Peter Cornwell: From Stop-Motion Animation Short to Blockbuster Sensation
Interview by Nicole Holland
Peter Cornwell, Director of Lionsgate’s hit feature The Haunting in Connecticut is a multi-award winning director who launched his career with his animated short film Ward 13, which screened in over 70 festivals and received 16 awards. In addition, Ward 13 qualified as an Academy Award® Semi-Finalist for Animated Short Film by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The success of Ward 13 led to his feature film directorial debut The Haunting in Connecticut, starring Virginia Madsen, Elias Koteas, Kyle Gallner and Martin Donovan. Based on a chilling true story, the film charts one family’s terrifying, real-life encounter with the dark forces of the supernatural. The film was a box office success. In the United States, the film had the second highest gross sales (behind Monsters vs. Aliens) on its opening weekend. The film grossed $76,501,870 in the worldwide box office. The DVD release was #1 in DVD sales for the week ending July 19, 2009.
Independent Film Quarterly’s Nicole Holland sat down with Peter Cornwell at a private residence in Beverly Hills, CA as he openly discussed his thoughts on film festivals, how a short film launched his career and his feature film directorial debut The Haunting in Connecticut.
IFQ: What are your thoughts about film festivals, especially Cannes as it relates to both its critical prominence and business importance?
Peter Cornwell: I can only talk from my experience. Ward 13, my short film, didn’t screen at Cannes, though it won 16 awards around the world including the Fapresci International Critic’s prize, and it screened in about 70 festivals. It was a great ride even though I only attended a few festivals. It’s great to have the awards on your resume, but my big break happened when I showed it to my manager, Peter McHugh at the Gotham Group. And I actually met him through a couple of acquaintances unconnected to any film festivals. If your goal is to get representation, then entering a lot of festivals might not actually help your career that much. Most managers and agents are too busy to go to festivals. With that being said, winning awards doesn’t hurt. But in hindsight, I might not have entered Ward 13 in quite so many festivals, and I would have spent that same postage and duplication budget on sending copies to managers and agents instead.
IFQ: Tell us about how making your short film, Ward 13 launched your career as a director.
PC: Well, I aimed to just make a film for myself that I knew I wanted to see. I’d hoped that if people were smart it might lead to directing jobs, but that was never may main focus. I didn’t try and double guess an audience, which I think can trip you up. I made it so I would be happy. I also think that spending so much time agonizing over every detail of the film (being Stop-Motion animation, I was doing every job on the movie during the shoot almost by myself), gave me a chance to really create my own vision for filmmaking. When I’m talking to producers, I come from a unique perspective because a lot of my ideas about filmmaking were figured out over years of working by myself!
IFQ: Your feature debut The Haunting in Connecticut grossed $76,501,870 in the worldwide box office. Tell us a little bit about your experience shooting film.
PC: It was actually a very rewarding experience for me and it turned out to be much easier than
animation. It was great to have so many skilled people working with me! I love collaborating. For example, the actors blink all by themselves! You don’t have to think: should this character blink now, or in another four frames?
IFQ: How was it working with Virginia Madsen?
PC: She was awesome! She is not only a really fantastic actress who really brought it; she really brought the cast together. They would hang out on the weekend and became like this surrogate family. That translated on screen to authentic warmth in the relationships, which is kind of rare in horror movies.
IFQ: What do you look for in choosing a script and actors?
PC: I look for something really original that we haven’t seen before. For example, Haunting in Connecticut has a lot of ghostly scares that I’ve never seen before. And there’s never been a haunted house film with an ending like this one! But a good script is about more than just having good genre elements. For me, it has to have a real heart to it, and that’s not an easy thing to achieve. I like to think that even if you took the ghosts out of the house, there is still a real story there about this family dealing with a sick son and the conflicts that arise with the crushing financial pressures. It wouldn’t be as good a movie, but it means the movie is always moving forward on this deeper level, so you aren’t just waiting for the next scary scene.
IFQ: What advice would you give an aspiring filmmaker?
PC: Well for me, I took the money and resources I had and instead of making a live action feature, focused them on making the best possible animated short I could. It was a very ambitious short and it took me a long time to make it. I wouldn’t recommend being that crazy actually, but what it meant was that I made a film that was like a whole feature compressed into 15 minutes. It allowed me to make each second on screen count for much more than I ever could have with the same effort diluted over a feature length. And ultimately, having a successful short may have actually worked out better for me, because it only takes producers 15 minutes to watch, so when you send them the disc they are more likely to find time to watch it.