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The Maze RunnerWes Ball, director of The Maze Runner, recently joined us for a roundtable interview to talk through the different perils and inspirations of bringing the best-selling young-adult novel to the big screen.

Wes has previously put his skills to test on three short films, until now, taking on his first feature film - The Maze Runner. Here is a brief premise of what the film enthrals;

Set in a post-apocalyptic world, Thomas arrives atop a lift into a community field called the ‘Glade’, home to a group of young men who similarly have had their memory erased. After learning they are all trapped in a maze, Thomas joins forces with fellow Glader’s to not only escape the interchanging maze, but solve its riddle and reveal the chilling secret of who brought them there, and why.

Be sure to also check out our interview with lead cast; Dylan O'Brien, Will Poulter and Thomas Brodie-Sangster too:

The Maze Runner arrives in UK cinemas 10th October 2014.





Interviewed on:
20 August, 2014


Words By:
Charlie Green
Charlie Green

"We are just ten weeks out from shooting right now. We are in New Mexico, we have got crew coming in; the script is in about its third draft already, it is frickin' massive and awesome! ..."

This is your first feature film, how did you go about following these characters different emotional journeys?

For me personally, it's an experience, you're on this ride with this main character Thomas, you experience the movie through his eyes. We are only cut away for one scene in the movie from what Thomas sees. It is all in his point of view. I like that idea of not spoon-feeding everything to the audience and liked being on this journey with them and making it entertaining, making it intense and cool-moments to grab onto. But hopefully also at least fall in love with these characters in some small way too, so that we can continue telling the story for the rest of the movie. I was saying this to someone else the other day, my job coming in this was to give the studio a franchise, they have a series of books and that is what they want. They want a franchise. But my goal as a film-maker is to make a good movie. So the puzzle is how you do both of those things. We do the best with the resources what we have and we had a great cast that you latch onto and hopefully we will just get to continue on with the questions that still linger and the ideas that we don't quite fully get to explore, we get to really tackle them in the next movie where everything grows up and picks right up where the last one left off, and you get basically this four-hour movie that this crazy journey the characters go through. Things come along and just grab me, there are the couple of movies that lately are very much like a roller-coaster ride, and I think there is something cool about that.

Wes BALLHow long were you shooting for?

We shot for eight weeks, which is a very short period of time to do our movie. It was intense, but fun. Some of those limitation help you, working in those parameters sometimes forces out creative ideas, but sometimes frustrated that you have to compromise so much. But that is all we had, and what we tried to do the best with what we had.

In terms of the franchise that you mentioned, what can you tell us about your involvement?

I have options with what to do next. Fortunately enough people inside the industry have seen the movie and they can see that I know how to use a camera at leas, so it is interesting. Right now we are prepping the sequel, we are gearing up to go basically. The fan screenings, and test screenings so far are showing that for the most part like the movie and want to see the next one. Which is kind of by design and I am trying to deliver a franchise for the studio here. At first I wasn't looking to do the sequel, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to work with the cast again. They are just so great.

We are just ten weeks out from shooting right now. [Interview took place 20/08/14]. We are in New Mexico, we have got crew coming in, the script is in about its third draft already, it is frickin' massive and awesome. We are changing it a little from the book. I have already told James Dashner, the author of the book that there are just some things that don't work for me in the movie so are rearranging it slightly to make sure it has a nice trajectory of beginning, middle and end. The books cans be a little more meandering than what a movie can be. So, we have got some kick-ass really cool movie monsters. Like I said, the movie takes place right where the last one left off. There is the really cool sense of growing up in the movie; it is way more mature, deeper and sophisticated and it is going to be - if we get the chance to do it - intense. By far one of the hardest things that I have had to do before for sure. Again, its scale is way bigger than the last one. In terms of its shooting time, resources, money and all of that stuff. But also in scope, the first movie is very much contained. It just a small little movie, there is no horizon inline in the movie. It is just basically three locations in the maze, which is a challenge all on its own. It is hard to keep things moving when you have just three split places to go shoot.

But the next movie is a journey movie. It is about these kids on-the-run movie, it's a fugitive movie. These kids do this terrible, dangerous environment and are still trying to figure out what the hell is going on, along now with all of these crazy dangers to find their way in this world. The first movie for me is very much like high-school, how you don't have an identity and latch onto one and navigate the dangers outside of your home world essentially and then find yourself in this new world - out of the frying pan and into the fire - what the hell do I do now? That is very much what the next movie is about. It is kind of like college, all of this experimentation, it's about these kind of ideas of growing up as a person and discovering how you fit into the world as a larger whole. Plus then there is all of the cool mythology stuff that we get to really start hinting at. I got a lot of criticism for this actually in my short about things that I don't quite wrap up at the end and we get to continue kind of doing that in the next movie. All of those things that we set up, they all make sense in the next movie. It is fun to think about this kind of thing in terms of it. I grew up on Star Wars, I mean you can watch those things and it feels at least like it was all planned. But there is something cool about that, and thinking about it TV does it so well. The stuff they are doing are like ten-hour movies; Game of Thrones. I love that idea for movies. So if people can be patient with us and kind of take the ride then it will be a lot of fun to go into this next one. Hopefully we will get the chance to do it, but who knows you never actually know what will happen. But we are proceeding as if we know it is going to happen.

What attracts you as a director to make apocalyptic films? Such as The Maze Runner and your short film Ruin?

Well, first of all, if someone is going to offer you a job - you take it no matter what! For me, the post-apocalyptic thing, when I came up with that idea nobody else was doing it. I had been working on Ruin for many, many years. I think there is something romantic about the reset. The idea of a world where you are self-reliant, a world basically of treasure. In Ruin, it is kind of an Indiana Jones story in the future essentially. It is a world that has come to an end and there is this character that goes out and finds all sorts of treasure on this world and sees all of these crazy sci-fi things they can do. It is like that Arthur C. Clark quote 'Anything you will understand is basically is magic'. What is interesting about The Maze Runner though is that you don't actually know it is a post-apocalyptic movie. When you first go into it, you are like you are in The Lord of the Flies or something like that. You don't see anything like that. Spoilers of course, you kind of see that that is where they are for the next movie, and the next main place. But I guess that is kind of why the studio gave me this book. I guess after they saw Ruin. I can't say that it is totally intentional, but it just kind of worked out.

How closely did you work with James Dashner, the writer of the book?

When I came on they gave me the book to consider and talked to me about Ruin, what we are going to do is Ruin - but as a big franchise thing. So they asked me to do a little screening of some people on the lot there, they gave me this book, The Maze Runner, and this script also. But I decided that I wanted to start over from scratch and do something else different with the book. Fortunately they let me do that. But I wanted to stay as close to the book as I could, because obviously the fans are the first people that would see this movie and we wanted to make sure they are happy and respect their desires of what they ideally want to see.

After I wrote about the second or third draft I brought James in and introduced myself and told him what I wanted to do. He has always been so supportive of us, he understands that we are going to make a movie, which is accepts is different from the book. They don't have to replace each other, but can stand next to each other side-by-side. For the most part he just let me do my thing, but I would always go to him and say 'Do you think the fans will be upset if I took this part out?' etc. I brought him out to the Glade when we were building that and he was like this kid in the candy store. It was fantastic to see his little world coming to life. It was amazing. The last thing I did, I let him come out to the scoring session. That was fantastic. There is just something so special about it. John Paesano who scored the movie is a newcomer himself as a composer. He is the guy who trained under John Williams, worked under John Powell and Hans Zimmer. He has got this unique kind of mix of old-school charm with this modern edge. So James Dashner came into see some of the movies with no dialogue with just the scenes play out with a full orchestra in the background. It is amazing, there is nothing like it in the world. It is absolutely fantastic. You never get quite that feeling again when you play it in theatres. It loses something special, some live - especially from choirs, it's phenomenal.

Just a quick question about the scoring. From the first moments you kind of notice that there is this key theme. Did you give him pointers at all? How did it come about?

I have been listening to soundtracks since Jurassic Park came out in 1993. That was the first soundtrack that I ever brought, and since then I am total dork. It is all I listen to, soundtracks. I have a huge collection of these things. There is just something for me, I day-dream very well with them. I think about scenes there is a pace, a rhythm and structure to them. Typically I design scenes to soundtracks. When I was looking for who to compose this movie, and there is no knock against what people are doing these days, but it is very much in that Hans Zimmer, when he came on the scene everything became the Hans Zimmer sound. Which like this driving engine, adrenaline, this pulse. I wanted themes, I would character in them, emotion, and those kind of things. John Williams is the guy to do that. So I spoke to John Paseano a lot about that and coming from that school too it worked out really well I think. There are some really strong themes in there and it helps to tell the story. Hopefully it is not so over-the-top that it gets in the way, but it is a nice marriage with the picture. I am excited for people to check out the score. I think it is fantastic. If you listen to it in a full run then there is a true character and whole story that is playing on its own. There are all these different genres that emerge, sounds textures. We are basically setting it up for the next score. I already have some of that written, it is fantastic. But like I said, the next movie just grows up and becomes way more subtle and we get to do it as a team again, it is really fun. Best job in the world.

"The guy who played the Harry Potter theme played the piano in our movie! We had John William's orchestra captain, the person on the violin playing on our movie. They are like Gods... and they're playing on our little movie - I was a kid in the candy store on that day!"

The Maze RunnerWas there any challenges that you had to face during the production?

There was two challenges honestly. It was being tied to source material, I cannot do whatever I want to do. This is a franchise, there is a certain structure that has to come into place. Certain things that have to be set up so that we can continue telling the story. That was tricky and a tough thing to navigate personally. Second was the resources, I am not alone in this I am sure that any director in any scale would agree that you can never do what you want to do all the time basically. You are always up against compromise. But sometimes you really felt it. We are a pretty small budgeted movie for what we are trying to achieve so that was exceptionally difficult for the kind of big things that I imagine - which is usually things quite expensive and big. Finding the bare minimum essentially. But often good things come out of that process. Those were tough things for me personally. Other than that it was just the challenge of making a movie. That is just a different kind of puzzle.

The Glade seems perfectly translated from book-to-screen, can you talk us through how your achieved that?

We basically went out and scouted hundreds of cow-patches. Stepped on plenty of crap on the way too! It was important to find somewhere that had character. It was also important that it was a real place. It needed to have real sunlight and was the big thing about making this movie is that when I came on is that I said I am not making Twilight. I wasn't making this teeny-opera; polished, bubble-gum thing with bright colours and all of that stuff. I wanted to make something that was dark; moody, sweaty and gritty. The sweat you see in the movie, that is real sweat. I think there is cool beauty in that.

So finding that Glade was important and we did eventually find the place - I think it will be on the DVD. I remember the day actually, we drive through this farmyard, though the grass and this line of trees and I was like 'This is it guys, this is what you want to show me?' ... 'No, no, no. Go through down those trees'. So you walk to these trees and there is like this little hill that drops down into this swamp, so you emerge into that and walk out of the swamp and you come into the Glade. It was fantastic, that was definitely the place. What was interesting about it was that there was this little fence line of trees on the edges and what it felt like was the walls. They were about 100-feet tall and if you looked around - it wasn't concrete but it you felt closed in and it felt right. When I saw it it was the winter, so they were bare trees and you wanted it to be green, so we prayed that it would all going to be green again by the time you start shooting in a few months. We made the right choice.

"... I am not making Twilight. I wasn't making this teeny-opera; polished, bubble-gum thing with bright colours and all of that stuff. I wanted to make something that was dark; moody, sweaty and gritty. The sweat you see in the movie, that is real sweat. I think there is cool beauty in that."

What was your favourite scene that you directed?

That is like choosing your favourite baby. I don't know - but will say that there was one in particular from the book that got me wanting to make the movie. It was Ben's banishment, I thought that was a cool idea of kids having to make adult decisions for the group, so that was like a scene that was just intense, brutal and merciless. If they was going to let me do that, and put that kind of a scene into a kids movie essentially I was like, I definitely want to do. That scene just resonates with me in particular because of that thing that made me see this movie in a different light, not just a kid’s movie, but more of an adult film with kids in it. But there was lots of fun little character scenes that I liked, it was a nice surprise for me to come from this background and find these two little characters on a log just talking, it was great to just see this type of life happening and it was a learning experience for me as a film-maker. We shot it so fast that it is all crammed together and I am interested to see the making-of's of these days and be like 'Oh yeah, that scene, I remember how that went'. Right now it is all kind of a blur.



The Maze Runner Cast Interview
The Maze Runner CAST Interview

  The Maze Runner Review
The Maze Runner




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