Interview with Bruce Dunn

Markee Magazine has an interview with Bruce Dunn. He is the Co-producer of “True Blood”. Click on the “read more” button below to read the interview.

Bruce Dunn, co-producer HBO series True Blood

Bruce Dunn has co-produced Strange Love, Tell Me You Love Me, Local Color, Kingdom Hospital, and has associate produced Californication, The Path to 9/11, Desperation, Sleeper Cell, The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer, Rose Red, Storm of the Century, The Siege at Ruby Ridge, and Sophie & the Moonhanger.

Markee: HBO’s new hit series, True Blood, from Alan Ball, gives a new twist to the vampire legend. With the development of synthetic blood, vampires have come out of the coffin to be integrated with mortal culture in rural Louisiana. Did you shoot there at all?

Dunn: We shot in Shreveport to get big-value local exteriors: the town of Bon Temps, the trailer that a tornado supposedly hit surrounded by those mossy trees we love, the exterior of Jason’s and Bill’s houses. We’re definitely going back to block shoot for the second season – it’s important for Alan to be where Charlaine Harris set her Sookie Stackhouse books. Louisiana’s tax incentives are icing on the cake, and the crews supporting us there are top-notch.

Since the second book in the series is called Living Dead in Dallas, it’s likely we’ll do doing a bit of shooting in Dallas, too.

MARKEE: Right from the opening titles – a collage of images ranging from bayous and evangelicals to sexy dancers and road kill – the audience knows it’s in for a different viewing experience.

Dunn: Digital Kitchen did the title montage. They worked on the opening sequence for Six Feet Under so Alan had a relationship with them. Their storyboards for the initial presentation blew us away – they really caught the flavor of what we were looking for. One of the mandates was to sell Louisiana, to let viewers know they were going to see something quirky and visit locations they’d never been to before.

MARKEE: How was the look of the show determined?
Dunn: R!OT colorist Scott Klein and pilot DP Checco Varese set the contrasty look with blown-out highlights. We now have quite a library of looks like Sookie’s ‘psychic TV’ where she sees what others are imagining: We pump up the brightness to bring out the film grain and differentiate it from the norm. In the flashbacks our DPs use a Deakinizer lens, named for Cinematographer Roger Deakins, to vignette around the edges of the frame; when we do that in postproduction Zoic simulates the lens look.

MARKEE: Visual effects play a key role in every episode, don’t they?
Dunn: Zoic Studios does the digital VFX and MastersFX the makeup effects. When vampire fangs are out for long periods of time, they’re prosthetics from MastersFX. But when they’re retracted and extended, they’re digital VFX from Zoic. We latched onto the concept of snakes’ fangs which are always there. The vampires’ fangs are tucked into their mouths and unfold from the back – you can see the CG mechanics in certain scenes.
Zoic created [vampire] Longshadow’s death and deterioration with an entirely CG actor – it’s probably the costliest effect in the show. They also did the V hallucinations [which occur when mortals drink vampire blood] which have been a lot of fun – sparks flying out of trees, the love scene swimming through a shared-experience dreamscape. The backgrounds were imagined after the water-tank shoot with the actors; it was Alan’s idea that they all be based in nature – in a forest, with waterfalls.

MARKEE: Audio is another key component from using Jace Everett’s amazing Bad Things as the theme song to Sookie’s ability to hear people’s thoughts.
Dunn: Working with Technicolor Sound we did multiple design tests to help sell the concept of Sookie’s thought dialogues: We needed a good way to convey that without being confusing. We use sound effects coming in and out of the thought process, then reverse dialogue and EQ it in a certain way to make it very clear that what Sookie hears is specific to her. It’s important for the storyline that the process be intelligible when we want it to be and cacophonous at other times.

Composer Nathan Barr has really nailed the spirit and feeling of the show. Nate’s love theme for Bill and Sookie has both an Old World feel, since Bill comes from the Civil War era, and the feel of something timeless. The Civil War flashbacks have banjos and cellos, there’s an African sub-theme for the voodoo exorcism, big-string power hits for the scary parts and, always, the flavor of Louisiana.

MARKEE: Are any production changes ahead for season two?
Dunn: We’ve had a top-notch, efficient team for our first 12 episodes. All the key departments worked so well that I don’t really expect changes for season two. I’ve never worked on a series that has spoken to fans like True Blood has. Thanks to Alan and the material we’re all excited to get back to work in January.