While we were guided through the premises, the Strause Brothers began talking about Skyline and what audiences had in store. Soon, we all made way into the screening room, a place where most of their work is done, and we watched several key scenes from the movie. While we were excited before, it definitely increased our enthusiasm for the special effect laden feature.

What we did see included a longer version of the rooftop sequence. This is just after the moment where Eric Balfour and Donald Faison witness the mass alien abductions and all those devastating blue lights. Things get pretty nasty for them as they soon realize a couple of the alien crafts are heading right for them. When the small ships (alien in form) get closer, they desperately try to get back inside the building from the rooftop entrance. It is an intense bit of action that soon has another character opening the door and looking into the blue lights. This is clearly a bad thing as it tends to mess up your skin and make you alien fodder for the taking. While we’ve witnessed bits and pieces of this footage, this more complete scene looks terrific. In other words, I can’t wait to see this.

Next up, we see a few of the characters trying to escape the building in the parking garage. Now, truthfully, I’m not sure how messed up the building is for them to want to leave, being that all the alien ships are waiting outside, but I’m sure we’ll have our reasons when se see the film. So our heroes are trying to leave, and not surprisingly, there is something waiting outside. And yes, it is something really big and nasty. The beastie is big and nasty and pretty damn powerful. In fact, we see a few more sequences with these monsters, and they are insanely scary f*ckers! One fellow has the unfortunate problem of losing his head thanks to one of the monsters. As violence goes, it looks like we’ll get an eyeful when Skyline hits theatres this coming November 12.

After the footage, which was most definitely impressive, we sat around with The Strause Brothers and cast members, David Zayas, Brittany Daniel and Donald Faison as they talked about the experience of Skyline. Read on and let us know what you think in the comments below!

Can you take us back to the earliest stages of this? When did the idea come about?

Colin Strause: About eleven months ago, I think. Basically, we came up with this idea about two weeks before Thanksgiving. We shot basically a teaser test on Thanksgiving Day. We kind of had a concept for it and one of the reasons we called the production company Black Monday was because there was this shitty meeting and we were just kind of tired of the whole process and everything. Literally, at that Monday lunch, we said, "You know? We should just do our own thing." One of our agents at CAA worked on Paranormal Activity and he said, "You guys should try an independent. Something you guys can actually control. Do your own shit and don't have anyone else tell you what to do. It'll be pretty liberating.

Greg Strause: We were sitting around a lunch table at Houston's and I pitched Colin and Liam and Joshua, the two co-writers, an idea that they rejected quickly, but the essence was that we shoot something in my house for 50 grand. That's kind of what it morphed into in two weeks.Colin: It was a terrible idea to start with. (Laughing) Basically, from there we started coming up with concepts and we decided to shoot this teaser as a test. Can we do it in the unit? Can we do the lighting there? When you're shooting in a residential location you can't have generators. There are all kinds of things you can't do. So part of it was finding out if we could actually pull it off. Liam had lived in the building for a couple of years as well as Greg, so we knew every inch of the building really intimately. It really helped when we were writing the script. Normally, you write a script and then you have to go and find locations. This was a case where literally every scene was written for exact places in the building. We know that this one chase scene takes you to that doorway. That doorway takes you to the swimming pool and then there's only one way out of the pool. We were literally able to map the movie out like that. Then we started casting in early December. We started shooting the movie with nothing at that point. We were self-financing everything and had no idea about distribution or anything. We just started shooting through it and, at the Berlin film festival, the script combined with that teaser we shot on Thanksgiving Day and got us some really good pre-sells from Berlin. From there, we showed our buddy Brett [Ratner] a little bit of the end of the movie. That's when he brought over Relativity which then got us to Universal. The whole thing sort of exploded from there.

So you had a full script when you started shooting?

Colin: Oh yeah, we did. Josh and Liam basically --

Liam O'Donnell: We had a first draft in December...

Colin: It moved fast because there's no one else to talk to. It's literally Josh, Christian, me and Greg and that's it. When we were doing casting, it would just be the five of us in the room. We liked someone and that was it. Normally you'd have to go to the studio and then have to get their head casting people through. Then you need to all the junior executives to approve. Then the co-president, who has to go to the chairman. It's just f*cking amazing how many assholes it takes to get a single decision made. It's the most frustrating part of the whole thing because you can't f*cking do anything. Then they wait you until the very end and you're stuck with whoever you get. We wanted to do something a lot different with this.

Greg: Hint, hint. Fox. (laughs)

Colin: One of the cool things is, for example, David's role. We actually wrote the role for David [Zayas]. It was the most awesome thing that we actually got David in the movie... From day one, we were saying David would be f*cking perfect for this. And that's kind of how we tuned the character. And it worked out. It was such an interesting process. We literally told all the actors to come over here and we did the casting just down in the conference room. It was real intimate and real simple and the whole process lasted less than three weeks, I think.

Brittany Daniel: I think I came and met with you guys and you said, "Do you want to do it?" and I said, "Okay!"

Why do you think it is that has our culture so preoccupied with the idea of alien invasion right now?

Gregg: Culturally? I'm not sure. We've always liked it... (DONALD FAISON ENTERS) One of the things about the genre is that it plays to ideas that are big visual concepts. There was this notion that Colin and I had a long time ago that we never turned into a story that was one of those visual ideas that maybe you use for a music video treatment or who knows where. You just sort of put it in mental storage. It was the idea that aliens would actually lure us out of our houses and places of refuge by using this kind of mesmerizing, beautiful-sounding light. So that was sort of the nexus of the whole thing. I didn't have a story wrapped around it. That's where Liam and Josh did such a great job. But it was this cool concept that we called "The Sirens". It was an idea based off the siren singing that would draw the sailors and crash their ships into the rocks. We asked, "What if aliens did that?" That would be a really cool MO for these guys. And the minute we're outside, whoosh! They abduct us. That was really the starting point for us. It was more of a notion than anything, but we just kind of built on it from that. We've been working on aliens since 1996 or 1997 when we were pretty young and just kind of fresh off the boat and had moved here from the Midwest. Every week we were doing some sort of different alien effect doing the visuals on The X-Files. It was just something that we fell into. We're sci-fi fans. You kind of migrate to what you like.

So what sets yours apart from some of the other ones?

Gregg: For this really smart independent, I think one of the things that sets it apart is that we've been able to really bring some big, disaster movie-sized visuals to it. That's one of the things we're really excited about. There are also a couple of different threads and subplots involving the aliens and their motives and how they navigate and what they're after. That'll kind of continue through the sequel. Those are kind of points we've made that are important to this story.

Colin: Also just the scale, too. It's not like its just attacking one city. Pretty much by act two, 99.9% of everyone is gone. There's an interesting scale to it where it's not like something where it's a little battle and can you fight back? It's basically, you're wiped out. How do these people survive the next day or so if 99% of the world is gone? And it's such a simplistic way that everyone is taken that everything stays untouched. It's not like cities are destroyed or anything. It's like everyone is literally vacuumed off.

Gregg: It's a biblical scale event.

Colin: And also the building is like having box seats to the end of the world. That's one of the cool things that, when we went into Gregg's place, we were talking about. We were sitting in his living room and you think of, like Terminator 2's nuclear bomb going off, it would be sweet to watch it from right here. You're going to see the shockwave. One of our other partners in our digital cosmetics company, Lola, during the Northridge quake, was up on a mountainside. He actually watched, as the earthquake hit, and saw all the lights move up and down. He saw the shockwave deforming the earth. He said it was so amazing watching an event that big. And he just happened to be looking out the window when it hit. It was mind-boggling. So we thought, if you're in that building when something big happened, why not do it from that vantage point? It's kind of a neat perspective.

On a normal film, you wind up toning down FX for cost reasons. What the rule for that going into this?

Colin: The rule was to add twice as much.

Liam: We were actually responsible writing the script. We always thought we'd have some big things here and there, but we thought, "Okay. We're only going to get big when we have to." And then these guys come in and say, "Oh, you can add a couple more shots. It's okay." And it quickly doubled in size.

Colin: I think we have 700 shots at Comic-Con and now we're hitting north of nine hundred now.

Can the cast talk about their characters?

Brittany: I play a woman named Candice. I'm this self-absorbed LA socialite girl. Through the movie, she really has a comeuppance. She realizes that the world doesn't revolve around her. She doesn't exactly save the day, but she's one of the people that takes part. I live in this building so I'm able to help all of us get out when we need to get out. And kind of kick a little ass.

David Zayas: I play Oliver. He's the concierge of the building and he works in the building. He guides them in when there's a party and everything. After the event happens, he's one of the sole survivors of the people that live and work in the building. He kind of joins up with the rest of them and tries to escape.

Donald: I play Gregg and Colin Strauss, pretty much. I am a special effects genius and everybody pretty much works for me. When it all goes down, being that I'm Gregg and Colin Strauss, of course I'm the leader... I play Terry. He's pretty much based on these two guys. Gregg specifically.

Liam: It's Gregg's penthouse so we thought that the only way to make Gregg likeable is to have Donald play him.

You mentioned a sequel. Is this being developed as a franchise?

Colin: Yeah.

Gregg: Correct me if I'm wrong but, once we got the first draft in, we were playing around and addressing our own internal notes and going through the development process, we were saying, "This is kinda fun and cool." You never want to end it at that. There's a commercial side of it, but then there's just some ownership that develops around something that, once you see it through from treatment to script, you just want to keep going with it. We've had a lot of fun with it.

Colin: It ends in such an interesting, weird, dark place, too.

Liam: Yeah. We did so much heavy lifting to get the characters to this really cool place that you want to go on with them.

Gregg: Yeah. We've already got almost a forty page treatment of the second one done that we plan to shoot in the spring.

David: (Sarcastically) I can't wait to the sequel. I can't wait. (Laughing)

Gregg: We kind of worked the crew out quite a bit. One of your first days, you must have ran what, 20 fucking miles?

David: All I know is that one day I was standing around thinking, "I'm about 15 years older than everybody here." But I got in shape for that movie.

Donald: Independent means pretty much no stuntmen. So we all had to do our own. And Gregg is against CG monsters, so you've got to do a lot of ducking and a lot of jumping. A lot of falling. That hurts. Especially on independents.

Can you comment on the level of gore in this film? There was a lovely decapitation. Any other treats for gore-hounds?

Gregg: In that style, yeah. When we originally wrote it it was such a small budget that we were just going to do it R. Then we wrote the script out and, because of the way they were taking everyone's brains and everything, we thought that it really doesn't lend itself to R rated violence. It's technically PG-13, but just because there's no blood. It's all in the way that they atomize flesh and tissue. It's more that sort of style. What they do is not an inherently gory thing. They're literally snatching people and decapitating them. It's that sort of style of action. It's not creatures cutting people in half. But it's still some kind of creepy ass shit.

David: I'm bringing my grandson!

Colin: There's definitely some cool sci-fi moments in that vein. I don't want to give away too many of them here today, but we've done our really dark, really gory movie. We didn't want to repeat that with this. We have a broader audience and we don't need to kill seven year olds. We got that out of us.

Not only are there a lot of alien movies, but they're all evil forces. Do you think there's a reason we don't see friendly alien films anymore?

Liam: You just had one of the biggest alien hits ever a year ago where they weren't.

Besides District 9.

Colin: I thought you were talking about Avatar.

Liam: That too, yeah.

Colin: I think one of the differences, too is that -- and I don't want to give away too much of the plot -- but there's many different definitions of evil. There's evil as an armed-force mechanized, politicalized creatures coming and doing something versus parasites or other types of creatures that are on more of a survival instinct doing their thing. That level of evil, to me, is all dependent on the side that you're standing on. I mean, we kill cows and eat hamburgers and I love fucking steak. I don't care about those cows. But if you're a fXcking cow, it's probably not that cool.

Donald: No, it's not!

Colin: So with our creatures, it's kind of like that. Ours are all organic. Even the mothership is a giant living thing. There's a very different sort of thing happening with them. Instead of them being hellbent on Earth's destruction, they're just kind of doing their thing. That, to me, is kind of what made it a little bit more interesting. We're not making a weird political statement. It's just an event. It's an event that's happening and now it's too late and it's how you deal with that. That, to me, is an interesting human struggle. You're losing people you love. Everyone's gone. Especially with Eric and Scottie's characters who are flown in from New York, they can't call their mother. They're cut off from what's going on. They're completely isolated. They're in an alien land. There are aliens taking over where they are. They have no homefield advantage. It's one of those things, too, where, with these types of movies, it's like a gaper's delay on a freeway when you see an accident. You don't want to see these things happen but, when they do, people like to watch. And it's the same thing where, if you look, that's the way that the creatures get us. It's such a simplistic attack on human nature that makes it so efficient. It kind of makes for a different way of telling the story.

Can you talk about the fan response as it already exists. It feels like Comic-Con really brought this film to the forefront.

Gregg: The internet has given us some pretty good buzz.

Liam: I think the best post was, "Despite the fact that Colin and Gregg are directing this movie, it looks really cool" (Laughing) It think that's the first really positive sign.

Gregg: Our feeling -- and we're kind of in this little isolated place where we are -- is that we've seen our kids out walking around Hollywood wearing a Skyline shirt and people will stop them and say, "Oh my god! I can't wait to see that. It looks awesome." That seems to be the response that is trickling back to us. Until I heard how silent you guys were when the footage stopped.

Given the quality of CGI and the scale you suggest, this feels like an event film. Do think we're moving into a new era where these kinds of films can be made without studios?

Colin: Yes. And we're not going to make another studio movie. We're going to always do this. And Universal has been great for marketing. You need studios for distribution. But for us it's the creation process. Movies can get really expensive. We've worked on 74 movies, I think, and we've seen hundreds of millions of dollars wasted on those films. To us, we know how to make the movies. We've done it. We've seen how many times people have f*cked up going the wrong way. We know how you can make that process better. One of the big things is, you have to own your own cameras. One of the big jokes is, if you look at a studio like Fox, if you want to shoot on Fox's stages, you need to be Universal or Warner Bros. or someone. Because Fox makes more money renting their studios to someone else than letting their own movies shoot there. Distribution and everything is fantastic and that's where we need the love because we can't do that. But for making the movies, this is the way to do it. And this way, everyone is in on the movie. There's no trailers. There's nothing. Everyone is a partner, basically. The whole crew, everyone, did deferrals. Everyone believed in the project. It wasn't just a job and just a paycheck. Me and Gregg literally made eight bucks an hour. That's the DGA minimum for doing the film.

Donald: That being said, the way of doing films like this now is really going to weed out filmmakers who are not talented, that are not going to be able to do that under these circumstances. I think that, to the credit of Colin and Gregg, they actually made this happen because they knew what they were doing. They had a vision and they were able to execute whatever they needed to do with the limited funds that they had. That's not easy to do. If you have a filmmaker who gets 50 million dollars to make a film, they're going to get a lot of help. If you get $500,000 to make a film, you're really going to have to be creative. I think that's going to weed out the really good filmmakers from those who aren't going to be able to cut it. If you go to see a movie like this, you're expecting to see Will Smith and Bruce Willis. Or Sylvester Stallone fighting the aliens. Something like this gives all of us an opportunity as well. People who don't make $25 million a movie. So that being said, it's great that it gives guys like me a shot to do something that I've always wanted to do and that was to feel like a badass action hero fighting aliens.

David: It's also an opportunity to work in an environment that is all about what we're doing. It's all about the actual story of what we're doing. I mean, people really care. You go on the set and everybody gives a shit about what's happening. Everybody really cares about what's going on. They're not just there for a paycheck. They're there because they really believe in this project. And that, unfortunately, is not as common anymore. I think this was a really unique experience in that.

Can everyone in the cast talk about how you know the brothers?

David: I used to babysit them (Laughing). No, I just met them. I wasn't in LA when the original casting happened. I was dealing with family issues in Florida. So when I got here, I came into this very room. They showed me the trailer and I was like, "Wow!" I said, "Yeah. Let's do it." I was extremely excited. I saw the enthusiasm in their eyes and in how they presented the project to me. I was on-board. As an actor, I'm always hungry for enthusiasm. It's ultimately about a great story and making people feel a certain way. I got that from them. That's when I met them.

Brittany: And I used to date Colin (Laughing). Kidding. No, I kind of came in in the 11th hour. I just got a call from my manager to rush down to their offices here. I was just back from the gym and they were like, "You have to get down there now! There's an awesome script and they're interested in you. You have to go there and sit in a locked room and read the script right there. Then the guys are going to talk to you after." So I read the script and was like, "It's awesome! I love it!" Then they showed me the test footage and then, I think, in the car ten minutes later they called me and said they wanted me to do it.

Colin: Pretty painless.

Brittany: Yeah, it was great. I think we started rehearsal a couple of days later. It was kind of a quick process, but it was awesome.

Donald: You guys all have great stories. You came and they pretty much offered you the role. I had to audition for this bad boy. Twice! I came in the first time and said, "I'm just going to try to do my best to make these cats laugh." In all these alien movies, there's always some type of comic relief. So I went on the audition and I tried to make every line a punch line. It was clear that that was not what they were looking for.

Colin: Confirmed.

Donald: It was obvious when I walked out. So I thought I blew it. But I guess I got good people fighting for me. They said, "They'll see you again." I came in again and I guess I gave them a better performance. Then I read the script and I got to see all of the trailer and stuff like that. But it wasn't like, "Donald, come in and let us show you around Hydralx. You guys got the good stuff.

Do you get any comic moments in the film anyway? Does anyone? Are there lighter moments?

Donald: That's an argument that I've had with these guys. I've said, "At some point, I'm gonna say something funny." And they say, "It's the end of the world. Do you there's comedy at the end of the world?"

Colin: Yeah, the first act is a bit of recruiting seduction "come out to LA" kind of story. So there's a lighter to the first act, absolutely. You get to see the charming side of Donald.

Gregg: And the slightly sleazy side as well.

Donald: We're just giving away too much now, guys.

Gregg: But yeah, once the shit hits the fan, he's stone cold Donald Faison. But it's not dour.

How far into the movie is the nuke?

Gregg: Most of the biggest set pieces are all after that.

Bigger than a nuke?

Gregg: Yeah, it gets better.

The nice thing about doing a movie like this is that, when you started it, you weren't having to rush to make a release date.

Colin: Well now we are. Now there's eight guns pointed at the back of my head. But this thing could have literally just sat on a shelf. This could be our own little personal movie we're watching here. We had no idea. We knew what we were hoping for, but it was a giant gamble. We just kind of sat around and greenlit the movie ourselves at that lunch and said, "Fuck it. We're doing it. Let's go." This thing could have ended a thousand different ways.

Liam: There's really no reason we decided on February for the start date, either. We just knew that if we kept the pressure on...

Colin: And then how quickly Brett and Relativity got it and then Universal got right in. It's been fantastic. Love started piling on this thing and we're trying to think about when we want this thing to come out. Maybe Christmas? Next year? Who knows? And then we're looking at the calendar and we found November.

Gregg: That was Universal. They had their date in November.

Colin: And we were like, "Let's go for it!" It seemed liked suicide at first but, normally, when movies have too long for the release date, which we've seen so many times, there's no end pressure. So you get stuck in these perpetual jerk-off sessions where you spend two months doing what the director wants and two months doing what the producer wants. Then the studio. It's a swirling thing where, when you actually have that deadline, you get to do everything once the right way because there's no time to change it. That's what we've been doing on this since we don't have anyone else to prove it to but ourselves. We're just doing it the way we want it done. And once the shot is done, that' s it. Move on to the next one. That pressure is actually great. It's been a little gnarly. We've been here seven days a week.

Gregg: There's a saying that a project will always expand to fill its calendar and there's just no reason, in this case, to allow that. So it's good they had the date. It doesn't matter who you are, it’s human nature to procrastinate a little bit. Everyone needs a little shelf once in awhile.

Colin: But once the snowball starts coming down the mountain, it builds. It really helps. All the marketing and that kind of stuff brings it together and growing out of that…

How long was principal photography?

Gregg: 42 days.

Donald: It actually went by really fast. The great thing about shooting in an apartment building with a limited crew is that it really forces everybody to stick together and really form up. Shooting with these guys, that's what it felt like. After day three, you're best friends with the whole crew. Everybody has each other's back. I'll hold a boom mic. It really turns into, it sounds like a cliche, but a family type atmosphere. You come to work and really enjoy working with the people you work with. At the end of the day, it's like, "Great job everybody!" That's pretty much all I can say. These guys are great. I don't think any of us would show up today if they weren't.

Do you believe in alien abduction?