He was precursury in the MashUp universe. This is why Antonio Maria Da Silva is the most legitimate Mashuper to be first interviewed for this blog.
Of course, it’s not just because Hell’s club hit 6 million views on Youtube. The MashUp Cinema encyclopedia is not running after huge sucesses. God knows how much I praise the cinema audience – not depending on His skin color or His amount of arms. Anyway. I asked a few questions to Antonio Maria Da Silva because his work deserves infinitly more than just the few lines the mass media have allowed him. My dear fellow citizens, please allow us to bring you the word of truth from the found footage directors.
Two points especially impressed me in Hell’s Club which seem very specific to your work, like a trademark. The first point would be about the technique, concerning the bluffing integration of many films inside a single set. In this MashUp Film, you blend disparate film materials that belong to diverse eras of film making with a discrepency of 20 years between the oldest and the youngest film (from Saturday Night Fever released in 1978 to Collateral in 2004). What method do you use to get such a result? Which software?
AMDS: Grading is the secret but it actually is a combination of several techniques and a lot of experience. I mainly use softwares like Premiere CC 2015 (a killer soft!) and After Effects.
(Ed: digital grading resides in the use of computer post-processing for the brightness, contrast and color settings of the image)
The other point is about the “metaphysics” if I may use such a pompous word. Since Bruce Lee VS Bruce Lee, your films are hiding a reflexion about time and identity behind an extravagant outlay of action. Bruce Lee is fighting himself and in Hell’s Club (even though the club does include many mirors) a litteral and metaphoric miror effect is going on throughout the film. The characters are looking at their doubles such as Tom Cruise from Cocktail sharing looks with Tom Cruise from Collateral, his 20 years younger double. Could you tell us more about this? What does make you want to bring together one characther or the other?
AMDS: In TERMINATOR VS ROBOCOP 3, it was possible to have a second reading. But it is true that since the BRUCE LEE’s hommage, I try to bring a true substance to my mashup. Concerning the meetings, it is uncounscious from me at the beginning. I am not always really sure whether this or that character should meet the other. I draw all this in my cinephile’s subconscious. And it will be more and more the case in my incoming mashups.
Would you mind if I describe you as the mashup’s Yuen Woo-Ping?
AMDS: I’m flattered! He did an amazing job on Matrix, among others.
What do you think can differentiate you from others in the mashup cinema galaxy?
AMDS: My experience and sensitivity , I think, but it is not my place to say. I take over images. That demands some complicated intellectual gymnastics that I acquired through my experience. And as I have a ‘3D’ vision of the scene before I design it, the shots are already in my mind, I don’t write anything. The writing process amounts to plan in advance which means that you don’t challenge yourself. When I have an idea, I go for it. Even if that means spending hundreds of hours on it.
You also shoot live action films. What is it you find in mashup cinema that you don’t in ‘traditional’ cinema?
AMDS; The Stars 😉
You are pioneer in mashup cinema and it was in 2007 with Terminator VS Robocop that your work was fisrt noticed. Was this your first mashup?
AMDS: No, I’ve done NEO VERSUS ROBOCOP that also worked quite well. I do mashups since 1990, but my first films were often very long: for example I mixed up CRIMSON TIDE, THE ABYSS and THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER in a three hours long film.
‘Found footage cinema’ has always existed. Why, in your opinion, does it create so much interest today?
AMDS: Mashups are technically better and most of all it resides in the zapping and multi mixing era. I think that, in a near future, we could watch feature films inspired, among others, from my mashups. Not so long ago, I was convinced that a feature film was not a viable project. But when I see the reactions from the journalists all over the globe, I think that I contradicted myself with Hell’s Club 😀 Now many people tend to think that it is possible to tell a story with other people’s images. 
What are your next mashup projects?
AMDS: A second night at Hell’s club that would be even more badass… if I can do it, because nothing is certain with mashup making. ROCKY INFERNO on which I am working for more than a year and a half. And FURY CARS that I am working on between two shots of Hell’s club. I am also giving a lot of consideration into an AMDS’ like mashup on Steven Spielberg’s work. But, for sure, it would not be a best of but a story. And other crushes if any idea come to mind.
And finally, the famous Bernard Pivot’s quiz in the mashup style:
What is your favorite mix of anything? ( really anything: food, drug, inspiration…)
AMDS: sweets and insomnia.
One thing you love to share?
AMDS: My passion.
One thing you love to borrow from someone?
AMDS: one euro for the coffee machine.
One thing you love to lend to someone?
AMDS: My services in the audiovisual fied.
Your favourite words combination?
AMDS: ‘Not possible? I don’t give a shit, I do it.’
If ever God does exist, when you eventually meet him in the afterlife, what mashup film would you like to watch with Him?
The Hell’s club trilogy, the Terminator vs Robocop trilogy and my hommage to Bruce Lee. Damn, that makes four. Ok then, if I have to chose only one, the Hell’s club trilogy with all the stars.
An interview conducted by Julien Lahmi
and translated by Antoine Menou.