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Eli Roth has been documenting the making of "Hostel: Part II" with a series of diary entries for MTV. Yesterday he discussed his battles and unlikely friendship with the MPAA. Today Roth talks about hearing the final sound mix for the film for the first time.

Once the film's cut, we mix the sound, which is what I've been doing at the Alfred Hitchcock Stage at Universal Studios for the past two weeks. Our mixers, Chris Jenkins and Frankie Montano, are awesome, and just did "300," amongst other films. They're amazing. My sound guys -- Brian Best, Kami Asgar and Sean McCormack -- are doing all the sound design, continuing the work they did from the first "Hostel." I worked again with my composer Nathan Barr, who I have worked with since "Cabin Fever," and he did another brilliant, terrifying score.

I obsess over every sound detail, and have to hear every single branch crack, footstep, and knife stab in every scene before we mix it. If something doesn't sound right in my mind's ear it will drive me crazy, and Brian will go and search for the sound until he has it exactly. The simplest sound can make a scene scary, even when you never intended to have it there in the first place. We can add a door creak or a metal scrape to an empty room, and suddenly it feels more creepy. You can't really explain it, you just have to feel it. We just played back the film and listened to all the reels all mixed. It was horrifying. Some of the scenes sound so beautiful you could just lie there and listen to the music for hours, and other scenes are so horrific and painful you're certain the screams will give you nightmares. But seeing the film today I felt a great sense of inner peace. It was the first time I'd seen the film all together, with music and sound effects. Read More...

Tags eli roth, hostel, hostel part ii

Eli Roth has been documenting the making of "Hostel: Part II" with a series of diary entries for MTV. Yesterday he discussed the music of his forthcoming film. Today Roth writes about his battles and unlikely friendship with the MPAA.

Contractually, for theatrical release I have to get an R-rating. This is not always easy, especially as the climate of the culture changes and parents groups get more and more upset about violence in films and on television. "Hostel Part II" is a more violent and scary film than the first "Hostel," and a lot of that has to do with the fact that this time it's happening to girls. It's just more horrific.

I was careful about how I used the violence, and really wanted to create an overall more terrifying film experience, and not just make a gore-fest. You can always make a film more gory by adding more tools and more bodies, but what I really wanted to do was create classic horror movie moments and make the entire film scary from start to finish. The problem is if your film's too intense, the MPAA will rate your film NC-17, which means that the studio won't release your film in theaters, except maybe a few art house cinemas. I cut the film for what would ultimately be an unrated DVD, but I was hoping to get as much of that violence as possible through the ratings board. Read More...

Tags eli roth, hostel, hostel part ii

Eli Roth has been documenting the making of "Hostel: Part II" with a series of diary entries for MTV. Yesterday Roth wrote about his secret weapon in the edit room. Today he talks about his favorite mode of transportation on the lot.

One of the other advantages to working with [editor] George Folsey Jr. is that he's always working, and has great contacts at every studio. Right before "Hostel: Part II," George cut a kids movie for Warner Bros. called "Unaccompanied Minors," so he had all his editing machines set up on the Warner lot. Instead of moving to a new place, Warner Bros. just let us stay in the editing rooms, since no one else was scheduled to move into those rooms for a few months.

Warner Bros. has a beautiful, beautiful lot, and every day that I go to work, it feels like something out of "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" or the beginning of "Ed Wood." I see directors like Chris Nolan and Zack Snyder around, and I'm editing next door to Wolfgang Petersen, who's editing his director's cut DVD of "Troy." (That's right, I get to share the same bathroom as Wolfgang Petersen. Kinda awesome. )

But the best thing about working on the Warner lot, by far, is that we have our own golf cart. I couldn't believe it when I first saw it. I mean, I have a thing for golf carts anyway, but to have my own golf cart on a movie lot...this was a dream come true. I ride around in that cart all the time. I have absolutely no idea what we could ever possibly use it for, except for giving tours to friends when they come to visit me in the editing room. I ride all over the lot, looking at the different shows and movies shooting, and usually wind up getting lost or stuck in a dead end somewhere around Joel Silver's company. There's a nice small-town America back-lot where I like to drive to, with fake stores and a fake school and everything. It's so cool. And somewhere in between the coffee drinking and golf cart rides, I have to edit the movie.

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Tags eli roth, hostel, hostel part ii