How and why did you choose to become involved with this story?

We were looking for a project for HBO, and we saw an article in the New York Times about three teenagers who had sacrificed three little eight-year-old boys to the devil in a cult ritual. Frankly, we thought we were going down there to make a film about a real-life River's Edge. We were convinced by the news reports that these three kids had done it. But when we got down there, we began to realize that the case wasn't so cut and dried.

What kind of impact do you feel the camera's eye had on the outcome of the case?

We don't feel that the camera in the courtroom had any effect on the outcome of the trial. Because they were all found guilty. If there was an effect, you'd think that they would've been found innocent. We find, once you turn a camera on and point it at somebody, it does affect the situation because you're changing the situation. However, you don't have to change things so they are untruthful and fake. If you set up your relationships so that there is trust, people are hopefully going to be as open and honest and possible.

In what instances did the camera have an effect?

When Mark Byers and to a lesser degree Todd Moore (parents of two of the murdered children) were out shooting pumpkins, they probably wouldn't have been going through the speeches and the hyperbolic nature of what they were talking about if we were not there. They probably still would've been shooting pumpkins as if they were the three little boys arrested, but not to the performance that the camera enhanced. However, it was a window into the soul of Mark Byers and what he is really like.

At one point, Mark Byers gave a bloody knife to one of your cast members. How did you feel when you were faced with the choice of introducing possible evidence?

We were faced with a moral, ethical and professional dilemma. In retrospect, people think it must've of been a good thing for our film. At the time, we were horrified that we got this knife. We thought it was going to shut the film down. We had no proof that Byers, the stepfather, had anything to do with the crime, and we didn't want to drag him into it. The other side of the moral question was, what if the knife did have something to do with the crime? As I've said before, our whole style of filmmaking is based on trust and relationships, and we thought that because of this incident, the whole project was going to explode in our faces.

What about the opening scene? Though only three minutes long, why did you choose to reveal such graphic footage of the murder scene?

We though it was important to show how horrible this crime really was. All of the things that were circulating around that town and that area of West Memphis over the month are all encapsulated emotionally in what you see and feel when you see those bodies. And in an instant you are feeling many of the things that the people in the community felt. We don't feel the film would have been as effective without it.

Do you still keep in contact with these people?

It's hard to stay in touch with the (suspects) directly, but we try. We try to stay in touch with everybody because we decided with HBO that we are going to do a follow-up film, because so much has happened to everyone involved. First of all, Mark Byers' wife is dead. The kids, despite the public outcry, have lost their appeals. At the same time, we still have mixed feelings about treading this water again. But we feel like we should make a less ambiguous (second) film. We could focus on "who did it?" instead of "did they do it?"

For more information contact the Paradise Lost Web site at http:/www/gothamcity.com/paradiselost.