The Final Destination, Bobby Campo and Shantel VanSanten Interview

MoviesOnline sat down with Bobby Campo and Shantel VanSanten to talk about their new movie, The Final Destination 3D. The film marks the latest in the highly popular "Final Destination" series, and its first 3D installment, giving horror fans an especially visceral thrill ride.

On what should have been a fun-filled day at the races, Nick O'Bannon (Bobby Campo) has a horrific premonition in which a bizarre sequence of events causes multiple race cars to crash, sending flaming debris into the stands, brutally killing his friends and causing the upper deck of the stands to collapse on him. When he comes out of this grisly nightmare, Nick panics, persuading his girlfriend, Lori (Shantel VanSanten), and their friends, Janet (Haley Webb) and Hunt (Nick Zano), to leave...escaping seconds before Nick's frightening vision becomes a terrible reality.

Thinking they've cheated death, the group has a new lease on life, but unfortunately for Nick and Lori, it is only the beginning. As his premonitions continue and the crash survivors begin to die one-by-one--in increasingly gruesome ways--Nick must figure out how to cheat death once and for all before he, too, reaches his final destination.

Bobby Campo was most recently seen co-starring opposite Milly and Becky Rosso in the comedy "Legally Blondes," the third installment in the “Legally Blonde” franchise, directed by Savage Steve Holland. He was previously seen in the comedy "99," directed by Pete Guzzo. For television, Campo has guest starred on the FOX drama "Mental," the ABC Family series "Greek" and the UPN series "South Beach." He was also featured in the CBS telefilm "Vampire Bats," a tale of aggressive vampire bats that have mutated due to a tainted water supply and begin murdering people in a small Louisiana town.

Shantel Vansanten received positive notices alongside Mischa Barton in acclaimed filmmaker Roland Joffe's dramatic feature "You and I," based on a popular Russian novel and set in Moscow. She was also recently seen in the drama "In My Pocket," which won the Audience Award as Best Feature Film at this year's Palm Beach International Film Festival. Vansanten recently wrapped production on the thriller "Something Wicked," opposite Brittany Murphy.

For television, VanSanten recently joined the regular cast of the hit CW series "One Tree Hill," on which she plays the character Quinn James alongside Robert Buckley and Sophia Bush. She also guest starred last season on an episode of "CSI: NY," working with Melina Kanakaredes and Eddie Cahill. Additionally, she appeared in the telefilm "Three Wise Guys" and on NBC's "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Model Search."

Here’s what Bobby Campo and Shantel VanSanten had to tell us:

Q: Do you start noticing things in normal life that might kill you since doing this film? Like, that pencil there is going to hit me in the eye?

Bobby: That pencil has killed four people today.

Shantel: For sure, like on set, especially when you're shooting and thinking about death every day, there's always mousetraps and other things and you'd be ‘Okay, if the back of the truck fell and hit that, then that would shoot up to the power line and I'd be electrocuted and die.’

Bobby: You can't help it. You worry about doing it literally 24/7 on set so I had to take it off set and just stop.

Q: Was this a fun horror film to work on?

Bobby:  I think it's definitely more fun than any movie I've done so far just with David involved.  David Ellis is a hoot on set.  You never know what you're going to have every day so it's fun.

Shantel:  And it's not a typical horror movie. It's not zombie.  It's not being chased after with a mask and a knife. It's death. It's something that's intangible.  You can't figure it out. There's no rules, nothing.

Bobby: There's slasher moments but it's not a guy in a mask.  It's something that could be in the corner of the room. It could be anywhere so you don't really know what to expect and that creates quite a level of uncertainly because it's not just one person that I need to avoid, it's almost everything I need to avoid so that pencil you were talking about actually can kill you in a way.  You can fall onto that. Somehow, we can find a way to do it in this movie, I'm sure.

Q: Your kills are very creative.

Bobby: Yeah, the appeal to it is these things are everyday situations. After the second movie, driving behind an 18-wheeler, I couldn't really do it and then a tire fell off right after that and almost hit my car so it's real. Those moments happen and that's the thing that's great about it.  It takes something that can really happen to you so that's the fear that we're playing on, that's the fear that we're evoking and it's more exciting.  It's not something that's a fantasy like a stalking killer with a knife.  This could happen to anybody at any moment.

Q: With the arrival of TV shows like "1000 Ways to Die," do they have to up the ante on each movie?

Shantel: Besides the fact that's it's the fourth one in the franchise and it is going to be the last one, you do. You have to make sure that the deaths are better and bigger than anything else and exceed everyone's expectations because these are the kind of movies where you go home and start thinking 'Oh, that would be awesome if they killed somebody in that way or if they would do a death like that'...

Bobby: Don't go home with her (laughter).

Shantel: (ignoring him and continuing) There's so many possibilities.  I've talked to Craig (Perry, the producer) before whenever I was on set and said 'How do you come up with some really sick stuff like this?' I guess he does tons of research and finds these sick, gory ways that people truly have died.  They probably give them a little bit more entertainment value but he does, he finds things that have actually happened to people. So, it does, it plays on normal fears that we all have and death being the culprit for it all.

Q: What about shooting in 3-D? Don't you have to hit your mark just right?

Bobby: This stuff is a bit forgiving. These cameras were so bad-ass. We've never used anything like this before. James Cameron spent how many decades developing these things for Avatar so we got to be that guinea pig in a way.  So, for us, the big difference was blocking. There wasn't a lot of it but you do have to be precise on anything, especially digital but, this one, we had to create slightly unnatural blocking arrangements because it would be almost more theatrical.  You had to create a three-shot. You wouldn't just want to shoot with two people. You want to create a depth of field and that's the great thing about this movie.  It's not like the 3-D in the past where it's a bi-planer field, where it's a painted field, where it's a painted background and you have certain elements coming out, everything comes out.

Shantel:  It's how you see a normal room. And, as the audience member, and for us even though we're in the movie, you're a participant in it.  You're a person on the couch sitting next to the person on screen or you're in the front of the room by the door and you're looking into the room but you're always a participant in all of it.

Bobby:  Yeah, you can't just spectate in this movie. The technology literally draws you into the film.

Q: They're not two cameras you are playing to? One for the right eye and one for the left?

Bobby: There are two cameras but there's a prism.  One camera is on top so they're perpendicular to one another through a prism so one records the right one, one records the left eye.

Shantel:  And then there's just one lens.

Q: Which was your favorite scene to do?

Bobby:  There's so many favorites of mine.  The racetrack was fun to do because I did it in a way, I was so in my own head, it was two different scenes.  I got to experience all this stuff and then they were experiencing something different.  But the escalator was a blast to film with her. She was so tense.

Q: I got my shoelace stuck in an escalator going up. It was awful.

Shantel: That's a major (thing).  People think of that all the time. I guess there was a little girl in India that it really did happen to and, when he told me that, I was like 'Wow, that really brings that into perspective.' It does. That, for me, was the most intense scene.  There was one day when we were shooting it and I kind of like lost it. You're in these scenes where you think 'I'm never going to truly understand what this feels like because it just doesn't happen with these kind of rare circumstances. How would I feel? What would I do?  What would I think?' Then, you get on that escalator in the middle of a mall.  You're three stories high. He's holding my hand and as safe as I feel, because David Ellis is a stuntman forever, there's still a part of you that is this raw adrenalin and you're like 'What was the last thing I said to my mom?' Or, 'My God, what if my dad never sees me get married?' There's these crazy thoughts that I never envisioned would come to my mind. You have your own mortality in check.

Q: There are a lot of safety issues on this set where you use gasoline, the nail gun, and fires erupt.

Shantel: They always had like sexy firemen (laughter).

Bobby:  That was in her trailer.

Shantel: That's my world.

Q: Were you in a harness for some of the scenes?

Bobby:  Yeah.

Shantel:  I have pictures of me lifting up my shirt because I would have these crazy devices that had pads on them and safety was always first.  Injuries are gonna happen.  I had severe bruising. My legs swelled because of the escalator stuff. Doing your own stunts, you feel like a bad-ass and it's amazing but, at the end of the day, there were always safety meetings and there were always precautions. It's a little scary doing some of the stunts.

Bobby: Yeah, well you have Jeff Dashnaw (stunt coordinator) who has been doing it forever, David Ellis who's been doing it for thirty years.  They know what they're doing. They are also creating an environment that is like 90 percent practically filmed so there is going to be safety issues within that, but these guys also check, double-check, triple-check everything. Casey O'Neill, was my stunt guy, he was doing it, checking it beforehand, making sure the rig was safe and whatever I was gonna do was okay so I would know how to do it or I could kind of follow him or watch him, so I got to do everything but I was directed in that way.

Q: Bobby, they don't explain why you have these visions.  Did you have to make up your own reason?

Bobby: They don't explain. I really played into the fact that I don't know why this is happening. He doesn't know and I wasn't going to try to come up with my own reasoning. It wasn't 'I don't know why this is happening' but 'How am I going to get through this? How can I win? How can we piece these different things together that we do know and make this understandable to us?' That was the way that I went about it.  'I don't know what's happening but I'm not gonna lose.’

Q: The escalator one was the scariest for you Shantel but what was the scariest for you, Bobby?

Bobby:  We were doing the racetrack, and when I was watching, it didn't really look as drastic as when I did it, but I fell down four or five different bleachers and I was really doing that.  You can't really see it on film.  You can't really tell, but we were down and it got kind of nuts.  I landed on top of Andy. He was playing the gear head and that's what we were supposed to be doing but it was intense when I was doing it. I thought I'd tweak an ankle or something.

Q: What about having fun on set? You have to break the tension somewhere. Who was the jokester on set?

Together:  David Ellis.

Shantel: He was the jokester, prankster.  He was always doing something goofy.  There was a scene in the carwash and they put insoles into my shoes and had to elastic them over my feet to make sure they stayed on when I was running through.  I actually slipped and fell and they used that tape on accident but he put soap on the bottom of my insoles so that when we were in there and all this water was rushing at us, I was making suds and bubbles were coming out of my shoes. You'd be crying and look down and be like 'What in the world is coming out of my shoe?' He was always doing something like that to lighten the mood on set.

Bobby: On the first day, we get off the plane, me, Nick and Haley. She (Shantel) was still flying in later, but for me it was kind of nerve-wracking because I'd never been on this big of a set before and I was a little intimidated by this. So, I go in to meet the director and he says like 'Hey, guys.  Look at how many red vines I can stuff in my mouth!'  He's got a wall of five-hour energy shots that's as high as this cabinet, like a six foot high wall.  So, I'm like 'Yeah, this is gonna be a bit more fun than... It's gonna be more fun than I've had.’

Q: Shantel, have you seen any of the other Final Destination movies?

Shantel:  I had to see them.  I hadn't seen them previously.  Then, when I got there, Craig Perry, who has been part of the franchise from the beginning, was like 'You have to see the other ones just to understand what the audience expects and what the whole franchise is about' so I watched them and I grew to understand what the nature of the beast was, the formula for all of it and it was really good to do because we wanted to make this the best one. Even though there are better stunts and more killings or whatever it might be, you still want to elevate the performance in every one that you see.

Q: Are you a horror film fan at all?

Shantel:  I don't like horror films at all. I can't.  It's so hard for me.  Even when I saw it last night for the first time, there were still parts of it where I had to look down.  Like the pedicure scene, I can't do it.  I get pedicures all the time.

Bobby: They're shoving a shovel into that toe. I saw the first one ten years ago as a little pup and they're great concepts because you take something that everybody does and make your worse fear come true.  You're just flying on so many emotions and there are so many places you can go with it and now you're doing it in 3-D, you're living it.  You're in it with us.  It's kinda weird.

Q: But Shantel, because you saw it made, were you able to look at it?

Shantel: No.  Even scenes that I'm in.  The escalator scene is really hard for me. When we did ADR, I vomited.  The first time I saw it with sound effects and everything.

Bobby:  Bad fish.

Shantel:  I wish it was that.  It was really hard for me to see it.  I made it through watching most of it last night without looking over at somebody and looking back but it's different than the horror movies I grew up on which were people running around killing each other and there's a person in a mask and there are zombies. This one is something where you wonder 'Is this something that really happens?'  It plays with your brain in that way instead of any other movie.

Bobby:  It's almost easier to watch the zombie movies because it's like it's fantasy. This one is so real.

Q: One of the inside jokes inside the movie, is you are going to see a movie and something happens. Is this good as a date movie?

Shantel: Yeah!

Bobby: Absolutely. 

Shantel: Bring the girl in closer.

Bobby:  It's so interactive. It's so much fun.  It's like a thrill ride going to a roller coaster.  It's the same kind of an amusement park feeling so it's a great date movie.

Shantel:  You get a huge adrenalin rush and then you leave.  I know, for me, I'm in the movie and I couldn't stop talking about the way that it all was and 'Oh, my God, but what about that part?’ Or 'What about this part?' It's more an interactive movie with your emotions and your senses.

Q: What's coming up next for both of you?

Shantel:  I just started.  I'm going to be a new series regular on "One Tree Hill". I've been filming in North Carolina.  It comes out I think September 14th. I play Quinn who is Haley's sister.

Bobby: I almost was on that in the part opposite her. It would have been wild.  I was too young for it.  But I just got done doing "Law and Order SVU" which was such an awesome set to be on.  They have so much time and experience has been put into that.  I think eleven years.  That and then I've got some meetings coming up with Screen Gems so I'm seeing where it goes next.

Q: You did Legally Blondes with those two young teen girls.

Bobby: Yeah, I'm getting a whole age bracket. I'm going literally from like eight to sixty-five with "Law and Order".

Q: Are you worried that this is opening the same day as another horror film (Halloween II)?

Bobby: We don't know too much about it but we had fun with this.

Shantel: And it's in 3-D and the other one's not.  (sing song) We win.

Bobby:  It's fun, it's 3-D, it's historical because some of this stuff has never been used before.  There's so many things in our favor.  I wish them the best but, at the same time, we stand by our product.

Q: Don't you have a film called Something Wicked?

Shantel: Yeah. I finished that before I went to do "One Tree Hill" in Oregon.

Q: Brittany Murphy is in it?

Shantel: Yeah, it'll be out probably next year.  It's more like a psychological drama.  There are aspects of it that are scary but nothing gory by any means and I have another one that comes out at the end of the year called You and I.

“The Final Destination” opened in theaters on Friday.