I've never owned an Apple product. I like the fact that PCs are open architecture and not locked down like Apple products. I feel that Macs are also unjustifiably overpriced.
By trade, I am a software programmer, so I never really had any experience with movies before. I started out with 'Paranormal Activity.'
Even if you look at the 'Paranormal Activity' movies, at the end of the movie things get really crazy and nutty, but they all start in a very mundane situation that people can relate to, and that's also to some degree what we tried to do in 'Chernobyl Diaries.'
For a found-footage-style movie, there's a definite advantage in using unknowns, because it helps sell the illusion that it's real. A known actor would get in the way of the suspension of disbelief.
I'm just considering myself extremely lucky. All I wanted is to have 'Paranormal Activity' be released and become successful. And everything that's happened since then is just an enormous bonus.
I believe that whenever I want to learn something I can learn it much better and faster by myself if I'm motivated to learn it as opposed to kind of doing it in more a standard, institutionalized way.
It's always about finding the right balance between answering some questions and raising new ones to keep your story going.
'Paranormal Activity' was a unique project in that I made it basically on my own, with a little help, and I had no exposure to the filmmaking world when I made it.
The most pressure I felt was for the first 'Paranormal Activity,' because when it was released, whether it was going to be a hit or not, I knew it was going to be a life-altering event for me.
Almost any movie, no matter how original, is borrowing from some other movies.
The less people know about 'Paranormal Activity,' the more they enjoy it.
I'm pretty content with what I have, but the one thing that I don't have is something like the iPod - but PC-based. I think that would be cool.
In many cases your imagination is much more effective than what can be shown. It primes you to know something is about to happen - the anticipation and anxiety is worse than what ends up happening.
