Christopher Lee dos Santos - director of Eternity

There’s little doubt that audiences love vampires. Think back to 1987’s Lost Boys starring Kiefer Sutherland as the eternal bad-boy David, which became an instant cult classic.

Since then we’ve seen hits like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Interview with a Vampire, Blade, and more recently Underworld and Twilight, topping the blockbuster lists, and re-igniting the world’s bloodlust for vampires. It was only a matter of time before South Africa produced its own version. Eternity is a love story about Billy (Andre Frauenstein), a vampire who falls in love with a human, Jenny (Rikki Brest).

If we’ve learnt anything from the genre, it’s that paranormal love stories are never simple. Jenny’s father (Ian Roberts) stumbles upon a serum that will allow vampires to walk in the sun, which causes an almost Nongquwusa-level rift among the vampire clans – separating them into those who want to walk in the sun and those who don’t. Debut director Christopher-Lee dos Santos says he wanted to break away from a stereotypical South African movie with his first film. “Making a vampire film allowed us to enter a stylistic world with a certain set of visual elements that I’ve always wanted to play with. It’s fast, it’s gritty, it’s exciting and it’s never been done before in South Africa.”

He says Eternity has everything audiences would expect from the genre. What makes it different is the Jozi setting, as well as the completely South African cast. “A highlight for me was working with the actors. The first night I had to direct David James, who had just done District 9, and we hadn’t had a chance to talk about his character. As a firsttime director, it was a surreal experience having to call him aside and say I didn’t believe the character he was portraying. He asked me what I wanted and in the next take he blew my mind. It was also inspiring to work with Ian Roberts. When I first started out in the industry, I said to myself: ‘One day I will work with that guy,’” he says.

The film also stars Christina Storm (Jakhalsdans), Hlomla Dandala (Isidingo), Gys de Villiers (Binnelanders) and Emmanuel Castis (Isidingo). Costume designer Nicolene van der Westhuizen and freelance make-up artist Karen Bezuidenhout transformed the stars into nightmarish blood suckers. Eternity is set in inner-city Johannesburg, which producer Anton Ernst (Surviving Evil, Jakhalsdans) says was perfect. “The idea came from sitting and looking at the city of Johannesburg and thinking, ‘What if there was a world inside the city, in the shadows of the underworld that we don’t really know about?’ Johannesburg is the South African equivalent of New York – the city that never sleeps. It plays perfectly into the vampire lifestyle, where we have characters that can only come out at night,” he says.

The producer says a lot of the film was shot in the inner city and Soweto. “We found an abandoned power plant in Soweto, which was like a R25 million film studio. There was so much space and so many layers to it.”
Joburg may have been perfect in many ways but in the middle of winter it was pure hell. “Last year’s May and June was exceptionally cold. We were shooting in temperatures of minus five and six degrees, which was not only uncomfortable but also extremely dangerous.”

Another challenge was the American investors pulling out. “Wehad to put a lot of our own money in and look to the dti rebate and product placement,” says Anton. The film was shot on three Canon 7Ds, which Christopher-Lee says proved advantageous for night time shoots. “The camera pulls in a lot of light and sometimes the camera can see what the human eye can’t. It really helped us a lot.”

He points out that George Lucas is shooting his latest project on a Canon 7D, adding weight to the old adage that size doesn’t matter, it’s how you use it that counts. Despite the fact that the film is ostensibly a love story that hopes to appeal to the teenage market, Christopher- Lee says it’s not Twilight. “Yes it’s a vampire love story but it’s also more than that. I tried to add some Blade influences, so in actual fact it’s a cross between the two. On set we called it Blade Lite.”

And in case you were thinking it, the similarity of the director’s name to the one-time Dracula has nothing to do with his wanting to make a vampire movie. “I didn’t make the connection myself. It was only when my mother called me and pointed it out that I had good laugh about it.”

Christopher-Lee and Anton recently jetted off to Los Angeles for The American Film Mart, where they hope the film will create some interest overseas. Indi-genous Film Distribution will release Eternity nationally on 23 December 2010.

This article first appeared in The Callsheet.