BY JENNIFER M. CONTINO
Kyle Higgins and Alec Siegel took their love of Golden Age superheroes to the next level, by creating a noir type film, The League, as a part of a thesis project for Chapman University. Now The League has found its way online and Grey Raven, Sparrow and The Blue Blaze are meeting a whole new audience. This ambitious project, about the world's first superhero labor union, took a while to complete and was filled with a fair share of challenges. Siegel and Higgins told THE PULSE a little about making comic books into movie magic.


THE PULSE: Let's start at the beginning, what is The League?

ALEC SIEGEL: The League is a short film about the world's first superhero labor union. It follows The League's founders, "The Grey Raven," his kid-sidekick "Sparrow," and "The Blue Blaze," first in the 1940's, and then in the 1960's. I co-wrote the film with Kyle Higgins, who directed it.

KYLE HIGGINS: It was also my thesis project for Chapman University.

SIEGEL: Right.

THE PULSE: What inspired you to do something like this? I mean, it looks like a really big labor of love ....

HIGGINS: I would definitely agree with that (laughs).

SIEGEL: Yeah. And obviously it's been extremely tough at times, but I'm really happy with the finished film. Basically, the idea started with a short story that Kyle wrote to get in to Chapman University. It was really more of a comedy and doesn't resemble the short film too much, but it set the stage for some of the themes we ended up exploring. About a year later, Kyle approached me to help him develop the same concept of the "superhero labor union," but for a thesis film.


HIGGINS: We started writing it Super Bowl Sunday, almost two years ago—we were both back in Chicago to watch the Bears/Colts game. Alec was finishing up school at Illinois State University, and I was at Chapman. And I was flying back the next day. I think we stayed up most of the night working out the world of The League (it was either that, or cry about the game).

SIEGEL: Kyle knew he wanted to tell this period story about superheroes, and that we had to do it in a more grounded way. We decided we wanted to set the film as close to the "real world" as we could. The idea was "the real world that just happens to have superheroes in it." We wanted to stay away from making it self aware or make it "look" like a "comic book movie." We hadn't seen a comic book film done that way before.

HIGGINS: Of course, that was before The Dark Knight.

SIEGEL: That's true.

THE PULSE: Yeah, I'd imagine The Dark Knight changed a lot of things. How did you make this come about? I'd guess any comic fan would be thrilled to work on something like this ....

SIEGEL: There was no shortage of people at Chapman that wanted to help make this movie. I think people were drawn to the concept; like Kyle said, nothing like this had been done at the school before. Kyle was able to bring on people that were really at the top of the list in their respective focuses. People like Dorothy Street (Production Design), Andrew Davis (Director of Photography), Joe Clark (Composer), Dylan Highsmith (Editor) and Mike Grier (Visual Effects). Without that team, we never would have been able to pull this thing off. So we really owe it to every person who worked on the film, from people who gave notes on each draft of the script, to the people who built the sets, to everyone that watched the film during post production.

THE PULSE: Was this film made as part of a school project or was it just done to get experience in the industry? What motivated spending all the time and energy on getting this made?

SIEGEL: I certainly gained a great deal of experience making the movie. It was the first time I'd ever really been on a set of any kind. The film was Kyle's thesis project for Chapman, but we'd always intended on putting it online, also.


HIGGINS: And to be honest, a large part of deciding to make this film had to do with the market for superhero movies. Even when I wrote the short story and first got in to Chapman, I was thinking about what kind of final project I would want to do. It seems like, for most people (myself included) the answer to "how do you become a filmmaker" is obvious: You go to film school. So everyone goes to film school now, which makes getting your work noticed even harder. So I was very conscious of wanting to do something that could stand out. Richard Donner's Superman is what got me into film, and I've been a huge comic book fan my whole life. So there were a lot of things that made the idea of doing this movie really, really exciting.


THE PULSE: How did you guys come up with your heroes? What was it about the Golden Age that made it ideal for what you were trying to accomplish?

SIEGEL: The heroes were really built from established archetypes. The Grey Raven/Geoffrey Warner (Rick Cramer) is the world's greatest hero, very much in the vein of Batman or Superman. He's a natural leader, which makes it logical that he'd be the one to run The League (and be faced with all the tough questions of how to keep The League going). In the case of Sparrow (Andrew Hilyard), there is obviously the Robin/Nightwing connotation. I know Kyle and I have both found the former sidekick dynamic extremely fascinating. Blaze (Reginald James) is designed after the Green Lantern. And there's also a very clear family relationship to the film, between these three heroes. It's a father, son, and uncle story.


HIGGINS: I think the reason I find that hero/former sidekick relationship so interesting is because at its heart, it's incredibly easy for me (and audience) to relate to. It's a universal idea. Everyone grows up and eventually has to move out of their childhood lives. And then we spend years trying to discover who we really are. I'm still looking (laughs).

And in regards to the golden age, we wanted the juxtaposition between the 1940's and the 1960's to be huge. We wanted to see what the world has become, and in a lot of ways it was becoming darker. So in regards to our story, I've always thought of the movie as starting as a Golden Age DC tale, and then transitioning into a Silver Age Marvel story.

SIEGEL: The beginning of the film always needed to be lighter. So much of the film is dark in both tone and aesthetic, and we really wanted to show a large change in the world (the condition of the city, the relationships between the characters, etc). There needed to be a contrast. Plus, I think it's fun to open the film with a "gee whiz" mentality. The characters talk right to the audience, which pulls the viewer in. I think that makes the dramatic shift that occurs in the 1960s that much more powerful.


THE PULSE: How did this film do as the thesis project at Chapman? Was it well received?

HIGGINS: Well, the tricky thing with film, and especially film school, is that everything is so subjective. And particularly with something like this, where it leans a bit more on the commercial side of filmmaking, the movie is definitely not everyone's cup of tea. There were people that supported the project, and I'd say for the most part (now that it's completely finished), it has been well received. But since we were trying to do something a little different from what had been done before at Chapman, and certainly the size and complexity of the production was one of the largest at the school, there was definitely some hesitation and doubt that we'd be able to pull the movie off.

THE PULSE: So what were some of the challenges of pulling this off?

HIGGINS: Well, first and foremost were the logistics of the shoot. Most of us were all seniors, trying to graduate. I know in my case, I was taking like 21 units and working while also trying to make the movie. So that, combined with the demands of doing a short film this large, proved for very little sleep. I'd say overall, the largest challenge was that our reach, in a lot of ways, exceeded our grasp. So it was a constant fight to find solutions to problems that, on a professional shoot might not be as big an issue, but on a student short were daunting.

For example, we knew we wanted three scenes in the Grey Raven office—two during the day, and one at night. And in the last daytime scene, we wanted Blaze to come crashing through the window. So naturally, this ruled out any practical locations. We shot on two soundstages at Chapman (the Nicolai Lennin safehouse was also a set). Mike Grier, Josh Grier and Mitch Fait were the architects of the soundstage weekends. This movie would not look as good as it does without them (Mike and Josh, along with a few others, handled all the visual effects as well). Mike designed the sets in Maya, and then went and built them. The cabinetry in the Raven office, for example, was done from scratch.


SIEGEL: I remember one night, in between shooting the Wraith/Eclipse fight, and the post explosion Blaze conversation, the Griers and a couple other people wheeling an entire set down the hallway at Chapman, so we could reconstruct it on a larger sound stage.

HIGGINS: That's right!

SIEGEL: We needed to get a forty foot green screen up behind an explosion hole, and still have room to hang Reginald (Blaze) from wires. The soundstage we were on was big enough for the set, but not for the green screen. However, the larger soundstage at Chapman was booked right up until the night before we needed it.

HIGGINS: Yeah. So it was things like that. And we haven't even mentioned the visual effects yet (laughs). But like I said, it was a constant fight and struggle to do things that will end up, hopefully, making the movie stand out from other student films.

THE PULSE: What kind of feedback have you gotten since you took The League online?


HIGGINS: It's been very positive so far—it seems like people really dig the movie. For anyone who hasn't seen it yet, the movie is streaming on our website in 720P (HD), at http://www.theleaguefilm.com

THE PULSE: Do you have any plans to make a comic book version of this or are you just going to leave it as a film?

HIGGINS: I know I would definitely be open to doing it as a comic book. We've had a couple meetings at different companies, where we have discussed that idea. At the same time though, I feel like the concept and the world would work in several mediums. We're working on a feature script for The League, but the great thing about a comic book (and in a lot of ways, television as well), is that the storytelling format is much more free form compared to film. Issues are chapters from a larger work, and as such, allow you to explore different characters (and the past) much more easily.

THE PULSE: Are you a comic book fan? What are your favorite comics?

HIGGINS: Yes, I'm a big comic book fan. I've been reading comics since I was 10 or 11. Actually, one of the first comics I ever read was during the Clone Saga in Spider-Man. I know the story went on too long, but at the time, I was a huge Scarlet Spider fan. I've actually still got a poster of him in my room. Like I said—the whole idea of trying to find who you are, and getting out from someone else's shadow is really appealing to me. There's obviously a lot of that in The League, and it's the same reason why Nightwing, Robin, Havok, and the Winter Soldier are all some of my favorite characters. And of course, I'm a big Watchmen fan. In recent years I've been reading Daredevil and Captain America. Nightwing, Batman, Robin, Justice Society… Green Lantern has been spectacular, too.



SIEGEL: I feel like I might get in trouble if I say that, up until now, I haven't been a big comic book reader. I remember reading some of Dark Horse's X-Wing series as a kid and I was a big follower of Batman The Animated Series, but that's about it. I've always been a fan of comic book movies, however. I'd often ask Kyle the history of characters and their relationship safter movies like X-Men and Spider-man came out. For example, Kyle had to explain to me that in Spider-man Gwen Stacy was Peter Parker's first love, that she'd been the one on the bridge (unlike the film, obviously, where it's Mary Jane), and that she'd died when he tried to save her. So my comic book knowledge has formed in a sort of backwards way, I guess. I'd have to say that Batman is probably my favorite character, but I'm also a big fan of Captain America and Watchmen.

THE PULSE: What's next for The League?

HIGGINS: Well, we're designing a much larger, expansive story, and we could tell it in several different mediums. Like I said, I would totally be open to doing a comic, tv show, or movie based on the ideas of the short. I have to say—the larger story we've come up with is extremely dynamic. There's one idea in particular that Alec just wrote up, that is so insanely cool—I really hope people can see it someday.

THE PULSE: What other projects are you working on?

HIGGINS: There are a number of things we're writing—some together, and some separate—and we've had a few meetings about what's next. But it's still very early, so unfortunately there isn't anything we can talk about.