Yesterday, I posted about the Iron Man fan film that’s been making the rounds the last few months; today, here’s the first installment of a two-part interview with David Guivant, the man behind the buzz on the flick. Turns out it’s not his first fan film, nor his first one to gain some notoriety. But why should I tell you that–here’s what he had to say for himself…after the jump

The Basics: How old are you, where do you live, what do you do in real life?
My Name is David Guivant, 31 years old graphic designer / Illustrator working as a part time art teacher at Junior High School. I’m from New Caledonia, a small island located between Australia and New Zealand.

When did you make the movie?
Back in 2004, I was shooting a Star Wars fan film and was wondering which project I was going to do next: There was Captain Future and Iron Man. For practical reasons, Iron Man came first. I shot most of it between April 2006 and August 2006.

What inspired you to make the film?
Acquiring new experiences in a different artistic field to become competitive and try to break into the “gated community” of show business. In New Caledonia, comic book projects are not part of the pop culture, but the cast who joined wanted to experience other things and have some fun. For my friends who are doing other jobs, they want to see me fly away to the USA and make my American Dream come true.

Would you characterize yourself as a risk-taker?
Well, to me there is an order to things in life; I’d rather do something that is artistic, show it to the world and if people like it, then I get famous and jobs start to come in, not the other way round. So is it a risk? I’d rather think that I am fighting for my future. I’d rather try and make it instead of die not knowing that I didn’t give it my best shot.

Had you made films before?
I had only designed trading cards and made some production paintings for my portfolio, not officially. I wanted to do illustrations for trading cards or game companies using acrylic paints for the Production Paintings and Illustrator / Photoshop for the Card designs–this is actually what I would like to do !!
Some examples:

G.I. JOE WIDEVISION TRADING CARDS

BIRDS OF PREY LITHOGRAPHS (SEASON 2)

TRANSFORMERS LITHOGRAPHS

I created these long before theses franchises made it onto the big screen, except for BOP which already had a season in production. I got tired of having feedback such as “Your work is pretty good but you’re not famous–this is a business. You gotta be famous, David, but with such quality in your work, I’m pretty sure you’ll have no trouble getting a job easily.” Yeah, right; I do work as an art teacher to make a living and am still struggling to make it into the business.

So I decided to branch out into another media and try and do some short films. I noticed that the fan film phenomena was very popular and decided to do mine as well. I made a short comedy I wrote a long time ago called George Lucas: Legend Of The Force and Prime Of The Jedi TV Spots.

George Lucas: Legend Of The Force included Lucas and Speilberg as main characters. It got noticed by Lucasfilm Magazine in France and was screened at the Grand Rex Theatre in Paris during Star Wars Reunion, the first Star Wars Convention to be held in Paris in 2005.

Prime Of The Jedi was more of a try out in the animation field to see how far I could go in my special FX. Good exercise to shoot models, toys… which is also part of animation.

For Iron Man, how did you choose/assemble your cast and crew?
I worked with the same people that were part of the Star Wars fan film crew. A friend of mine who’s a commando introduced me to his uncle and auntie—that’s when I met Jean Claude and his wife Amandine, who are fans of Iron Man and studied film at College. We shot the film at their apartment. My cousins Julien and Christophe also helped me on these films holding the torchlights and moving the projectors. For the cast, it was rather difficult to find actors because filmmaking isn’t part of our culture; neither are comic books as well. We live in a banana republic that doesn’t focus on comic books.

I did place an ad mentioning about the project and looking for people that looked like the comic book characters. People who called didn’t understand why they had to look like the comic book characters. I told them I wanted to be faithful to the comic book as much as I can. I had someone who told me on the phone he looked like Clark Kent but with a long beard and long hair. Clark Kent form Woodstock? But he didn’t want to cut his hair and beard to look like Tony Stark. Then I found other people that were quite interested but couldn’t bear to see themselves on TV.

Part 2 Tomorrow.