Ben McQuaid on Welcome To G-Town: ‘We wanted it to be big and splattery and fun’
Fresh from completing their media studies degrees at Stirling University, the McQuaid brothers talk to Eddie Harrison about horror inspiration, sliming their cast and close encounters with disembodied voices
Nathan and Ben McQuaid are the writer/directors of comedy-horror Welcome To G-Town, which has its world premiere at Glasgow Film Festival. For G-Town read Glasgow in this Shaun Of The Dead-style update of genre classics, as a trio of locals discover that tartan-clad aliens are operating out of the city centre.
You’re premiering your first feature film within six months of graduating. How did that happen?
Nathan: We were at Stirling for four years where we were taught how to make documentaries but there was also a great film society where we learned to make drama films. We met Graham Hughes, a Glasgow filmmaker, and we’d seen films he’d made like Death Of A Vlogger. We reached out to him with a short we’d made called Ginger Nut, and he got back in touch a few months later. We naively said our plan was to make feature films and he kindly took us under his wing. We wrote a one-page outline for him and then a draft with the aim of starting production when we graduated.
With aliens disguised in gift-shop tartan, this feels like a very Scottish alien invasion story. What inspired you cinematically?
Nathan: The 70s version of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers was an influence, plus Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste, which taught us that anyone can make anything from anywhere: if Peter Jackson can do it in New Zealand, anyone can do it. Bill Forsyth’s That Sinking Feeling showed us that you can do it in Glasgow, too.
Ben: We wanted it to be big and splattery and fun, like in Bad Taste, but also a film that people in Glasgow could watch and recognise as theirs, and have that same kind of a youthful energy to it as That Sinking Feeling. We definitely were nervous about the political aspect; like we wondered if anyone would take offence. Once the office set was all decorated in tartan, and we saw the Scottish/alien costumes, we realised that we couldn’t back away from what we’d written.
Low-budget filmmaking is a notoriously taxing pursuit. How was your shoot?
Ben: We shot for 12 days... one of the challenges was that we were making a horror film in the summer, so our access to night-time shooting was limited. The good thing was that the streets were empty and we didn’t get much harassment. When we were shooting outside Central Station, we used a long lens on the camera and shot from across the street; we just told people we were taking shots of the building for a documentary. I don’t think anyone who saw us connected the dots.
Nathan: The only time we got caught out was on the platform at Bellgrove railway station after the last train had gone and we heard this big booming voice asking what we were doing. The voice came from this little metal box with a light on it: we felt like we were talking to Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
How did you find your cast?
Nathan: We got lucky with our main three, Danny McAllen, Ruben Ross and Stan Ross. They’d never seen each other and the first time they actually met was going out for drinks before the shoot. We wanted them to like each other. Our whole cast was incredible, they were up for anything. Sometimes we’d have them standing in the rain or covered in slime. We had Mark Dallas in an alleyway at 3am and we had this big bucket of slime that got chucked over him... he was a real trouper.
How did post-production go?
Ben: We realised on the first day that the footage files were way too big for our laptops and, since a big part of our ethos was getting other people involved, Graham suggested an editor called Nina Barrett. She’d edit it together and send us the footage and we’d give notes. It was a very collaborative experience because we’d never worked with professionals who understand film on a deeper level.
Was getting Welcome To G-Town to Glasgow Film Festival always your goal?
Nathan: Glasgow Film Festival was always going to be the best outcome for us. We see films at the festival every year and also our cast and crew is based in Scotland. The timeline was so tight for us, to wrap in August and be ready for the GFF submission in October, so we wanted a big celebration. We’d feel pretty silly if a film called Welcome To G-Town premiered in Spain...
Welcome To G-Town, GFT, Glasgow, Saturday 28 February; Odeon Glasgow Quay, Sunday 1 March; GFT, Glasgow, Friday 6 March.