Tina Kakadelis
Nicholas Pineda’s Infirmary is a bold new entry into the found-footage genre. The film is made up of security and body cam footage from a guard, Edward (Paul Syre), during the first night of his new job patrolling an old psychiatric hospital. The film opens with a note telling the audience that Edward disappeared after the events of the evening and was never to be seen again. In Infirmary, Pineda has created a claustrophobic thriller with a mystery that will keep you guessing until the chilling end.
Ahead of Infirmary’s release, director and co-writer Nicholas Pineda sat down with Film Obsessive News Editor Tina Kakadelis to discuss the challenges of making a found-footage feature, finding the perfect abandoned location, and how long he’d last through this night of terror.
Film Obsessive: I saw that you were a co-founder and managing partner of a creative agency. How has your experience in that world of storytelling helped you prepare to create Infirmary?
Nicholas Pineda: I grew up as a painter and then got into graphic design. I got my bachelor’s at Laguna College of Art and Design, and that’s when I got into film, because I took one of their film courses. I started applying a lot of my design background with composition, color, and typography into my portfolio thesis project. That led to me going to USC film school. I’m always using my graphic background in all my projects. Making Infirmary is everything I learned from that background.
You describe the experience of making Infirmary as brutal, exhausting, but also exciting. What about the process made it that way? Looking back, is there something you would have done a little differently before diving in?
It’s just brutal because it was a super-tiny crew. The main group was probably five people working on the project, you know? Having to juggle the logistics, filming, managing the cast and the crew, doing all the legal work…it was constant work that you have to power through because nobody else is going to do it except for this very tight, tiny group of collaborators.
I’ve been doing this pretty much part-time in my off hours. I have my creative agency that’s my full-time job, so I’m just doing this at night or on the weekends. Then, I have a one-year-old daughter. Everything was just piling on all at the same time. Also, going to these festivals, traveling, organizing all these screenings. This is not for the faint of heart. Filmmaking is daunting.
Do you feel like the found-footage aspect made it easier or more difficult?
It’s just a whole different set of challenges, because everything I learned in film school is not really relevant for found footage. Nobody teaches you how to shoot a body cam movie where you’re having the actors wear the camera the whole time. It’s like, how do you block actors who are trying to have a real scene, but they also have to make sure they’re hitting the marks for the camera? They have to move their body around and make sure everything’s in frame. Then they’re even holding the flashlight that’s the light source in the scene. I mean, it’s a whole other set of issues.
I did found footage because I thought it would be easier to manage and handle for the budget, but then it just opened up the door to a whole new set of issues that I’d never experienced before. This was my first time doing anything like found footage, and we didn’t really do any test shoots. We just dove right into filming right away.
I had no idea if it was going to work because, at the time, there were no body cam movies. When we came up with the idea and started prepping, the only real reference was actual body cam footage. Beyond that, there were no references for me to pick. I was like, is this going to edit together? Is cutting from multiple wide-angle lenses at each other going to work?
Infirmary made me think of both Exit 8 and Backrooms, and this theme of liminal space that’s popping up in the media. What is it about this type of atmosphere that creates an immediate sense of dread? Do you feel like there’s anything happening in the current state of the world that would make liminal spaces a little scarier than they would have been maybe five, ten years ago?
I’m not sure. I mean, to be honest, when I was making this, I wasn’t even aware of the term liminal space, but somehow my film was exactly like a liminal space. I don’t know if it’s just a zeitgeist thing or if it’s this weird thing happening, but growing up, that stuff would just depress me. I didn’t even know there was a word for it at the time. Seeing these empty warehouses with the gross, pee-colored fluorescent lights, gross carpet and walls, those would always depress me as a kid growing up. I think it just kind of seeped into everybody’s psyche at the same time.
Where did you find the abandoned hospital that you got to shoot in?
The original idea was to shoot in an abandoned office building, just because the idea came about during the pandemic. I was like, there are all these empty office buildings; it’d be easy to find a location for cheap to shoot in.
A friend of a friend knew of this abandoned hospital. I was like, okay, this is too good a location to pass up. We kind of created the story around it. It’s pure luck through a friend of a friend.
Did you shoot it overnight? Did it have the full spooky atmosphere?
Oh, yeah. It was scary, or as scary as the film we were shooting in it. It was horrifying. It’s as gross and disgusting as it looks on camera. It was a massive building, like 200,000 square feet. A giant labyrinth. People would get lost all the time. We had real break-ins while we were shooting there. Horrifying.
Oh, my gosh. So very little production design, I’m assuming.
We didn’t touch it. We tried maybe just a little bit here and there to clean up some stuff so it wasn’t so hazardous for the actors. It was a wild experience shooting there.
For Edward, the main character, it’s his first day on the job. It is the world’s worst first day of a job ever. If you were in Edward’s shoes, how long do you think you would last?
To be honest, I think I would do everything Ed did because Ed really wants this job. He’s there to protect the place. He’s not just going to run away at the first sign of danger, you know? It’s his job to guard the place. I tried to make it as realistic as possible with the character motivations and what would really be happening for this character.
He really wants this job. He wants to prove he can do his real dream job, which is to become a cop. He needs to be this tough guy. He’s not going to run away or abandon his post. I think I would be like Ed.
As soon as that bathroom door started closing on its own, I said, “Well, this is where I’m done.”
Yeah, I mean, a normal person would leave. I try not to spoil anything, but bad stuff happens. Normal people would have definitely left at that point.
Absolutely. I have no loyalty to the building. I’m gone.
