Q&A with Kevin Luna

In the near future, as projected in “Five Minutes Before the End of the World,” the hipsters gathered around a Swedish coffee shop can’t be bothered by ominous signs of the end. We asked director Kevin Luna about the film’s doomsday foundations, its foreboding sound design, and whether or not he’s scared of the future…

1) When and how did you first become in interesting in filmmaking?

I got into filmmaking through skateboarding. I was in high school and I was filming my friends skating and goofing off. At some point I bought this book of short stories called Broken Poems by the artist and skater Mark Gonzales and also the Spike Jonze music video compilation, just kind of following the thread. The DIY attitude of the skate culture made me feel like I could do whatever I was interested in.

2) How did this project get started? What was the original inspiration? How quickly did it come together?

I was pitching a longer version of this idea to some funding bodies in Sweden. It was about two friends in the near future who randomly hook up while one of them is thinking about buying the other one's truck. At the same time, I'd been wanting to make a banal film about a trendy Swedish cafe for a while. When I didn't get enough support to make the longer thing I pitched, I re-worked the truck idea into the cafe idea and tried to simplify it into something I could wing over a two day shoot. 

While I was writing it there was a lot very foreboding news about Trump and North Korea and whether or not they were going to blow each other up (this was before they met up and everything) so a sense of impending doom was really hanging in the air. That element ended up tying it all together for the film. It kind of gave the rest of it a reason to exist. But for me, the film is more about all of the stupid little details going on. Even though it's very topical, the end of the world stuff feels more like a ruse.

From when I decided to rewrite the longer idea to shooting it was about 3 months.

3) I love the free roaming feeling, where we follow a character for a while, then move on to another. It adds to the real-time feeling of dread. Can you discuss this decision, and if it worked according to plan, or was it more challenging than you anticipated?

That initially came from my desire to make a portrait of a cafe. If you're lucky there's all of these absurd conversations going on around you and when you start listening to them you start to think they mean something. I'd originally wanted to use a bigger location for the cafe and it would have been a bit slower and dreadful in a different way. But we didn't get that location so we had to rethink for the smaller space which was the reason we brought a lot of it outside. Shooting was pretty smooth but it was really really cold outside and I needed to make sure I got the scenes quickly before people would freeze and lose the performance. 

The other thing about production that was interesting for me, is that I don't speak Swedish very well. I've absorbed it a lot from having lived there for a long time but I never properly learned it. So directing and editing in Swedish forced me to let go of any preconceived notion that was in my head and just watch their body language and listen to the tone of their voices. We were going off of a script I had written and then got translated but I didn't find out what they had actually said until my wife translated back it for me, 4 or 5 months after shooting.

4) So much of the film is about sound design — there’s a intense uneasiness communicated there. Can you talk about how you built that up? How difficult was it to get that right? Where there things you tried to communicate with sound that didn’t work?

The main challenge was to make sure that the score always held the tension and to figure out how to make the sirens and other noises work in a natural rhythm with everything else. The score is actually an experimental sound piece that a friend of mine made and I got his permission to remix for the film. I wanted it to have a 24 ish feeling but not to feel too generic or predictable. The sound designer I normally collaborate with was fully booked up so I ended up doing most of it myself and then having detailed communication with the mixer to make sure that the things that should be fucked up stayed fucked up and the things that were too rough got smoothed. In that regard, because I did it myself, that sound/tension element is lost on me and I can't really tell how it's working. At some point I started to see the film as a comedy because of that and when I first screened it I was sad that more people weren't laughing.

5) It’s a unique approach to a possible doomsday scenario that the characters are just going about their daily lives, mostly unaffected by the sirens, etc. How did you arrive at this decision to keep everyone subdued, and the performances low-key? 

The film isn't really about the end of the world but more about the feeling of the end of the world. I guess I see the film as an allegory (is that the right word?) for how things are today, when everything can really feel like it's on the knife's edge but middle class and rich people still have time to be on the internet and get fancy coffee and buy shit. And you can look at it like, all of these rich, oblivious hipsters who are shielded (for now) from the bad shit that's going on or you can look at it like: Is this how humans have survived? How do we just keep going on in our lives, being self involved and hoping for the best or trying not to think about it even though bombs or guns or disasters could destroy our world in an instant? Is that ability a good quality or a bad quality? I think it depends on where your sympathies lie. But for this film I tried to take sympathy out of the equation. I can see how the characters in the film can seem pretty shallow and oblivious but I also see them as kind of sweet and endearing (probably because a lot of them are my friends).

Also, if you care to discuss the ways you moved into the future a bit, in terms of technology, and how you applied those projections cinematically?

I wanted to set this in the near future because I thought it would make it a bit more fun to watch and less banal or preachy. I appreciate how genre is a bit sly in that way. 

In terms of the augmented reality tech, I had some more cinematic ideas for how to play with that (things or people that are there but aren't really there) but they didn't make it into this one.

Bonus question: Are you more scared for the future, or excited by it?

I try not to think about it too much, haha. But I just had a kid so I think about it a little bit. I wonder how it's gonna be when he's my age. I could envision some futuristic Star Trek shit or The Walking Dead. But I've enjoyed both of those shows anyways. I try to do my best and appreciate when there's nice light outside. I hope it's gonna be OK!

2nd bonus question: What’s next for you?

I'm finishing the post on my first feature (and hoping to find it a festival) and I'm developing a few longer ideas that are at the script stage. For the most part I've been making everything on a shoestring so hopefully I'm finding a producer soon and figuring out how to navigate the money and distribution maze a little better. I'm out here in LA at the moment, seeing how their cafe's work.

Contact Info:

Website: www.dreamtrash.com

Email: kevinleeluna@gmail.com

Instagram: @dreamtrashk