DVDFILE: How did you first become involved with the Pitch Black project, and what was it that attracted you to it?

David Twohy: It was originally a script by Jim and Ken Wheat, and it had a strong central concept about a planet that goes dark and creatures that come out at night. (laughs) And I liked the concept more than the execution, as did Interscope, the company that developed it. So basically, they said "look, if come aboard and make this work, and we can get it greenlit."

DF: Did you do any rewriting yourself?

TW: Yes. I did some significant rewriting, at least enough to get co-screenwriting credit with the Wheat Brothers.

DF: Have you seen the finished DVD yet? I looks quite beautiful, and perhaps the most immediately arresting aspect of the film is its unique look. I think a lot of films are already ripping yours off visually...

TW: I have seen the DVD. I see all the check discs, and if there is something I don't like, they fix it. (chuckles) And we can actually do some things in the telecine process that we can't do in the film word. As extreme as I was trying to push the film, I pushed even more in the telecine process.

DF: What motivated you to take such an aggressive and extreme route, and was there any resistance from the studio to go for a look that could potentially confuse or put off the audience?

TW: it was born of necessity, I'm afraid. We didn't have a lot of money to make the film, only $22 million. So when I get to an alien planet, I just can't enhance every shot with something CG. I can drop in bits of alien architecture here or there, but I really can't do much to lend it an otherworldly quality.

But (Director Of Photography) David Eggby and I happened upon this "skip bleach" process, which is really used for nighttime scenes, and (Director David) Fincher has used it enhance blacks. But we found out it also did extraordinary things for the daytime scenes. So we felt it heightened the surreal and otherworldly sense of the film. We went with it and blew it out, and it was very dodgy from the studio standpoint, because we had to do (the skip bleaching process) to the actual camera negative.

DF: I imagine that wasn't something the studio would be particularly excited about...

TW: If it was just something I was "dialing up" in postproduction, it wouldn't have been such an issue, but we had to tell them (the studio) that we were doing it to the negative. And it couldn't be applied to the whole film, just the daylight sequences. The studios don't like you to fuck around with their original, because that is their investment. So it took a little maneuvering and some papers had to be signed…it was very stressful.

DF: One interesting aspect to the photography I noticed was that even in the daylight scenes, the look alternated between hard blues and hard oranges. Was there any thematic relevance to that stylistic choice?

TW: Actually, they (the color schemes) were supposed to follow the colors of the sun, and to track time. There were three suns on the planet. When two suns were up at once, we called them the "Amber Suns" - one was yellow, one was red = and then when those were setting, and the blue sun came up, and we went with the blue look. Nothing really more thematic than that...

DF: Speaking of thematics, I watched your first film again recently, The Arrival, and was struck by some of what seemed to be similarities in the spiritual aspects to both films. Each deals with the issues of transcendence and the existence of a god. And in Pitch Black, I thought it was especially interesting that your lead, Fry, eventually sacrifices herself to save the others. Is there any conscious link in your work between the concept of spirituality, redemption and sacrifice?

TW: It really wasn't so much that she had to give up herself to save them. I don't think she went into the dark to save Riddick with that in mind. But just from a thematic standpoint, from a writer's overview, it seemed not entirely inappropriate that she die instead of Riddick, because she was just a bad of a person as Riddick is made out to be. Hers was the one true crime committed, or at least the crime that was captured on camera. (The scene) in the beginning when she wants to dumps the passengers. So at the end of the story, to die for them and save them seemed very fitting to me. Even though some people were outraged by it...

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