William Eubank (born November 15, 1982) is an American film director and screenwriter. He previously worked as a cinematographer and director of photography. His 2014 feature film The Signal premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and was released in theaters by Focus Features on June 13, 2014. For his 2011 feature film Love, in addition to directorial and director of photography duties, Eubank also served as production designer.
Career
Panavision
Eubank began working as a director at age 18, creating commercials for Mikasa and other clients. He attended UCLA where he took cosmology classes that he would later cite as an influence on his films' ideas. He worked at Panavision in Woodland Hills, California for eight years, as a camera technician and digital imaging technician. Eubank attended the Sundance Film Festival five times representing Panavision, dreaming of attending as a director. He would meet with his grandfather, a former Navy cinematographer, who lived in Salt Lake City who insisted Eubank would someday attend with a film.
A number of Eubank's works feature the use of in-camera speed 'ramping'. Shots of this style were featured in his Mikasa spots and in reels for Honda, Adidas, Skullcandy, and others. Eubank was later hired by the UFC to film fights in this style.
Love
In 2007, Eubank was approached by Tom DeLonge to create material for the alternative rock band Angels & Airwaves. Eubank directed a number of music videos for the band, including the video for the single "Surrender". Eubank also wrote and directed the feature film Love, commissioned and produced by Angels & Airwaves. The film was inspired by Terrence Malick's Thin Red Line and asks according to Eubank "[W]hat are we, as human beings, going to leave behind when we cease to exist one day...?" The emotion the film is titled after, 'love', is defined by Eubank as "The ability to feel and find complete communication without words or touch…the ability to find an understanding on nothing but a sense…"
Eubank spent four years working on the film, serving as the film's production designer and constructing both the International Space Station and Civil War-battleground sets for the film in his parents' backyard himself over the course of nine months. Eubank based his building of the ISS set on NASA photography and skateboard ramp designs and his staging of the battle scenes on Civil War paintings. The filming was frequently interrupted by weather and the sounds of frogs and his family's neighbor operating a weedwhacker. On February 2, 2011, the film premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. It later screened at 11 other festivals worldwide, including the Athens International Film Festival, where Eubank won the "Best Director" award. On August 10, 2011, National CineMedia released the film.
The Signal
While Love was still being edited, Eubank began writing a second screenplay, The Signal. He collaborated on the script with fellow screenwriters David Frigerio and his brother, Carlyle Eubank. In an interview Eubank described his first thoughts for the project: "I'm a big fan of The Twilight Zone, of what Rod Serling used to do as a storyteller, and I always wanted to do one of those â€" a story with intangibility and strangeness that makes you say, 'What the heck is going on?' I’d been thinking about the concept of an individual thrust into a specific and extreme situation, the true nature of which this person would have to uncover." Before production could begin, Eubank worked as Second Unit Director on the 2012 Regency film Broken City. Soon after, The Signal found producers: Brian Kavanaugh-Jones of Insidious and Tyler Davidson of Take Shelter and production could begin.
Eubank described his main inspirations for the film as filmmakers Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch and also said the films Pi, Moon, and Cube were on his mind. He decided to shoot the film in 2.39:1 theatrical anamorphic format saying "No other ratio allows you to stare right into an actor’s eyes; the performance can erupt. It helped with other aspects of the film, like the shots of New Mexico and of driving down the road with it coming up at you."
To cast the film, Eubank met with actors over Skype from New Mexico, settling on Australian actor Brenton Thwaites, English actor Olivia Cooke, and American actor Beau Knapp. For props, Eubank worked with Legacy Effects to design custom pieces. After two years of pre-production, The Signal began shooting in Albuquerque, where it would occasionally be hampered by sandstorms. The films 29 shoot days took place in New Mexico and Ohio.
Eubank chose Brian Berdan, an editor who worked on David Lynch's Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, to edit the film. Berdan and Eubank had collaborated before, Berdan having edited Love. Eubank described his work with Berdan saying "Brian’s sensibilities are different from mine; on my first film, Love, I realized that Brian had another way of looking at things than I did. I’ve come to appreciate his perspective, his fresh viewpoint, so much."
While praising the film's "exquisite visual design", Variety said that it was "ultimately quite silly".
Filmography
Eubank has been involved with a number of projects, listed below:
References
External links
- Official website
- William Eubank on Twitter
- William Eubank at the Internet Movie Database
- William Eubank's channel on Vimeo
- William Eubank's channel on YouTube
