|
Kevin Williamson on Vampire Diaries
By Fred Topel | Image property of CW
Vampire Diaries
Kevin Williamson on Vampires (and Their Diaries)
“The premise is the same: you know, girl meets vampire,” said producer Kevin Williamson. “When you read the first book, I was like, ‘No way. This is Twilight.’ But when I got to the second book, you start to realize, ‘Oh, my God, boy, this is a fork in the road. It really does separate.’ Once we got into it, it's sort of a challenge. It's like, ‘What can we do differently? What can we add to it?’"
Viewers will just have to be patient and get through the pilot episode, which may feel familiar, before Williamson can get to that fork. “The pilot was very tough because it does have a lot of similarities to Twilight, and there's no way around it. We had the story as he comes to town, the first day of school. That is the book. So we sort of are telling it in sort of that fashion, but we're switching things around. Once we get into it and we can establish all the characters - the pilot, we had 10 characters to get out in 42 minutes - now we can sort of sit back and start telling stories on a weekly bases. Then it all changes. That's when you'll see the differences, because you're watching a weekly show. We're not a movie with a beginning, middle, and end. We're actually evolving, and we get to evolve and just tell the stories, and it just sort of unrolls.”
At least their vampires look different from the start. “We wanted to do something that we can actually do on a weekly basis. I hate cheap effects and I hate when it gets really cheesy and you don't really have really money or the time to do things to any sort of big budget scale. Everybody who is watching this show has seen what you can do with $150 million on a feature film. So it's kind of hard. We want to do something a little more subtle and just keep it to some sort of biological, sort of physiological response so when they get excited we just sort of see the blood rush under the skin. Pale their face out a little bit, but it all goes to the eye and they kind of have these bloody eyes. Ten, of course, they have teeth. But we wanted to do something just to keep it sort of simple, something we can manage and actually do a good job with every week.”
The vampire rules are a little bit different here too. “It all starts in one place and everybody is sort of an extension of those original rules. I never read Twilight so I don't know how we are with Twilight, but I know we can go out in the sun. Sunlight kills vampires but they have this talisman ring that they wear, with this blue lapis stone, this is from the book, that protects them. It has been spelled, so it is a special ring. They can wear it and go out into the sun but if that ring come off, they are in trouble. One of the things that vampires do, they have in the pilot, there is mind persuasion, you can sort of get into a person's mind and sort of convince them. But if you wear this little root, it will protect you, and the vampires can't get near you. And so there is protection.”
What about joining the clan of the undead? Will a simple bite do it? “I don't know what the Twilight one is or Lost Boys was, but you have to be bitten, you have to feed on their blood, then you have to die and then you have to come back. Then you have to feed on a human, and then you are a vampire.”
The Vampire Diaries premieres September 10 on The CW. .
Fred Topel
Sources: Image property of CW
Contact
© 2004 Minds Eye One, All Rights Reserved
The Can Magazine™ is a trademark of Minds Eye One
All movie titles, movie icons, movie stills/clips/trailers/other media... are registered trademarks and/or copyrights of stated holders
CanMag.Com banners contain movie/gaming icons that were created by individual holders
|
|
|
Add to Heffee!
