The Final Destination Q & A
WATCH THE TRAILER FOR THE FINAL DESTINATION HERE!
Since making the film, do you walk around wondering
about potential hazards around you?
SHANTEL VANSANTEN:
Sure, like on set, especially
when you're shooting and thinking about death every day.
There were always "Mouse Trap" types of things. You'd be
like, 'Okay, if the back of the truck fell and then it hit that,
that would shoot up to the power line and then I'd be electrocuted
and die.'
BOBBY CAMPO: You can't help it. It's
something that I'm doing it literally twenty-four/seven on
set. So I have to take it off set. You just don't
stop. You just practice, it's not fun. But you can't
stop doing it at the same time.
Was this a fun horror film to work on?
BOBBY CAMPO:
I think that it was definitely more fun
than any movie I've done so far, just with David involved.
David Ellis is a hoot on set. You never know what you're
going to have every day; it's so fun.
SHANTEL VANSANTEN: And it's not a typical
horror movie. It's not being chased after with a mask and a
knife. It's death. It's something that's
intangible. You can figure it out; there are no rules.
There are some slasher kind of moments.
BOBBY CAMPO:
Well, there are slasher moments, but
there's not a guy with a mask. It's something that could be
in any corner of the room; it could be anywhere. You don't
really know what to expect. That creates quite a level of
uncertainty because it's not just one person that I need to avoid,
it's almost everything that I need to avoid. So, a pencil
actually can kill you in a way. You could trip and fall onto
it. And somehow we could find a way to do it in this movie,
I'm sure.
Did you and the filmmakers feel you needed to up the
ante on a movie like this?
SHANTEL VANSANTEN:
Well, besides the fact that it's
the fourth one in the franchise, yeah, you do; you have to make
sure that the deaths are bigger and better than anything else and
they exceed everyone's expectations, because these are the kind of
movies where you go home and you start thinking, because there are
endless possibilities. I've talked to Craig before whenever I was
on set and said, 'How do you come up with really sick stuff like
this?' I guess he does tons of research and finds these sick,
gory ways that people truly have died. And they probably give
them a little bit more entertainment value. But he finds
things that have actually happened to people. It plays on
normal fears that we all have, and death being the culprit for it
all.
What about shooting in 3D? Was it a challenging
experience for the actors?
BOBBY CAMPO:
Well, I think this stuff is a bit
forgiving. These cameras were so bad ass. I've never
used anything like this before. We got to be the guinea pig
in a way. So, for us, the big difference was blocking.
Slightly. There wasn't a lot of it. You have to be
precise on almost anything, especially with digital. But with
this one, we would have to create slightly unnatural blocking
arrangements because it would be almost more theatrical. You
would have to create a three-shot; you wouldn't just want to shoot
two people. You want to create a depth of field. And
that's the great thing about this movie. It's not like the 3D
of the past where it's a painted background and then you have
certain elements coming out-everything comes out.
SHANTEL VANSANTEN: It's how you would see a
normal room. Even for us, even though we were in the movie,
you're a participant in it; you're a person sitting on the couch
next to the person on screen, or in the beginning in the front of
the room by the door and you're looking into the room. But
you're always a participant in all of it.
What was the best scene to do for you? The race
scene?
BOBBY CAMPO:
There were so many favorites of mine to
do. The racetrack was fun to do because I did it in a way
that I was so in my own head-like it was two different scenes-like
I got to experience all this stuff and they were experiencing
something different. But then the escalator was a blast to
film with Shantel. She was so intense.
SHANTEL VANSANTEN: People think about that
all the time, and I guess there was a little girl that it really
did happen to. When Craig told me that, I was like, 'Wow,
that kind of brings that into perspective.' (Laughs)
That, for me, was the most intense scene. There was one day
when we were shooting it and I kind of lost it. You're in
these scenes where you think, 'I'm never going to understand what
this truly feels like because it just doesn't happen to that many
people, these kind of rare circumstances. How would I feel,
what would I do, what would I think?' And then you get on
that escalator in the middle of a mall; you're three stories high,
Bobby's holding my hand-and as safe as I feel, because David Ellis
is a stunt man forever, there's still part of you that's this raw
adrenaline and you're like, 'What was the last thing I said to my
mom? Oh, my God, what if my dad never sees me get
married?' There are these crazy thoughts that I never
envisioned would come to my mind. You kind of have your own
mortality in check.
Did you think of your own reason why your character is
having these visions? What did you go with in your head as to
why he's having these?
BOBBY CAMPO:
I really played it to the fact that he
doesn't know why this is happening. I wasn't going to try to
come up with my own reasoning. It was: 'I don't know why this
is happening, but how am I going to get through this, how can I
win? How can we piece these things together, piece these
different things that we do know, how can we make this
understandable to us?' So, that was the way that I went about
it, was just like I don't know what's happening, but I'm not going
to lose.
What was the scariest scene for you, Bobby?
BOBBY CAMPO:
There was one when we were doing the
racetrack. When I was watching it, it didn't really look as
drastic as when I did it. But I fell down four or five
different bleachers, and I was really doing that. You can't
really see it when you're filming it. I saw that and I was
like, 'oh.' You couldn't really tell, but I flew down and it
got kind of nuts. I landed on top of Andy, who was playing
the gear head, and that was what we were supposed to be doing, but
it was intense when I was doing it. I was like, 'I'd better
not tweak an ankle or something.'
Shantel, have you seen the other three Final Destination
movies?
SHANTEL VANSANTEN:
I had to see them. I hadn't
seen them previously. Then, when I got there, Craig Perry,
who's been part of the franchise from the beginning, was like, 'You
have to see the other ones just to understand what the audience
expects and what the whole franchise is about.' So I watched
them and I grew to understand what the nature of the beast was and
the formula for all of it. It was really good to do because
we wanted to make this the best one. And even though there
are better stunts and more killings and whatever that it might be,
you still want to elevate the performance in every one that you
see.
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