KEY POINTS:
Filming 30 Days of Night in New Zealand required a little more than that.
Director David Slade can laugh about it now, but making a vampire movie set in an Alaskan town caught in the darkness of an Arctic winter had him working nights for two months at
a stretch.
That took him, his cast - including American star Josh Hartnett and some notable New Zealand screen faces in supporting biting or bleeding roles - and crew from the snows of the Queenstown region to the wilds of Henderson Valley Studios.
Add a blizzard or two, a lot of screaming, lots of blood, and some deadline pressure - the movie had to be out in America for Halloween - and Slade says the movie took its toll on his nerves.
"We shot for two months at night and everybody goes cranky and crazy."
With the development time beforehand and editing afterwards, the English-born director - who made his mark with the acclaimed claustrophobic revenge thriller Hard Candy - says he's been "two years in the service of vampires".
Not just any vampires either. These blood-suckers don't play by the usual rules.
The film originated in the first of the hit graphic novel series of Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith, which itself sprang from an unsuccessful film pitch by writer Niles.
"The funny thing is the writer of the graphic novel started writing the film script first and no one wanted to buy it - 'Vampires in Alaska? What a crap idea'. And eventually they all went, 'Vampires in Alaska? What a brilliant idea'. And then they had to pay a lot more money for it because of the rights to the novel.
"One of the things we had going for us is the premise - one of the two high concepts behind the graphic novel was this is the pre-biblical vampire, this is nature's vampire and this is the fundamental beast and everything else is myth and lore.
"It's great because we get to redesign everything - how a vampire looks and behaves. So the audience is never particularly aware of what it is going to do next. The preconceptions weren't going to tell you when to put your hands in front of your face."
Once the novel series was a success, Hollywood reconsidered. Enter, among other players, the horror-movie producing partnership of Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi, who, having brought the whole Xena-Hercules roadshow here in the 90s started bringing horror productions here with 2005's Boogeyman. Thirty Days of Night is their second NZ-made small-budget horror.
They saw Slade's Hard Candy as it was picking up buzz on the festival circuit - and effectively launching the career of Juno star Ellen Page - and got in touch.
Slade says he got the job because "I just kind of had a take on it and a very strong picture of what I wanted to do with it."
He was pretty much left to his own devices by the pair - Raimi was embroiled in directing Spider-Man 3 anyway, and Slade laughs that Tapert, Lucy Lawless's husband, wasn't exactly hands-on.
"Being almost a local he was down here fishing while we were making the film."
But Slade is effusive about the other local talent he got to work with.
"There were many places we could have chosen to shoot where that roster of talent is not available, but I think Nathaniel Lees gives as good a performance as any actor in the film. And as a director it just makes my life fantastic to work with people like Elizabeth Hawthorne. They are veterans of stage and film. It's just a breath of fresh air really."
Slade also had high praise for his Kiwi crew, stunt team, Weta Workshop (who did the teeth) and Weta Digital. Though he's not quite a fan of Henderson Valley Studios, which isn't quite as soundproof as a soundstage should be.
"There is a Hollywood joke you may or may not know - 'They've found the perfect location for a new soundstage in New Zealand, just between a power tool testing company and a drumming school'.
"You don't seem to have a soundstage. One place we went to had a tin roof, and so if there was a drop of rain it was like a chip friers' convention.
"And the other stage you have is next to a railway track. You have people perched next to the railway track waiting for the trains to leave and reporting back on walkie-talkies."
But by the sounds of it, it was the noise coming out of 30 Days of Night that was more disturbing.
Like the scene where Hartnett's sheriff is interrogating "the stranger", played by Ben Foster. The prisoner is meant to be sporting a painful gunshot wound. So Foster put one of the lighting crew's giant steel clips on a toe so he could get in the mood.
"It was nerve-wracking to direct because he was in extreme agony."
Then there was a scene involving vampire leader Marlow, played by veteran character actor Danny Huston.
Slade noticed Huston's evil character seemed to be feeding off the hideous screaming of an actress playing a victim. So after a chat to Huston, he had her do it even when she wasn't in shot.
"So we spent the entire day listening to blood-curdling screams. That was the wholly most unsettling scene to shoot, it was just non-stop horrific sound, and of course the violent acts ...
"I really felt like we were making a snuff movie - even though the end result is not even gratuitous."
LOWDOWN
Who: David Slade, director
What: 30 Days of Night, NZ-made vampire flick
When & where: At cinemas from today
