Q&A with Christophe Gans

• Read the behind the scenes account of Silent Hill, as we go on set of the movie.

Like most fans of the game, we groaned when news slipped out of Silent Hill's film adaptation. But our response changed immediately when Christophe Gans was announced as director. His film The Brotherhood of the Wolf was a stylish and kinetic action film, and his visual sensibility immediately seemed suited for Konami's moody descent into hell. That impression was only reinforced as we joined a small group of writers on the set of the film to chat with Gans and pepper him with questions about the process of adapting a fan-favorite series.

Yahoo! Video Games: What was your first experience with Silent Hill?

Christophe Gans: I played through the first one five years ago, and I loved it. I wanted to do the movie immediately. So I've spent five years working on getting to this point, a lot of which was reaching Konami and convincing them that we'd make something very true to the game. The team of Silent Hill is a team of three or four guys and they are very conscious of what they achieve, and don't want anyone to mess up their work. So it was a long job just to convince them that we'd do it carefully.

Silent Hill 2 is my favorite game of all time. Of course I'm also a fan of Metal Gear Solid, Quake, and of RPGs. Especially the SquareSoft RPGs. I like all types of games, except maybe racing games.

And given the story's origins, was it just common sense to shoot on high definition?

We decided...well, I was watching Collateral and I saw that there were great moments where the HD was catching every little reflection, and I was concerned about how it would capture darkness. How to achieve the feeling of the game, where a character can be lit by just a zippo? So we did some tests and found that we could obtain a very clean original element that afterward we could work with and crush into darkness to obtain the feeling of the game. So I was very happy to work for the first time on HD. But it's important to know that the foggy and regular visions of Silent Hill are shot on standard film. So it's very interesting to use HD specifically for one dimension of the story.

YVG: The games borrow liberally from other films. Is there a concern about looking like those movies?

CG: The first time I played the original game I immediately noticed the similarities to Jacob's Ladder. There are basically two sequences in the film that are really referenced in the game, that work into the premise of Silent Hill. But I think as a great creation Silent Hill has achieved a completely original premise and world. I was not afraid to adapt it, and I don't think you will find any element of other films in this movie. So though Silent Hill is based on Jacob's Ladder and the movies of Jan Svenkmajer and David Lynch, I think it's such a beautiful creation that it exists by itself.

YVG: Few game adaptations have worked well. How did you approach the task?

CG: That's a great challenge, and when we started to write the film it was basically three directors: Roger Avary, Nicolas Boukhrief, and myself. So it was three guys, three directors and three gamers trying to make a movie that can satisfy the game culture, which we belong to, and at the same time make a movie that someone not familiar with the game can watch. But as a great game, Silent Hill has a good story inside it, even if that story a lot of the time is in the background, because you have to be playing. But if you are careful, especially in the third one, you realize that there is a huge story behind the game.