Q&A: Ben Ketai, Director of FEARnet's '30 Days of Night: Dust to Dust'

Vampire movie fans will be happy to hear that 30 Days of Night: Dust to Dust debuted on FEARnet today, marking the third part of the 30 Days of Night series. Based on the graphic novel of the same name, the first part of the series, produced by FEARnet and Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Productions, is 30 Days of Night: Blood Trails, a 7-part miniseries that serves as a prequel and publicity project for the feature movie, 30 Days of Night.

Dust to Dust picks up after Blood Trails. Set in New Orleans, we follow detective Nick Maguire as he searches for his sister, who has been kidnapped by former junkie George, the protagonist of Blood Trails who was framed for murders committed by a group of vampires. The series, directed by Ben Ketai, who also wrote Blood Trails and Devil’s Trade, features Christopher Stapleton, Shawnee Smith, Andrew Laurich, and Mimi Michaels. According to a FEARnet press release, the series will also have cameos from horror movie faves Ted Raimi (Sam’s brother) and Ken Foree.

Tubefilter got a chance to ask writer/director Ben Ketai (Ghost House) a few questions about the series, and he even gave us a few details of what to expect in the upcoming episodes.

Tubefilter: What is it about the online realm that made you decide to release Blood Trails and Dust to Dust online, as opposed to any other medium?
Ben Ketai: We looked at both series as a great opportunity to take a well-established and extremely rich property such as 30 Days of Night and explore the medium of webisodes. We wanted to take advantage of the fact that the episodes could only be five minutes long and attempt to create something with a serious action/horror pulse. Something that’s non-stop, beginning to end. The web-series is a fast growing medium and I think people are about to be very surprised in the next few years by how ubiquitous they become. I personally feel very lucky to be able to be play in this space so early on.

TF: Was it hard to work on a storyline that had a prequel already written, i.e. were there any issues of having to make the story consistent?
Ketai: The first series, Blood Trails, was designed to lead right into the feature film. But it also left open George’s storyline in a great way that was totally separate from and did not rely on the feature at all. The challenging part was figuring out how to broaden George’s world and bring in new characters upon which he could bestow his wisdom. I really dig the sort of Sarah Connor transformation that George goes through from one series to the next.

TF: What is one of your favorite moments in the series that we can look forward to?
Ketai: I don’t want to give anything away but let’s just say there comes a time in every young vampire’s life when they have to learn how to feed. And in this series we have the unique pleasure of getting to watch our heroin make this discovery in a pretty gruesome way.