the fairy kind of lore is really wonderful because it's this like coexistence of darkness and beauty that really resonated with me as a child so to be able to kind of think about what what they would be like in today's world was just a dream the Watchers are the tricks that your mind can play with you the addiction that you wish you could drop the obsession that you wish you could let go of there's always a place for the fairy tale you know even in the modern world like all those Notions of monsters come from a fear of the unknown beautiful part about fairy tales and stuff is the darkness underneath it and Al really reminded me of all of that by making it a genre piece it's it's just got all of the ingredients it needs to be the perfect horror what Chine has done is in a way embed several layers of Irish folklore mythology into the book in the form of contemporary goth the car on noal the Watchers came to me through Steve deitzer who's also an executive producer on the project I was told that I had to read it right away I remember reading it and I couldn't put it down then I picked up the phone and I called Ashwin over at blinding Edge I had known night and we' wanted to find something to work on together and I pissed him the book I had a click idea I said oh my God you know is Shana she has a slight fantasy bent in her interests I went this this is just an an amazing book for her if she was interested because she was starting to write her own first movie and then she read it and she was she was fell in love and it's just a wonderful structured book and it's so visual and then it un unravels into this massive kind of thing that just begs you to kind of think about how how the world's look and what the characters look like one of the things ultimately that I find magical about making movies is finding the right actor these four actors needed to be they needed to steal every scene they're in and we felt that with all of the the roles this kind of magic lightning bolt thing that was happening here which is very special we began the casting process one of the departures that we had from the book isana wanted a character that she could have be even further away from her family she wanted to turn that character into an American Building Mina was kind of an interesting process because I think she didn't really exist in full until we began shooting yeah Dakota was kind of the one name in my mind for mina she kind of brought this whole level of of kind of texture and just who she is which is this effortless cool girl what is that what are they doing Applause for you Mina we meet Mina at sort of a Crossroads in her life you find out very quickly that she's lost her mother and is sort of isolated from her family and it's almost feels like a kind of hibernation she's sort of isolated and alone and moving through the world and figuring something out and so I could see that in the character and in speaking to is I think we both could relate to to that isana she's got a beautiful painterly way of working her and Eli the frames are painterly it's a very non formulaic way of filming which I really really like Eli we had watched his movie lamb which is just a beautiful movie and so kind of elegantly straddles the line of reality and fantasy as well he's just like the loveliest human being and loves the art form and I think in many ways we're both very classical and kind of want to approach the the medium in a classical way and he's yeah he's just an elegant elegant artist and you can feel that in everything he does and he's done more with this world than than I thought was possible the look of the film is really grounded the adventures that like come at the characters is from otherw worldly kind of positions but what happens to them is very very kind of concrete in their lives so the approach was always very very serious in terms of of the look and feel it should feel real do not turn your back to the mirror do not open the door after dark do not go near the always stay in the light I just knew that the production design of the Watchers was going to be exceptional is sh is maniacal about these things that what it feels like what it looks like she found the most perfect person in Feria to be honest I just love the script I I got a great kick at reading the script I didn't want to put it down which was great you know even before I spoke to aana about it we realized that we had a huge number of common mood board images that we created so we had loads of stuff in common so it kind of felt once we did start to talk it felt like we were really in sync on the story already and of course there were some great sets to design so yeah it was a no-brainer really in the beginning the concentration was on this set the coupe which was a very hard finish for the uh construction and Painters to get because of that concrete finish and it's kind of a real concrete they poured so there was this then there's the exterior of this which they've built the same thing again which is incredible really up in the hills past Lala in County Wicklow then we had the bunker which is meant to be under this set which is on another stage that was a really really big build and that took the longest to dress like the ducting alone took two weeks to do cuz it was up at a height it was towers and so on then we had the burrows when we see it in the movie it'll be kind of out in the countryside and you'll see a hole but when they actually go into the hole that's a set so that's kind of an amazing build as well and the greens Steven Kelly did a terrific job with all the synthetic roots and stuff and then we had put in the idea was we didn't want it to be a tip the Watchers aren't kind of going around grabbing things and then making a big pile it was that they were kind of taking this chair but they didn't really know they're trying to learn how to be humans so they kind of maybe would put it sideways and then go that doesn't really work and put it upside down H so they're kind of learning over time so we were kind of dressing and and they were like mag pies so shiny Wing mirrors off cars or car lenses or Bells off bicycles we kind of had buried and if you look carefully when you see it you'll see oh I see oh there's a pair of shoes stuck up there you know scouting the forest was the one of the most rigorous parts of the process with the different Forest locations they searched high in low for a lot of forests We've Ended up here in balner Stow woods in County Wicklow there is very unique mixture of dead trees that haven't been felled or harvested and it's created a really eerie atmosphere in here anyone feels it when they walk into these Woods you just you feel it immediately it's just incredibly striking and is full of these very stoic kind of dark dead trees like literally you can touch the trees and they're they crumble in your hands and the second we stepped into that Forest we're like okay this is it we've got we've got our hero location here and then we could build kind of everything else around that this location actually our designer F Murphy came up with I it was great to feel that Ireland had that diversity of look that could offer to the film the fact that the movie is set in Ireland and it has Irish folklore at its base we never even blinked we were going to shoot this in Ireland the whole time Al's book feels very specific in the way that he depicts the world and particularly gway and anyone who talks to him knows how much he loves gway so it just felt that the best way to honor his story was to come shoot it where he had envisioned it and it's so trippy that we shot our bar scene in the bar that he wrote the book and like passing by the seat that he wrote the book in and it's just yeah feels feels very kind of spiritually full circle there I mean I'll be honest I'm fallen in love with Dublin and Ireland I've the second we've gotten here we have all felt very at home making a movie here the crew has been so supportive and you know this Ireland and Dublin will always be where Asana became a filmmaker this experience has been unreal and so beautiful for me there's like certain Alchemy about uh the wonderful people that have come together to make this real