TASTE IN MUSIC at TIFF: a short movie by director Kyle Sevenoaks and actor Chris Wiborg in interview

‘Taste of Music’ received a standing ovation at the Norwegian Ravenheart film festival in Oslo. The promise of this short directed by the brilliant and talented Kyle Sevenoaks is about a man (played by the maverick Chris Wiborg) for is facing his music keyboard turned evil after a cosmic storm hitting the Earth. The question is, “what would you do if your keyboard became alive and ready to attack you”? I was lucky to connect with Kyle and Chris and to explore a little more this fantastic horrific short movie that should be a perfect launch for the two men’s careers.

Q: How did this crazy idea for a movie come together?

Kyle: It came from a conversation I was having with Chris and other people about what would happen to electronic devices if a cosmic storm would hit Earth? Because we are both musicians we decided to choose a keyboard as an evil device. And so, the idea was born that this keyboard was going to attack and try to eat our protagonist, “Thomas”, played by Chris.

Q: What is this movie about beyond the crazy storyline? Were you trying to say something in particular?

Kyle: If it says anything it’s “Hire me for your feature film as your director”! haha! Honestly we just wanted to have a good time and entertain people with a crazy concept.

Chris: Music is dangerous! Put major restrictions on music, that’s what we are saying!

Q: What were the many challenges you faced making this short?

Kyle: The scene when Chris has his hand being eaten was quite a challenge to execute. We had to time all that and get the perfect shot. The blood spirting was difficult to time and make it work. The biggest challenge was time management because the cabin we got was a twenty-minute boat ride off the coast of Norway. We only had two weekends or four days total to shoot everything. We had to plan everything very carefully. There was a time crunch, but we knew exactly all the shots we needed, and it went fine at the end.

Chris: Lots of the shots were filmed at night. Summer nights are short in Norway and therefore we had an even greater time restriction. I remember that for the last scene Kyle was yelling: “the sun is coming up! Hurry up!”.

Kyle: We had to spend a few hours each time to black out all the windows of the cabin to make sure it looked pitched dark inside.

Q: How did you get into the skin of your character, Chris?

Chris: Kyle had a solid idea of what type of person Thomas was. So, I followed his direction. I tried to stay realistic about the character and, I tried to be funny as well. There is some dark humor about this horrific story. You can escape from seeing this film as being a little bit absurd.

Q: Why did you choose the horror genre to make this film? Do you have horror inspirations for your film?

Kyle: I always been a fan of horror since I saw “The Terminator”, even so I was way too young to watch it, like 5 or 6 years old. Here the inspiration comes clearly from Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” and Peter Jackson’s “Braindead”. I love the horror from the 80’s. It was such a great era for horror movies. Because there were movies that didn’t take themselves too seriously and it still was scary to watch.

Chris: For me I remember watching “Nightmare on ELM street” and it scared me for life! Haha! The chase of the keyboard running after me reminds me of Freddy running after all these kids in their nightmares.

Q: I understand you recently got a standing ovation at an Oslo film festival; what does that means to you and what is coming next?

Kyle: It means that everyone loves Chris’ face! Haha!  It was unexpected, and everyone reacted so well to our film. It’s very flattering and encouraging. It showed me we have what it takes to make the next film bigger and longer. That’s our goal, to make a feature next. In fact, we just finished a feature script. And we also are in pre-production to film another short about a Norwegian folklore monster: “The Nokken”. It’s a water spirit that lures people to their death in lakes and streams with his enchanting songs. I did a lot of research and I feel it will be another great picture.