10 Questions with Clare Grant
1) All of us at Yodasnews have been big fans since you and Rileah’s short film, Saber, won two awards at the 2009 Star Wars Fan Films, including the coveted Audience Choice Award. Three long years later, we finally have a sequel in Saber 2: Return of the Body Wash, let’s start with how you came up with the new concept?
Rileah came up with the concept immediately after we shot the first one, but we got so side tracked with Team Unicorn, that we didn’t have time to focus on anything else.
2) We saw some behind the scene shots on Facebook and you had quite a crew in that bathroom, how long did the shoot take?
It was a two day shoot. One day for the exterior shots, and one 14 hour day for the interior shots.
3) Your husband Seth directed the sequel, did you have to cook his favorite meal and wear the Slave Leia costume around the house for a week to peel him away from his gazillion projects to work on this with you?
Actually, when we he read Zeb Wells’ version of the script, he got really excited and presented a different take on the idea, asking us if he could direct it.
4) Can you tell us a little more about Nerdist Channel and why you choose them for this film?
Working with the Nerdist Channel was an obvious choice for us. We love Chris Hardwick and Peter Levin over there. Their interests are the same as ours, and both Nerdist and Danger Maiden (My & Rileah’s production company) share the idea that we should all be one big happy nerd community family.
5) In just a few short hours Saber 2 is already into the thousands of views and by time we publish this, it may be into the tens of thousands – knowing how much fans love these shorts, did you ever think of making them a web series?
We are thrilled that Star Wars fans out there like our videos, we made them for the biggest Star Wars fans we know-ourselves. So yes, as long as people keep watching, we would absolutely like to create more Saber parody commercials.
6) Your followers and fans on Twitter and Facebook know you are big into Cosplay, assuming you will be at SDCC and hopefully Celebration VI this summer, do you have any new costumes you plan to debut?
Team Unicorn plans on cosplaying this year for sure. We have created our own super hero costumes and can’t wait to unveil them at SDCC.
7) Geek and Gamer Girls was also very popular with our readers (and just about everyone else) – is there anything coming down the pike from Team Unicorn?
Absolutely. We loved G33K & G4M3R Girls, and already have another super nerdy song recorded and ready to go. Next step is getting everything together to produce the video and share it with all of you.
8) What is your favorite Star Wars film?
Ok. I would like to state for the record that you asked which is my favorite Star Wars film, not the best Star Wars film. And to that, my favorite is Return of the Jedi. However, I would never argue that the best one is Empire Strikes Back, which is definitely Rileah’s favorite Star Wars movie.
9) I think we’d all like our own “Saber Girls” to add to our collections and make our lonely Chewies on the shelf smile – I think it’s time for a 3 3/4 2 pack to be released, it would be a perfect con exclusive – have you thought about any merchandise?
Oh my gosh! That would be a dream come true. Obviously we would LOVE to have merchandise, especially our own Saber Girls action figures, but that is a hard accomplishment to manage.
10) Thanks for taking the time to chat with us, anything else on the horizon that our readers should know about?
Thanks for taking the time to chat with US!! I have two independent movies coming out soon, The Insomniac, starring John Herd, Danny Trejo, Eddy Salazar, directed by Monty Miranda. And a movie starring James Preston about Jimmy on the road to becoming James Dean, called Joshua Tree 1951: A Portrait of James Dean. And then there is this little show I just lent my voice to called Star Wars: The Clone Wars, where I play a bounty hunter in leagues with Boba Fett named Latts Razzi. She had a couple episodes this season, and will be coming back next season.
Rileah just filmed a movie called The Pandora Experiment, starring Noah Hathaway and Michael Dorne, and has another top secret movie that she is attached to which begins filming this month.
Images via Clare Grant – You can follow Clare on Twitter at www.twitter.com/claregrant and Rileah Vanderbilt at http://twitter.com/#!/rileah