Production Diary / Ixtlan Artworks - From Beyond

2010
The Ixtlan Artworks (founders are Gábor Erdélyi (GE)/director and FX, Róbert Schneider (RS)/editor and music, László Tarnai (LT)/cameraman) is a Hungarian, independent film maker enterprise, which earlier made commercials for world-renowned companies such as M. T. Derm (D) or Discovery Channel, and, also worked on documentaries about Hungarian organic architecture. As they managed to finish these projects of great responsibility before deadline and within budget, and they invested their income to buy equipment for filmmaking, they thought it was time to make a film for their own amusement.

Since they are sci-fi fans, the theme of the film was obvious, its topic was its title at the same time: Suspend the inner conversation, which is a multilayer, deep philosophic, abstract, though spectacular and exciting sci-fi. During the first screen test it became clear that the story works fine and the design (scale-models, costumes) film also well, but the sci-fi environment is too ambitious seeing the length of the film and the private financing. Therefore, the film can lose a lot from its genuineness because of the compromises or it is impossible to finish it. Although this film had to be taken aside, it had positive effects on the later ones, after all. One of these was the fact that Balázs Pál Nagy (BPN) played the main character in the sci-fi film, who was not only perfect in his role, but a very good working relationship evolved between him and the IA, which played a huge role later in the creation of the film inspired by H. P. Lovecraft.

2011
Since the sci-fi film had to be postponed, they wanted to create a project that seemed to be feasible in spite of the conditions. The IA wanted to make an exciting, philosophic, dark-mood film, therefore, the choice was the short story From Beyond by HPL, which is a costume horror mixed with sci-fi elements. The IA again asked BPN to play the main character in the film, as they were quite sure that his actor talent and work-maximalism can be one of the film's keystone. The script, the main elements of which were worked out by GE, BPN and RS, began to be written. The storyboard of the first few scenes was completed, and the reading rehearsals started. Temporarily in the sound studio of RS, because the filming locations were not yet chosen. From the first rehearsal, BPN played prof. Tillingast, on the test takes made by RT it was clear that they are on the right way, but finding the proper person to play the role of the Friend caused a much bigger problem. At the first rehearsals the members of the crew played the role by spells to help BPN build the character, form the conversations and gestures. We have to mention one of the possible persons - Tamás Horváth - to play the Friend, IA pinned their hopes on him, but in the end, he did not play in the film. He, though, helped the project very much by taking part in the rehearsals with BPN, so the main character development directions could be built clearly.

2012
One of the most difficult things when you make a self-financed film is that it can last for very long, even four or five years, and during this period, plenty of unexpected difficulties may arise. While the script made good progress as for the detailed elaboration of the two main human, the machine and the alien characters, and BPN rehearsed a lot, refined the character of the professor, there was still no actor to play the other main role. Despite the rehearsals continued and by the end of the year LT made the test shootings at the filming locations of the finale of the film, the project started to take so long that the finish could not be predicted. The scale-models, the alien worlds, the monsters existed only in written form, only one actor was found for the two main characters, there were no supporting actors, and GE, who was responsible for direction and visual effects within the IA, had to withdraw from taking part in making this film because of personal causes, which made the situation even more difficult.

2013
The project mostly inherited difficulties from the year before, but the invested work, time and money could not waste. Shooting the second part of the film, including visual effects, seemed a very distant problem. First, the human factors had to be elaborated, the film needed a director, so the responsibility of this was taken by BPN. Most of the further financing was taken over by Viktória Bella. Actually, it was their dynamism that picked the film out of the "pit": they found the other main character, the support characters and the rest of the locations, too. They continued working on the script, and prepared the first part of the film shootable. The rehearsals also continued with great effort with Géza István Nagy, who was chosen to play the role of the Friend. The costumes were also on the way, they organized the locations, got the licenses and prepared for the roles of the support characters directly connected to the main characters. When all these details were realized, LT made the shootings, RS then made the first versions of editing and the musical moods. Seeing these, all the efforts seemed to be worth it, as a unique and nice film was on the way. The next months were about shootings at different, outdoor and indoor locations, setting and editing the raw material, writing the music. By the end of the year the project reached the state when the next difficult section of the film including the special effects was already very close. At that time, RS invited GE to watch the completed parts of the film. The version that the crew visualized long before, started to come true, but they thought GE's work was needed to complete the film especially because of the parts that included visual effects.

2014
While RS continued to refine editing, BPN coordinated the actors' work for the next shootings of the film's second part, and, he started to build the 6-meter tall machine monster's metal framework at the main location. The final construction was built on this framework according to GE's concept painting, from which, György Szűcs made a 3D model, and they, together with BPN, started to elaborate the scale-model of some hundredweights. They managed to create an astonishingly imposing statue, with operating functions, monitor, lights and smoke etc. It had only one disadvantage: the tenancy of the location had almost expired when it was finished, so everybody had to take part to be able to complete it and to leave enough time for shooting. The attic scenes that covered most of the second part of the film, on the one hand, provided the opportunity for the actors to rise their work onto a newer level, on the other hand, they had to be synchronized with the post-production special effects, therefore, the tasks of the assistant director was fulfilled by GE from then on. With the scenes shooted here, the film's main sequence was recorded by LT, and beside this, a few more post-shooting days will be necessary to put the stories of the support characters together. In parallel with these, the elaboration and shooting of the effects have been going on from the middle of the year, some of which are digital, some use the scale-models. Within the effect crew, the monsters and the big landscape-dioramas are being made by GE and Henriett E. Gruber, the necessary 3D-modelling is being prepared by GYSZ. These processes, together with the shootings, has to be finished by the first quarter of next year, to make the final version of the editing and music possible to complete in May.