With the new trailer for Trespass hopefully just round the corner,  this on set interview with Joel Schumacher is an interesting insight into the movie and the director himself!

Trespass and the Difference Between Big Budget and Small Budget

Max Tedaldi: I’ve heard the general themes and plot of Trespass, but it would be great to hear from the director what this movie is about. It seems like it’s been shrouded in mystery for a while now.

Joel Schumacher: I think [there is] a universal fear of home invasion. For the last 14 years, I’ve been doing a lot of public service campaigns, especially for MTV and I was doing one on bullying and sexting with 40 teenagers on set and they asked me what I was going off to shoot. When I said, “a home invasion story,” they all gasped! Everyone started talking, saying, “that’s what I’m afraid of most”. High school students said they always make sure their parents check that the doors are locked. The girls going to college are scared shitless to live in the dormitories. I think it’s the fear in the middle of the night that you’re going to wake up and there will be someone in your house. So in a simple sentence: It’s a home invasion movie.

Why these people are here in this house is another story. There are cross connections, there are secrets and lies in Nicole [Kidman] and Nic [Cage]‘s marriage, there are secrets and lies between Ben Mendelsohn and Cam Gigandet, who play brothers, and for the strange man that Dash Mihok plays, and for Ben Mendelsohn’s girlfriend, who’s a stripper, played by Jordana Spiro.

So there are many secrets and lies in that foursome, and then there are cross connections between them too. Even though there are guns and running and some action to it, it’s really about these seven people, in one house, in one night, pretty much in real time. It’s like Phonebooth in a house.

Max: In terms of the pacing, you’re discovering more about these characters as they learn about what is actually happening. Almost the same as 8mm, which you also did with Nic.

Joel: Yeah, that’s about an ordinary man, who becomes someone he never thought he would be.

Max: Does Nic’s character do something similar in this film when he’s pressed into an extreme situation?

Joel: Yes, but the difference in 8MM is that the sins were so heinous, it led him to beating James Gandolfini to death with a gun, and then breaking into Chris Bower’s house. He would not normally do this, he’s just trying to defend his family and outsmart them. In this movie, by the time it ends, everyone becomes someone they never thought they would be. No one knows who they will be when their life is on the line. Very simply, [Cam Gigandet and Ben Mendelsohn] have a plan to be in and out of this house [belonging to Nicole Kidman and Nicolas Cage] in 15 minutes. It should have gone that way. These are people [Nicole Kidman and Nicolas Cage's charcters] that can be threatened with guns and home invasion, they’re terrorized by it but there are many things Nic can’t say, so it involves stalling them. This is the fabric of the movie. People do change. Nicole becomes a ferocious mother bear. Everybody is called upon to do what they never thought they’d have to do.

Max: So the movie happens in real time?

Joel: Yes.

read more here