned constraints. Wan is certainly a
filmmaker who has learned his own lessons over his career, and were the ones
who benefit from that knowledge.

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