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"Former 24 star Eric Balfour takes a break from his TV role in Haven this week to star in Colin and Greg Strause&amp;#039;s Skyline. This is no ordinary Hollywood sci-fi epic, though, most of it was filmed in Greg&amp;#039;s apartment! We caught up with Eric to chat about his Skyline character, battling 60ft aliens and bringing an indie spirit to a large-scale production. What can you tell us about Skyline? &amp;quot;Skyline is an alien invasion film that really takes an interesting look at the genre. The writers did an amazing job of creating a new take at how life from other planets come and plan to invade Earth. It was done with a really independent spirit, not dissimilar from District 9. It was made without studio financing originally so the decisions were all made by the creative powers of the movie. It just turned out to be a really incredible ride.&amp;quot; Is it true that you filmed most of the movie in one of the Strause brothers&amp;#039; apartments? &amp;quot;Yes that is very true! Greg and Colin Strause kept saying, &amp;#039;How do we make a movie with all the stuff we already have?&amp;#039; So we shot it in this high rise building that Greg Strause lived in. What was really cool about the movie was that when we were inside of the apartment building it was very intimate, and felt very close and almost claustrophobic at times. And then when you go outside on the roof of the building through the corridors of this complex, the world became huge and [there were] these gigantic city-wide alien ships and droids and 60ft monsters trying to kill us. It was pretty amazing.&amp;quot; Is it quite difficult acting in a special effects-driven film when you can&amp;#039;t see what your character can? &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s always a leap of faith that you have to take. Sometimes you have no idea what the final outcome is going to look like. There&amp;#039;s a scene where I&amp;#039;m fighting this alien, and I&amp;#039;m supposed to be choking it around what I thought was its neck. Well, it turned out a day later I was choking it more around its waist!&amp;quot; There have been a lot of low budget sci-fi films over the last few years - what makes Skyline different? &amp;quot;To be perfectly fair it wasn&amp;#039;t that low budget of a film. What it was, was it was made with an independent spirit in the sense that the Strause brothers used their own money and their own facilities to make the movie. Their company Hydraulx is one of the biggest special effects companies in the world - they did Iron Man 2, 2012 and Avatar, so they are very, very fortunate to have a lot at their disposal.&amp;quot; So they didn&amp;#039;t have to worry about producers interfering? &amp;quot;Have you heard the saying, &amp;#039;Too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the stew&amp;#039;? Well, we didn&amp;#039;t have that. There were five people on set making the decisions. There were the two directors, the two writers and the producer - and the cast. And that was it. There were no phone calls made to anyone if we didn&amp;#039;t like something or wanted to change something, there was no compromise. The directors had a really clear vision and, very different from Alien Vs Predator, this was done the way they wanted.&amp;quot; Skyline opens in UK cinemas on Friday. Leave your comments on Skyline in the space below! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/interviews/a279716/eric-balfour-chats-apartment-sci-fi-skyline/>