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	Interview by: Thomas M. Sipos www.hollywoodinvestigator.com - HUMAN NO MORE WINNER! Best Sound WINNER! Best Actor - Tony Simmons In Human No More, hard-boiled police detective Nemo (Tony Simmons) enters a basement office. Or is it his home? Nemo listens to a taped interrogation of a psycho who'd killed Nemo's wife. Nemo shuts the tape and presents us with a grief-stricken monologue, then commits an unspeakable act upon himself. Like his two previous horror shorts, Christopher Alan Broadstone's 17-minute film is not so much a story as a vignette. A "slice of life" from the dark side; despairing and nihilistic. "It was a film I had to make," said Broadstone to the Investigator. "One, to exorcise some personal demons, and two, to comment about the current state of the world. Especially since 9/11, I'm sick of people wearing their religious beliefs on their sleeve and blowing their pious trumpet in everyone's face. Whatever your personal religious or political beliefs, keep them to yourself, in your heart, and leave me and the rest of the world the hell out of it. "That said, Human No More also grew from a deep depression I'd fallen into after an unexpected breakup with my girlfriend of many years. My depression and self- doubt joined my already cynical view of mankind, raging onto the pages of my journal in mad storms of hurt, hate, and anger. A lot of the remorseless dialogue in the film's interrogation tape is straight from my journal. Those were dark times for me. Much of detective Nemo's monologue is from my journal too. "If [psycho] Blight's and Nemo's words are compared, it's eerie how similar their perspectives are -- 'psychopath' and 'everyman' are only a hair's breadth away from being the same. What they do in the end is all that separates them. "They're two sides of the same coin -- and that coin was me. Disillusioned, yet driven forward by the relentless misery of losing a girl I loved more than anything in the world." And yet Broadstone's two earlier films, My Skin and Scream for Me, are likewise dark and nihilistic. Despairing and hopeless vignettes in which God appears absent and pointless, arbitrary evil triumphs. "It's true, I am a nihilist," said Broadstone. "But on the other hand, I'm a walking, talking contradiction. I'm an indefatigable advocate of personal and human triumph -- I tear up every time the Space Shuttle blasts off successfully. I'm also aware that I'm one of the luckiest people in the world. I have my health, family, friends, and my art, which many people seem to admire. My problem is, why me? Why not that poor guy I heard on radio who's fighting to survive incurable cancer? Why him and not me? Is it destiny? Is it chance? Is it karma? Is it simply that God's on vacation? Or is it the endless injustice of reality, the harbinger of inevitable entropy? "On the other hand, maybe I just need to get laid. "At one point in my life, I would've said I'm addicted to death and depression. Now I'd say that I've always been overly sensitive to the absurdity, wickedness, and futility of humanity and life in general. No matter how hard I try to be simply entertaining, I only find true inspiration in my personal need to make a comment on (or exploration of) life, people, and the puerile philosophies and contingencies that perennially devour both." The chief flaw in Broadstone's films is that they're vignettes rather than stories. A story has a character pursuing a goal, which pursuit ends either in success or defeat. Broadstone skips the pursuit and goes straight to the defeat, lingering on the misery throughout the entire film. Even so, his films are technically brilliant. The cinematography in Human No More is beautiful, innovative, and aesthetically appropriate. A distorted point-of-view shot follows Nemo, the images bleeding and blurring red, as though some demonic entity is waiting for the moment to snatch the despairing detective's soul. "The crucifix wall was lit with four practical red floodlights," said Broadstone, "then punched up with two 500 watt Fresnel's with purple/magenta gels. That was necessary because video, and even film, is almost impossible to keep in focus when all prevailing light is red. "The other lighting was the practical desk lamp, which emitted a warm, yellowish light, and two or more 750 watt halogen video lights to pump up the overall light level. "These video lights were also diffused with a white silk or sheet of 1000H vellum, and then gelled yellow to further enhance the warmth of the light coming from the desk lamp. "The rest was achieved during the post-production color correction process using. .Final Cut Pro. First the mids and highs were color corrected toward the yellow-red, and then heavily saturated. The blacks were brought down to where they began to crush, leaving little visibility in the shadows. "The final step in bleeding the colors was accomplished by placing a second layer of video over the primary footage, then applying a considerable opacity drop with a Gaussian blur. Also, in most shots, the overlaid footage was offset by one or two frames to create a slight ghosting effect." The film was shot on a Sony TRV-900 using a VCL-R0752 wide-angle lens. Visuals aside, Human No More is impressive for its complex, densely layered soundtrack. Apart from Nemo's monologue, there's the taped interrogation, demonic rumbling, music, and other sound effects, all contributing to the film's dark ambience. "The soundtrack was built and mixed entirely in Final Cut Pro," said Broadstone. "The only production sound used, short of a few stolen and processed sounds, was Tony Simmon's monologue. Everything else was recorded post-production. All the footsteps and most Foley were recorded wild, and cut together some six months after shooting wrapped. The interrogation tape was recorded, built, and mixed entirely on its own, then inserted as an audio stem into the full soundtrack for the final mix. The ambient devil voice was another track of multi-layered audio that was mixed in and of itself, then dropped into the final mix as an audio stem. The thunderstorm was done the same way. Most of what you hear in the film are multiple tracks of multi-layered audio first created independently and then dropped into the master soundtrack as a single-track element for the final film mix. "Any dirty or noisy audio was cleaned up with Bias Sound Soap. Audio effects and reverbs were achieved by processing individual sound elements through Bias Peak 4. Equalization of sound elements was achieved by processing through Super Freq, a plug-in package for Peak 4. A tremendous amount of work, but well worth it. "Nothing can ruin a movie like a poor soundtrack." Even more impressive, Broadstone shot his film with minimal on set help. "To be honest, I am the camera and sound crew," he confessed. "I use many pseudonyms in the credits to avoid seeing my name over and over. I only take the main credits of director, writer, editor, and re-recording mixer. I'm a self-taught filmmaker, and for years prior to that, a musician. I credit my time in the studio as a musician (and my experience on my previous two films) with my ability to do cinematic audio work." Human No More was shot in an old downtown Los Angeles freight depot, since renovated and home to the Southern California Institute of Architecture. "I had free access because I'm the manager and buyer for the Institute's supply store," said Broadstone. "Yes, I still have a day job, but that job allowed me unlimited access to an amazing location. After practically living in that basement for a month of set building and preproduction, then an intense four day shoot, I still miss that creepy, cockroach-ridden hole in the ground." Broadstone recently signed an option agreement with producer Christopher Webster (Hellraiser, Heathers) to raise money for Broadstone's first feature, Retard. "I'm attached as director," he said. "My co-writer, John Franklin (Isaac in Children of the Corn and Children of the Corn 666: Isaac's Return), is attached as the mentally handicapped lead." More information about Broadstone's films may be found at his company, Black Cab Productions.