Interview Transcript: Myles McEwen & Ripley Stevens
Hub interns Megan and Aubrey sat down with the South Australian directing duo to talk found footage, sleepwalking in Budapest, and their latest horror film Nightfall: A Paranormal Investigation.
Myles McEwen (left) and Ripley Stevens (right).
Megan: Tell us a bit about yourselves and your journey into the screen industry so far.
Myles
We've been creative and making films for about four to five years. We studied film at school together and it was only in year 12 that Ripley and I started to connect more and become mates. I remember in year 12, about halfway through, we're working on our final film for the IB and I went over to Ripley and said, “Hey man, I've had this vision to to make a feature film when we finish school,” and I told him, “we're gonna direct it,” and he didn't really know what was going on at the time.
Ripley
Bit clueless. (laughs)
Myles
Like you know, he just kind of smiled at me (laughs) and then you flash forward four or five years and we have our new movie Nightfall: A Paranormal Investigation premiering on Feb 9 at the Piccadilly Theatre. We both directed the movie and we’re both in it. Its 80 minutes. So yeah, we're very creative. We've made a lot of stuff up to this point.
Ripley
Yeah. That's pretty much it. Being able to go full creative and just making whatever projects we can, short films and features.
Myles
And commercials as well. We work on them. We also spent three months in Europe as well.
Ripley
That was two years ago, about 2023. So nearly like a year and a half.
Myles
We spent three months in Europe together and we did this travelling filmmaking campus called Cinemadamare We essentially were with a group of young film makers, and we travelled all through these remote cities in Italy in this crazy bus, sleeping in gyms. And it was like 40° like it is today.
Ripley
Yeah. On air mattresses.
Myles
We had to make one film each week in the city/town. So, and there's heaps of different groups working on all these different films and we did that for three weeks and then we continued our travels, but those three months really defined I think where we are now.
Ripley
And it inspired a lot for the years to come. It's been a hectic few years.
Megan: So, before you mentioned your feature film Nightfall, which is about to have its premiere in South Australia. Can you just tell us a little bit about the film and what we should expect?
Ripley
Yeah. So primarily, it's a supernatural psychological found footage feature film. A bit of a hybrid, yeah.
Myles
It follows two young paranormal investigators in 1988, and it's all about “Case 13”, which happens at on June 6th at 6:00 PM. You know, there are a bit of demonic and religious ideas affiliated with the film and it's very cursed. The movie is based on our experience staying in Budapest in Hungary, when Ripley and I were solo travelling together through Europe. And we were staying…
Ripley
At, like, a 4th cousins’ dad's apartment.
Myles
And it turns out it was owned by a deceased old man. So the man that owns the apartment had died only a few months earlier. We arrived in this decrepit apartment block and it was very scary from the onset once we arrived. There's no one really there. Cold War era. We just knew there was a kind of a heavy feeling of like “this isn't quite right.”
Ripley
And I also hadn't slept for a long time, I really struggled to sleep.
Myles
He literally could not sleep. Ripley hadn’t slept more than 4 hours across an entire week, it was crazy.
Ripley
So it felt good to finally be able to rest then. But also my body was really weak.
Myles
Yeah. Ripley was really weak. We were both weak. We needed a place to stay, to recover. And what better place to stay than a deceased man's cursed apartment? And it was really scary. Like old artefacts around and strange photos on the wall and anyway we really wanted to watch a movie. So we manifested watching Insidious on this scary little TV.
Ripley
Yeah, we downloaded it somehow with the little Wi-Fi we had, managed to get it and plugged it into the TV, and we watched it and it was all good.
Myles
Yes. I'd never seen insidious.
Ripley
Yeah, it's pretty much it's about this young boy that falls into a coma and then sleepwalks, like, astral, weird stuff, yeah.
Myles
Yeah, it's quite spooky. And maybe 2-3 nights later, I look into the bathroom and I see Ripley walking around the house and I hear a few things. But I don't really pay attention and I don't know what he's doing. I fall asleep. Cut to a week later. I hear Ripley get out of his bed at 3:00 AM and he's whispering to himself. And I couldn't see any sense of my friend Ripley. And I'm watching him, and I feel tense. I'm sweating. He walks into the bathroom and just stands there, and he's saying the most strange words to himself like (whispers gibberish). And I go, “Ripley, what’s going on?” and he goes, “Oh! Oh! I don’t know! I don’t know!” And it all hit me, I realised he'd been sleepwalking the entire week.
Ripley
I used to sleep walk as a kid, but hadn't done it for a long time and I think it was just because I was so weak from everything that my body was sort of freaking out a little bit and it happened to be just after we saw Insidious so he might’ve thought it was a joke.
Myles
It’s the most scared I’ve ever been. At the same time, my older brother was messaging me from home saying that my bedroom light was magically switching on. I could hardly sleep that week. Subconsciously, this inspired Nightfall.
McEwen, M. & Stevens, R. (Directors). (2025). Nightfall: a paranormal investigation [Film]. 10:12.
Megan: That's great. So what is it that excites you the most about telling this story?
Myles
I like that the aspect of the story comes from an authentic place, and we were able to completely fictionalise it and set it in 1988 and explore a time before phones and a time where there was more esoteric thinking and the demonic was probably more of a fearful thing compared to nowadays, which is yeah, you know bit of a joke in some ways.
Ripley
And it's also been a dream for a while to do a found footage/supernatural horror, so it was really cool with our experience in Europe to then finally bring that to life. And you know, the final film scared us. So we're hoping that maybe if we share it to others, it might scare them too.
Aubrey: Just branching off of that period horror aspect of it, a lot of your previous work and now Nightfall have a strong focus on the past. Do you think there's a certain aesthetic or fear factor that comes with horror from the past?
Myles
I think we set a lot of our films in the past because there's no phones, so already the characters feel more isolated in the place that they’re situated. In this kind of day and age that we live in, everyone's pretty connected, there's phones, there's social media. So setting in the past where there's all these constraints definitely increases the horror and also meant we could go for that grainy look with the cinematography. Very aged, kind of spooky imagery.
Ripley
And I think there’s something about 80s films that had a big impact on me.
Myles
I think it's the reason we make movies and we connect so much is we don't quite feel like we're from this time that we live in. We're outliers, we’re unique people and we don't really fit in. Making films in the past has been a great way to explore different characters, and we play both the leads. Ripley plays Archie Charlesworth, who's a psychic, whispering paranormal investigator. He’s the scariest in the film. And I play Mick Sutherland, who's the other paranormal investigator who's driven by logic and intuition. So he's very serious and straight forward and blunt.
Aubrey: You mention inspiration from 80s films, what would you say are your biggest horror inspirations?
Ripley
John Carpenter was quite a big inspiration with Halloween. Love David Cronenberg.
Myles
I think the main inspiration for this film was The Omen. It's a religious horror. And it's just a fantastic film. It's very theatrical and ridiculous, which is a tiny bit like this film.
Ripley
Oh, yeah, and The Exorcist.
Myles
We watched The Exorcist for the first time in Paris in this really cool eclectic theatre, and it was such an experience. You’ll see a lot of that kind of style unintentionally in Nightfall, from the titles to the slow zooms and the church bells and all that kind of imagery. And in terms of other more modern films, Insidious and The Conjuring.
Ripley
Skinamarink as well, which also took that 80s look and used a lot of sound to insert the audience in that film.
Myles
We wanted to make Skinamarink but not as boring. (laughs)
Aubrey: And when it comes to the inclusion of found footage, what was the process of incorporating that into the story and how did that compare to your previous work?
Ripley
We weave the found footage into cinematic moments because the investigators are sort of documenting their findings. So it's kind of cool having like, a whole cinematic scene and then cutting straight to found footage, which is fun to experiment with.
Myles
So the last act of the film is like 20 minutes of complete found footage. That's like the main brunt of the found footage. Doing the found footage thing for the first time allowed us to really put the audience in the present moment, because you've got this music and cinematic shots, and then the characters get their Super 8 camera out and you cut in and it's just the noise of the forest or wherever they are and the sound of the Super 8 film. So it really puts you in the moment and therefore allows you to do a lot of big jump scares.
Ripley
Yeah, and some camera tricks to help you out.
Myles
And we didn't have a big budget for this film. So the cinema camera that we're using to shoot the whole film, we also used it for the found footage, but we just messed the settings up a bit. So we amped up the aperture to like 11 or 12, maybe even higher, and put shutter speed on quite low to add blur in the camera movement and then in post-production, we amped up the grain and a lot of different colour techniques to really come close to the Super 8 medium or at least the visual feeling that film creates.
Megan: So in your previous work, such as Nole: The Christmas Killer, there's quite a few South Australian cultural references, like having the Christmas pageant and even dialling Santa on the payphone and stuff like that. Can we expect those types of references in your upcoming work?
Myles
That's a great question. Don't expect any South Australian elements in Nightfall. It’s set in Northern Europe and the last sequence is actually filmed in Italy. But for local South Australians you will see familiar locations. Our next feature film, it's called Switch and it stars SA actor Jack Rawlinson. We've nearly finished it. Its very Australian and partly filmed in the Hills.
Megan: I feel like with Australian films sometimes we tend to try and appeal to the masses but like we need to embrace our culture and our life.
Ripley
I agree. In Switch we filmed a lot of the Australian beaches and some other things all around to really show off the beautiful landscapes we have around here.
Aubrey: How do you balance co-directing and how do you solve disagreements if they arise?
Myles
A lot of the improv in Nightfall came from onset tension between Ripley and I. There was huge tension between us. In the third scene we filmed, if you look at the raw takes, we’re just yelling at each other and swearing. Ripley's got no idea what's going on. I kind of know what we're filming, but I just don’t have time to communicate it.
Ripley
And I think in doing so, that really did help the acting and everything. It really allowed us to jump into the character’s shoes.
Myles
To be completely honest, we were really annoyed with each other.
Ripley
And it was also because we did it in this really hot heat wearing proper winter coats in 40° weather.
Myles
I think the tension between us as directors came from the fact that a lot of Nightfall initially was my own vision and Ripley was trying to just work out how he could bring in his own direction. So a lot of the tension ironically came from that. But I think that's why this film works, because there's so much tension.
Ripley’s direction is generally around a lot of the horror elements. So he has ideas for jump scares, whereas a lot of my direction is more how can we progress the story and ideas. So when you nail those two together, I think it's pretty good sweet spot.
Megan: How have you gone about forming your crews and accessing any funding for your projects as young filmmakers?
Myles
We've been very lucky. A lot of our good friends are filmmakers and actors. So we just all help each other out. And as you know, in Adelaide we all just want to help each other. Collaboration is the key. Access to funding is something we’re working on at the moment.
Ripley
Hopefully this will be the year where we actually can start getting a little bit of funding.
Myles
When we made Nightfall, for example, we just did it, because we have all the gear and we have some backlog of money which leaves us broke after it's spent. (laughs) It's allowed us to make our first two movies, but now we're looking to actually secure funding. There's a big network out there, so I think we're still trying to expand.
Aubrey: And the final question, which we've already covered a little bit with your upcoming films, but what's on the horizon for you guys in the future? Where can we expect to see you after Nightfall?
Myles
I think a few more feature films. We've got our upcoming short film called Statues. It’s Ripley’s solo directorial debut and it stars myself, Ripley, Jack Rawlinson and Alexandra Todorashko. Adelaide’s own Amelia Rooney composed the best score I’ve ever heard in one of our films.
Ripley
Amelia also composed for Nightfall as well as local Ivy Sage plus Christian Jacobs from Europe.
Myles
Yeah, and Statues is upcoming. I think that's our best work, we're at the 90% mark. We just need to finish the edit and we do have some big festival plans for that one. So yes, and then Switch, our horror feature film starring Jack Rawlinson, David Daradan, Joseph Baronio, Nat Kelly and more coming 2025/2026.
Ripley
Hopefully (laughs).
Megan: Is there anything else you wanted to add?
Myles
So for Nightfall, what we love about making movies is ultimately giving other creatives a voice. And that's the composers, we really care about composers. And we had two Adelaide legends, Amelia Rooney and Ivy Sage and also an international composer all come together and compose their own tracks for Nightfall. And we're so stoked about what they've created. I think that's where the magic is made.
Ripley
They really bring it to life in the edit. Brings it all together in the end.
Myles
Yeah, cause when we're in the edit for Nightfall and just all our films, you get quite depressed sitting there. And you watch it over and over and there's no music and there's no sound design, which in a horror is everything. But once we got the score sent to us and placed it in we’re like “okay, cool, it’s not terrible.” There's over 3,000 sounds in Nightfall, and it's all mixed in cinema 5.1 surround. So the sounds are coming from every direction of the cinema. People forget watching a movie, it's shot with almost no sound. We had to construct the sounds and be intentional with them and also a lot of the dialogue we redubbed in post as well.
At the end of the month, Nightfall: A Paranormal Investigation is premiering in San Francisco at the Unnamed Footage Festival with filmmakers in attendance.
Watch the trailer and more films from Myles and Ripley here,
