Moviescope 35

movieScope 35

35

Movies From An Insider’s Point Of View

35 July/Aug 2013

Modern Animation Benefiting from the digital revolution Second-Time Directors How to turn a debut into a career Multi-Platform Releasing Experiment or essential change?

9 771751 135006 July/Aug 2013 ÂŁ4.95

Elysium

The Dark Side of VFX

Is the industry trapped in a race to the bottom?

www.moviescopemag.com

ELYSIUM

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Performance capture and the changing face of modern cinema

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Issue 35 July/August 2013

Contents

24 Fps 06 Territory Focus

Economic development specialist and former Executive Director of the AFCI Martin Cuff explains why filmmakers, as well as territories, can benefit from the boom in film tourism.

10 Industry Insider

Michael Gubbins reveals why an increase in production and distribution may not necessarily result in a widespread availabiliy of diverse content.

12 Script Talk

Danny Munso explains why writing for Internet-only projects can be a valuable step in any screenwriter's career.

14 Finance and Funding Dave Morrison examines HMRC's Consultation Document on the future NIC status of entertainers, and the potential benefit for UK productions.

16 Distribution

Mick Southworth and Martin McCabe explain why traditional theatrical release windows absolutely need to be broken.

20 Announcements

From lightweight LEDs to new prime lenses and a mini stabliser for action cameras, we take a look at the very latest tech for filmmakers.

32 Motion Capture

“I think there was an attitude 10 years ago when actors would see putting on a mocap suit as beneath them; [now] the big actors are like ‘Why aren't I in a mocap suit yet?’" Animatrik's Brett Ineson

www.moviescopemag.com

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Contents Issue 35 July/August 2013

Features

Insider's P.O.V

Reviews

24 Modern Animation

22 Richard Jobson

58 Theatrical

32 Motion Capture

28 Claire Jones

How all kinds of animation, from CGI epics to traditional cel and stop-motion, are benefiting from the digital revolution.

With 15 years experience in the industry, Animatrik's Brett Ineson is perfectly placed to discuss how the evolution of mocap technology is driving creative advancements.

40 The Dark Side of VFX

Effects veteran Scott Ross explains why he believes the VFX industry is in a race to the bottom, and why it needs to take positive action if it's to save itself.

46 Second-Time Directors

No matter how successful a debut film, many new directors fail to move on to a second project, let alone build a career. Here, five British directors, along with major industry bodies, discuss the reasons why so many filmmakers fall down the gap.

54 Get Lucky Set Visit

movieScope visits the London set of Sacha Bennett's neo-noir caper Get Lucky.

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The fiercely independent writer/director discusses how new cloud technology is allowing him to retain creative control.

A Field in England's producer and Film4.0's Anna Higgs explain why they have chosen a multi-platform release strategy.

38 Oliver Hollis

The experienced performance capture artist writes exclusively about his changing role in front of the camera.

44 Shane Carruth

Having self-funded and self-distributed Upstream Colour, the director explains why true independence is so rewarding.

52 Kevin Howarth

After a career playing villains, the actor reveals why he'd like to try his hand at comedy...

56 Mat Newman

The Only God Forgives editor explains how he helps Nicolas Winding Refn achieve his unique visual style.

Editor Nikki Baughan and critic James Mottram discuss Lovelace, the biopic of Deep Throat adult star Linda Lovelace.

Plus reviews of Prince Avalanche, The Conjuring, The Moo Man and many more.

You can find additional and extended reviews on our website, www.moviescopemag.com.

“As an editor, you have to offer the director a shape to the movie. You have to make the film play [and know] what the intention of the material is."

Mat Newman, Editor www.moviescopemag.com

05/07/2013 09:17:31

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04/07/2013 10:48:49

Editorial Issue 35 July/August 2013

Contributors

Tis the season to be jolly… if you’re a fan of effects-laden blockbusters, that is. Of course, most of us love being bamboozled by the bombastic from time to time-after all, that’s one of the joys of the big screen experience-and this popularity sees them unbeaten at the box office and being remade, rebooted and franchised ad infinitum. But while audiences are being wowed by zombie hordes, intergalactic battles or the destruction of entire city skylines, how many pause to consider the painstaking effort (not to mention the sheer number of people and machines) that goes in to every awe-inspiring frame? Not many would likely be the answer. One could argue that’s not unsurprising; after all, if the industry itself doesn’t award the same recognition to VFX as it does to, say, cinematography, then why should the moviegoer? And, after all, isn’t VFX one of those ‘invisible crafts’, something that audiences shouldn’t concern themselves with lest it interfere with the magic of the movies?

Whether that’s a valid argument or not, VFX artistry is still something to acknowledge, and celebrate. As technology develops, creativity advances right along with it and, no matter how many computers are involved, human imagination is still at the heart of the most effective of effects. Nowhere is this more true than in motion capture, which has evolved from a technique used mostly in the artificial worlds of video games to a sophisticated method of performance that allows an actor to breathe life into a creature that would otherwise be a flat CGI composite; just compare Andy Serkis' intense portrayal of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy with Star Wars’ two-dimensional Jar Jar Binks. In order to truly understand the depths mocap can bring to a project, we spoke to mocap supervisor Brett Ineson (p.32) and performance capture artist Oliver Hollis (p.38) to see how the technology is being used on both sides of the camera.

While the images created by mocap and other VFX techniques wow audiences on a weekly basis, however, the industry itself is under something of a cloud. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, international financial incentives and tighter schedules put pressure on FX houses to deliver awesome content cheaply and quickly, and some are paying the ultimate price. Rhythm & Hues, for example, filed for bankruptcy while almost simultaneously collecting an Academy Award for their work on Life of Pi. Scott Ross, co-founder of Digital Domain and a veteran of ILM and LucasFilm, certainly believes that unless the industry takes positive action, it’s on a one way course to implosion. He reveals the problems, and the solutions, on page 40. As ever, it’s a fascinating debate.

Nikki Baughan, Editor

movieScope magazine Ltd Bridge House 105 3 Mills Studios Three Mill Lane London, E3 3DU United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0) 845 094 6263 Twitter: @movieScope www.movieScopemag.com Publisher & Editor-In-Chief Rinaldo Quacquarini Editor Nikki Baughan Sub Editor Naila Scargill Art Director Simon Edwards Cover Photograph Elysium © Sony Pictures

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Creative Consultant Jaime Biazotti Litho Pensord Press www.pensord.co.uk Subscriptions +44 (0) 845 094 6263 or visit www.movieScopemag.com Advertising Media Pack available online at: www.movieScopemag.com or by calling +44 (0) 845 094 6263 movieScope is published bimonthly in January, March, May, July, September and November by movieScope Magazine Ltd. Subscription: 6 issues for £20.79/$37/€30 plus shipping. movieScope is available from all good newsagents across the UK, Europe and USA. Visit movieScopemag.com for an interactive map to locate an outlet closest to you. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system without the express written permission of the publisher.

The opinions expressed in movieScope Magazine articles and advertisements are those of the individual authors and advertisers respectively and should not be considered in any manner as expressions of the management or official policies of movieScope Magazine Ltd. For information on reprints and syndication, please contact Editor-In-Chief@movieScopeMag.com The title “movieScope” and logotype are registered trademarks and service marks of movieScope Magazine Ltd. Copyright 2013. All Rights Reserved.

Nikki Baughan is the editor of movieScope. @rollcredits Anton Bitel is a film writer and academic. @AntBit Helen Cox is editor of New Empress magazine and a freelance film critic. www.newempressmagazine.com Martin Cuff is an economic development specialist and former head of the AFCI. www.martincuff.com / @martincuff James Clarke is a freelance film writer.

Simon Edwards is a freelance film critic and movieScope's art director.

Michael Gubbins is a journalist, consultant and chair of the Film Agency for Wales. @michaelgubbins Oliver Hollis is a performance capture artist working in film, TV and video games.

Martin McCabe is one of the UK’s most experienced film distributors.

Kat McLaughlin is a freelance film critic. @coconutboots Dave Morrison is a partner at Nyman Libson Paul and chair of the Institute of Chartered Accountants' Entertainment and Media Group. www.nlpca.co.uk James Mottram is a freelance film writer and author of four books on film.

Danny Munso is a screenwriting expert. @dannymunso Matt Ogborn is a freelance film writer. @mattogborn Chris Patmore is movieScope's web editor, and freelance writer. @krisht Rinaldo Quacquarini is the publisher and editor-in-chief of movieScope and shareholder in EnderLegard.com @movieScope Naila Scargill is movieScope’s sub editor and editor of Exquisite Terror magazine. www.exquisiteterror.com @exquisiteterror Tom Seymour is a freelance film critic. @TomSeymour Mick Southworth is the Director of The Works Film Group.

Adam Thursby is a screenwriter and freelance film writer. @dumbashtray Josh Winning is a film critic and writer.

www.moviescopemag.com

05/07/2013 09:17:31

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04/07/2013 10:51:13

Contents Issue 35 July/August 2013

Features

Insider's P.O.V

Reviews

24 Modern Animation

22 Richard Jobson

58 Theatrical

32 Motion Capture

28 Claire Jones

How all kinds of animation, from CGI epics to traditional cel and stop-motion, are benefiting from the digital revolution.

With 15 years experience in the industry, Animatrik's Brett Ineson is perfectly placed to discuss how the evolution of mocap technology is driving creative advancements.

40 The Dark Side of VFX

Effects veteran Scott Ross explains why he believes the VFX industry is in a race to the bottom, and why it needs to take positive action if it's to save itself.

46 Second-Time Directors

No matter how successful a debut film, many new directors fail to move on to a second project, let alone build a career. Here, five British directors, along with major industry bodies, discuss the reasons why so many filmmakers fall down the gap.

54 Get Lucky Set Visit

movieScope visits the London set of Sacha Bennett's neo-noir caper Get Lucky.

2

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The fiercely independent writer/director discusses how new cloud technology is allowing him to retain creative control.

A Field in England's producer and Film4.0's Anna Higgs explain why they have chosen a multi-platform release strategy.

38 Oliver Hollis

The experienced performance capture artist writes exclusively about his changing role in front of the camera.

44 Shane Carruth

Having self-funded and self-distributed Upstream Colour, the director explains why true independence is so rewarding.

52 Kevin Howarth

After a career playing villains, the actor reveals why he'd like to try his hand at comedy...

56 Mat Newman

The Only God Forgives editor explains how he helps Nicolas Winding Refn achieve his unique visual style.

Editor Nikki Baughan and critic James Mottram discuss Lovelace, the biopic of Deep Throat adult star Linda Lovelace.

Plus reviews of Prince Avalanche, The Conjuring, The Moo Man and many more.

You can find additional and extended reviews on our website, www.moviescopemag.com.

“As an editor, you have to offer the director a shape to the movie. You have to make the film play [and know] what the intention of the material is."

Mat Newman, Editor www.moviescopemag.com

05/07/2013 09:17:31

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04/07/2013 10:48:49

Editorial Issue 35 July/August 2013

Contributors

Tis the season to be jolly… if you’re a fan of effects-laden blockbusters, that is. Of course, most of us love being bamboozled by the bombastic from time to time-after all, that’s one of the joys of the big screen experience-and this popularity sees them unbeaten at the box office and being remade, rebooted and franchised ad infinitum. But while audiences are being wowed by zombie hordes, intergalactic battles or the destruction of entire city skylines, how many pause to consider the painstaking effort (not to mention the sheer number of people and machines) that goes in to every awe-inspiring frame? Not many would likely be the answer. One could argue that’s not unsurprising; after all, if the industry itself doesn’t award the same recognition to VFX as it does to, say, cinematography, then why should the moviegoer? And, after all, isn’t VFX one of those ‘invisible crafts’, something that audiences shouldn’t concern themselves with lest it interfere with the magic of the movies?

Whether that’s a valid argument or not, VFX artistry is still something to acknowledge, and celebrate. As technology develops, creativity advances right along with it and, no matter how many computers are involved, human imagination is still at the heart of the most effective of effects. Nowhere is this more true than in motion capture, which has evolved from a technique used mostly in the artificial worlds of video games to a sophisticated method of performance that allows an actor to breathe life into a creature that would otherwise be a flat CGI composite; just compare Andy Serkis' intense portrayal of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy with Star Wars’ two-dimensional Jar Jar Binks. In order to truly understand the depths mocap can bring to a project, we spoke to mocap supervisor Brett Ineson (p.32) and performance capture artist Oliver Hollis (p.38) to see how the technology is being used on both sides of the camera.

While the images created by mocap and other VFX techniques wow audiences on a weekly basis, however, the industry itself is under something of a cloud. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, international financial incentives and tighter schedules put pressure on FX houses to deliver awesome content cheaply and quickly, and some are paying the ultimate price. Rhythm & Hues, for example, filed for bankruptcy while almost simultaneously collecting an Academy Award for their work on Life of Pi. Scott Ross, co-founder of Digital Domain and a veteran of ILM and LucasFilm, certainly believes that unless the industry takes positive action, it’s on a one way course to implosion. He reveals the problems, and the solutions, on page 40. As ever, it’s a fascinating debate.

Nikki Baughan, Editor

movieScope magazine Ltd Bridge House 105 3 Mills Studios Three Mill Lane London, E3 3DU United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0) 845 094 6263 Twitter: @movieScope www.movieScopemag.com Publisher & Editor-In-Chief Rinaldo Quacquarini Editor Nikki Baughan Sub Editor Naila Scargill Art Director Simon Edwards Cover Photograph Elysium © Sony Pictures

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Creative Consultant Jaime Biazotti Litho Pensord Press www.pensord.co.uk Subscriptions +44 (0) 845 094 6263 or visit www.movieScopemag.com Advertising Media Pack available online at: www.movieScopemag.com or by calling +44 (0) 845 094 6263 movieScope is published bimonthly in January, March, May, July, September and November by movieScope Magazine Ltd. Subscription: 6 issues for £20.79/$37/€30 plus shipping. movieScope is available from all good newsagents across the UK, Europe and USA. Visit movieScopemag.com for an interactive map to locate an outlet closest to you. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system without the express written permission of the publisher.

The opinions expressed in movieScope Magazine articles and advertisements are those of the individual authors and advertisers respectively and should not be considered in any manner as expressions of the management or official policies of movieScope Magazine Ltd. For information on reprints and syndication, please contact Editor-In-Chief@movieScopeMag.com The title “movieScope” and logotype are registered trademarks and service marks of movieScope Magazine Ltd. Copyright 2013. All Rights Reserved.

Nikki Baughan is the editor of movieScope. @rollcredits Anton Bitel is a film writer and academic. @AntBit Helen Cox is editor of New Empress magazine and a freelance film critic. www.newempressmagazine.com Martin Cuff is an economic development specialist and former head of the AFCI. www.martincuff.com / @martincuff James Clarke is a freelance film writer.

Simon Edwards is a freelance film critic and movieScope's art director.

Michael Gubbins is a journalist, consultant and chair of the Film Agency for Wales. @michaelgubbins Oliver Hollis is a performance capture artist working in film, TV and video games.

Martin McCabe is one of the UK’s most experienced film distributors.

Kat McLaughlin is a freelance film critic. @coconutboots Dave Morrison is a partner at Nyman Libson Paul and chair of the Institute of Chartered Accountants' Entertainment and Media Group. www.nlpca.co.uk James Mottram is a freelance film writer and author of four books on film.

Danny Munso is a screenwriting expert. @dannymunso Matt Ogborn is a freelance film writer. @mattogborn Chris Patmore is movieScope's web editor, and freelance writer. @krisht Rinaldo Quacquarini is the publisher and editor-in-chief of movieScope and shareholder in EnderLegard.com @movieScope Naila Scargill is movieScope’s sub editor and editor of Exquisite Terror magazine. www.exquisiteterror.com @exquisiteterror Tom Seymour is a freelance film critic. @TomSeymour Mick Southworth is the Director of The Works Film Group.

Adam Thursby is a screenwriter and freelance film writer. @dumbashtray Josh Winning is a film critic and writer.

www.moviescopemag.com

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24 Fps Territory Focus

Film Tourism: A Route to Funding?

Economic development specialist Martin Cuff explains why filmmakers, as well as locations, can benefit from the boom in film tourism.

From Taiwan to Forks, Washington, and from New Zealand to Northern Ireland, audiences are increasingly motivated to travel to the places they have seen in their favourite films or shows. Last year’s global benchmarking survey, the TRAVELSAT Competitive Index, noted that around 40m international tourists chose their destination mainly because they saw a film shot in a particular location, and up to 10 visitors in every 100 choose a destination thanks mostly to movies.

The survey also noted that this channel is particularly useful for attracting first-time visitors, young travellers and short-stay and city-breakers, and that the lucrative BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) markets tend to be especially sensitive to this medium.

Although there are examples of film tourism impacts going back decades (think Deliverance; 40-years-old this year and still driving tourism of more than $40m per annum) more recent examples prove that it’s an ever-increasing sector. Chinese road movie Lost in Thailand, for example, is explicitly cited as the main reason for an increase in Chinese visitors to Thailand.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film has generated a 44.4 per cent increase in tourism turnover, and investment of as much as 29.6bn Thai baht (a jaw-dropping $1bn) into the Thai economy in 2013. Similarly, figures released by Tourism New Zealand

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Above: The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit films have provided a lucrative tourism boost for New Zealand

Below: Lost in Thailand is directly responsible for an increased number of Chinese visitors to Thailand

show that international holidays to the country rose by 10 per cent during the first four months of 2013, compared to the same period last year. A survey indicated that 8.5 per cent of visitors cited The Hobbit as a reason for coming, and that 13 per cent took part in some kind of Hobbit-themed tourism, such as visiting one of the film’s sets. Closer to home, Film London report that films and TV programmes that depict the UK are directly responsible for attracting about one in 10 overseas tourists—around 28m visitors—who spend around £1.8bn per year. Visit Britain suggest that films could be influencing the expectations of up to 40 per cent of international visitors coming to the UK. The influence of the big and small screen is also being felt by locales that may not otherwise be typical tourist destinations. Consider the small city of Southport, North Carolina. For the entire month of January, 2013, the city’s website received around 322 page views. In the four months after Lasse Hallström’s romantic drama Safe Haven debuted on Valentine’s Day, that same website received over 250,000 total page views. And in Sweden, the municipality of Ystad—home of the Wallander series—calculates the value

of the city’s media coverage in Swedish and English-speaking web-based press at a total PR value of over 96m SEK (around €11m).

But what does all this mean for filmmakers? The good news is that it could result in access to more funding and other marketing resources for films that showcase a particular location.

We’re already starting to see examples of this: Israel’s tourism ministry, for example, reportedly invested $8m in the romcom The Old Cinderella, starring Chinese actress Zhang Jingchu, which shot in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. And Botswana Tourism invested $5m in the HBO/BBC series The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, which shot in and around Gaborone in 2009.

The bad news, however, is that— unlike film incentives or tax credit programmes that are based on clear and easily discernible formulas and rules—tourism offices and destination management organisations aren’t set up to hand over cash to filmmakers.

There’s no simple calculation that says, ‘if you pay me X, my movie will create Y tourists and Z economic value’. In a nutshell, that means if you want tourism cash, then you’re likely going to have to work hard for it.

www.moviescopemag.com

05/07/2013 10:55:04

Although there is no real precedent or framework for this, in my experience there are a couple of things worth considering when you draft your proposal. Firstly, you need to be specific about the audience you hope to attract to your film. ‘It’s for everyone who’s young at heart’ may sound good in a presentation, but it will have real marketers sharpening their pencils to stab you in the eye. Break it down. Give details. Ascribe niches.

Furthermore, you need to do some research into whether your proposed audience is actually a genuine target market being wooed by your proposed

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tourism partner. Google a location’s tourism strategy for an idea about the kind of market they want to attract.

For example, if the destination is looking to develop the upmarket, luxury, sophisticated but eco-friendly end of the market, then pitching a movie about cannibal-mutant biker gangs running amok in a topless Spring Break rave party is unlikely to be of interest. There ARE destinations going after the youth market, you’re just going to need to research which.

You also need to be specific about how the destination is going to be

Right: Romantic drama Safe Haven created huge interest in the location of Southport, North Carolina

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24 Fps Territory Focus

featured in your film. Will it be a simple visual placement, where the location is observable only for a few moments—in establishing shots, for example? That’s not going to get them fired up. Will it be spoken placement? (‘Is this Heaven?

No, it’s Iowa,’ is the famous line from Field of Dreams.) Or will there be specific plot placement, when an on-screen personality interacts with vivid aspects of the location? Consider everything that appears in the frame and the way it is shown and arranged. Will the characters speak with local accents? Will they eat local food or drink local beer? Will they spend time in local hangouts, listen to local music or kiss in front of iconic local backdrops? Will the location become a character of its own? If you’ve got a Woody Allen kind of sensibility for place, you’ll know what I mean.

When you’ve nailed down this information, you should begin including it as a line item—‘tourism impacts’, perhaps—in your investor pitch packet. You should do this not only to explicitly identify the potential audience of your film and the key messages, but also to set out some of the exciting ways in which you imagine that audience can connect with the location after the film. It’s also useful to define the ways you are prepared to make that happen.

This is undoubtedly a big issue, because most filmmakers just want to make the damn movie and don’t want to be bothered with a whole bunch of extraneous stuff. There are, however, a number of things you could provide to the tourism office that wouldn’t take long to organise; in fact, you’ll probably be coordinating them on a day-to-day basis during the production anyway.

These could include providing information on where your stars slept (seriously), GPS positions of

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Below: Fast and Furious 6 features several iconic locations, including London

the camera for key iconic shots from the film, B-roll footage for use on their tourism websites or movie stills for inclusion in their marketing brochures. Access to your stars and crew is a big plus; one of the easiest things is to ensure that your electronic press kits specifically include clips of your lead actor waxing lyrical about the wonderful time he’s had filming on location.

Even offering to host a premiere locally can have benefits for the local economy. The premiere for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey at Wellington’s Embassy Theatre, for example, earned nearly $12m for the economy.

Then there are all the spin-off events, such as competitions and walking tours, that could all contribute to local economic benefits for the host: following the release of Fast and Furious 6, for instance, a car event held in Nyack, New York, attracted more than 150 people who each paid to drive luxury race cars around a

parking lot. Be creative, and think of the added value.

Practically speaking, ensure that what you’re offering your targeted tourism organisation is clearly outlined in your chain of title documentation.

Since every film is essentially a collection of copyrights, ensure that you clarify that the relevant tourism office is given the right to use the film’s name and any images/clips granted for the specific purpose of tourism promotion.

Finally, it’s important to look at how your own marketing activities for the finished film may coincide with the marketing drives of your chosen destination. For example, if the tourism office’s main target market is Germany and you want to get your movie into the Berlinale, then figure out how you can work together for mutual benefit.

Will they host your screening and after party in return for being able to promote travel packages at the event, for example? Will they pay for radio spots, translation of materials or an increased print run of press materials?

They might well do, if you make your case properly and the relationship is mutually beneficial.

All of this may seem like an extra headache. But tourism offices have a number of points of entry for the creation of film tourism product and, to be brutally honest, not all of them involve the filmmakers themselves.

In fact, the default position of most tourism offices is most likely wait and see. They lose nothing by simply waiting until a film is released, assessing its box office and resulting activity before they even lift a finger.

So, as a filmmaker the choice is yours; go out and create a genuine, mutually beneficial partnership with your location of choice, or miss out on the potential funding altogether. Happy travels! l

www.moviescopemag.com

04/07/2013 14:39:25

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24 Fps Industry Insider

The Illusion of Choice

Michael Gubbins reveals why a huge increase in production may not necessarily result in widespread availability of diverse content.

A survey from the European Audiovisual Observatory suggests that there are now more than 500 videoon-demand services available in the EU dedicated mainly or wholly to feature film.

And, despite a small dip in 2012 (due to a fall in documentary production), the EU countries’ production of nearly 1,300 films a year represents a 75 per cent increase in output over the last decade.

This all sounds like great news for the consumer and, to the outsider, it might seem that subsidised and protected film production in Europe is in rude health. Yet there’s a persistent paradox that will not go away; let’s call it the illusion of choice. While all of the experimentation in new platforms and release windows has unquestionably increased the volume of films available, volume and choice are not the same things. A mathematician might have a lot of fun working out the number at which human beings might make a genuine choice of alternatives. Columbia Business School Professor Sheena Iyengar offered a fascinating insight in a TED talk earlier this year, showing that consumers were more likely to buy from a selection of six items (in

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Despite a massive increase in content, blockbusters like Man of Steel (above) and Pacific

Rim (below) still reign supreme with audiences

that case, pots of jam), than of 24.

For independent filmmakers and the organisations and bodies tasked with building diversity of content, however, these are not academic issues.

In fact, there are two issues at stake here. The first is the big question of how you build business models on practically unlimited choice but limited consumer time. The multinational media platforms and globalised retailers are finding their way around this problem by mobilising big data, to curate—some would say manipulate—consumer taste. Amazon, for example, has what seems like an uncanny knack of predicting taste but its success is built on mining rich and vast fields of audience data, which are added to with every interaction.

What’s more, consumers willingly help that process by volunteering additional information in the hope of personalised services. (Oddly, the power that this gives multinational giants does not seem to create the same adverse public reaction as to governments monitoring and collecting information on citizens.)

That level of data access does not scale down, but smart independents are finding ways of aggregating

demand. Crowdfunding is perhaps the most benign form of the process, with a few key branded sites, such as Kickstarter, helping bring together likeminded people to support a project in which they feel they have a stake.

We are then in a world in which it is possible, at least to some extent, to engage audiences with known tastes.

There is a lot of self-serving nonsense spoken about how the growing potential to service existing audience demand is compromising to art. This is not just an issue of slavishly following market trends. Instead, it is about ensuring the broadest audience for content, and that is just as important to any cultural mission worth the name as it is to commercial imperatives.

That brings us to the second serious issue. It may be increasingly possible to accurately and dynamically service audience tastes; Internet business is profoundly focused on personal gratification. But how do you create taste and demand in the first place? It may be considerably easier to give people what they think they want, but how do you awaken passion that they do not know they have?

www.moviescopemag.com

04/07/2013 14:46:30

One To Watch Antonia Thomas Actress

Ironically, many of today’s more adventurous lovers of film were introduced to it because of the limited choice of options, particularly on terrestrial television. It is fashionable now to talk in disparaging terms of the evils of ‘gatekeepers’ between content and audience. Yet the public broadcasting mission, summed up by the founder of the BBC, Lord Reith, as the need to ‘educate, inform and entertain’, did at least ensure exposure to different forms of art and culture.

It was a patrician culture, of course, which put huge amounts of power in the hands of a small state elite. The relationship between the broadcasters and the law-makers was dangerously close and, in some states, profoundly undemocratic and deferential. But the on-demand culture of the Internet era has not yet found effective means of ensuring that choice is an educated selection between a considered variety of options rather than the product of market forces. Unlimited access to content has tended so far to polarise demand around the pervasive marketing mainstream and smaller, narrower, local or niche tastes.

Hollywood’s strategy of the last few years necessarily exacerbated these trends. The studios have been betting their future on fewer but bigger films, having largely divested themselves of the specialist production arms. At the turn of the century, there were four films made with budgets above $100m.

Last year there were 22. To recoup on that level of investment requires ever-greater domination and marketing strategies that squeeze out alternatives.

In June, Steven Spielberg warned that the reliance on globally marketed movie behemoths risked the longterm implosion of the industry. One could also make a strong case that Hollywood needs a diversity of content

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to keep cinema’s central place in national cultures worldwide. But the polarisation in which big films get bigger and small films get invisible is also true in Europe.

EAO’s annual Focus Report also reveals that the top two per cent of EU-produced films made up almost half of the total 328m admissions for EU films last year. In fact, the top film, Skyfall (below, categorised as UK-US by EAO) made up 13.5 per cent of the total. The latest in the James Bond franchise was almost single-handedly responsible for the increase in European market share in 2012. Again, unlimited choice tends to favour the biggest and loudest.

For the individual producer, it is becoming essential to think harder about the target audience, and how to build the necessary levels of awareness and engagement at a much earlier stage. There is, however, a bigger issue that should now be at the heart of public policy. How do we ensure that film culture does not fragment into a variety of exclusive fan bases and taste groups? And how do we ensure the broad access to film that will be at the heart of future demand? l

Best known for playing Alisha in the award-winning TV series Misfits, this year Antonia will take the lead in 1970s music drama Northern Soul (released on October 4), alongside Steve Coogan, and will also be seen in Dexter Fletcher’s Sunshine on Leith (released in the autumn).

Antonia also had a role in the recent Spike Island, and has just finished filming London comedy Hello Carter and science fiction thriller Scintilla.

What training have you received?

At 14 I joined the National Youth Music Theatre, and later became a member of the National Youth Theatre as well. With both youth companies I performed to paying audiences in Japan and at the Edinburgh festival, the Royal Opera House and the Soho Theatre, amongst others. It was an invaluable part of my training, and the closest I could have got to a professional experience without already being a professional actor.

At 19 I went to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and did a three year BA course in acting. It was a steep and exciting learning curve, and I got a brilliant classical basis to my training that has, so far, stood me in good stead.

What kind of roles attract you?

I don’t think there’s a particular type of role that attracts me. I just want to explore as many different kinds of people as possible. For me, it’s extremely important to be as versatile an actor as possible. I do, however, really enjoy playing characters that are very different to myself; I find it fascinating to get into the mindset of somebody completely removed from me.

What’s the best advice you’ve been given as an actor?

That if you want to have a serious and respected acting career then you better be in it for the marathon and not the sprint. It should be about working really hard and doing it for the love of the work, rather than any kind of by product that can go along side it.

Tell us the most significant moment in your career so far.

I would say that would probably have been when Misfits— my first job out of drama school—won the BAFTA for best drama series. None of us had any idea that would happen!

It was a great show to have been part of and we were just extremely proud to have been nominated, let alone given the award. It was a real honour.

You’ll die happy when…

David Attenborough is made King of England!

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04/07/2013 14:46:31

24 Fps Script Talk

Writing for the Web

Danny Munso explains why writing for Internet-only projects can be a valuable step in any screenwriter’s career.

The current landscape for screenwriters can seem daunting, even depressing, if you look at it through certain prisms. If you can somehow see through the ashes of the spec market and the crowd of unoriginal material at the multiplex, however, you will find some optimism. And much of it centres on the opportunities being afforded to writers on the Internet.

Though the YouTube revolution began several years ago, the idea of the Internet being a viable place for screenwriters is a recent one.

While initially the Internet afforded creative freedom that had never been available before, the reality was that the viewership and, just as importantly, credibility was not there. Those days are over, as the lines between the Internet and television continue to blur and overlap.

The rise of Netflix as an original content provider is a big factor. So is the fact that Amazon has jumped into the online television show business, producing four pilots this year. But the biggest development is that viewers are now willing to look at a show produced exclusively for the Internet and accept it as viable content. If you write and produce your own show online, no matter the format, you are no longer shunned into the same categories that include cats playing pianos or sneezing pandas.

Viable Hollywood talent—writers, directors, and actors alike—is turning to the web to showcase ideas. One of 2013's funniest shows is a web series, the Yahoo-based Burning Love.

Written and directed by actors Ken Marino and Erica Oyama, the show spoofs the recent rash of reality dating programmes and features appearances

by Ben Stiller, Jennifer Aniston, Kristen Bell, Adam Scott and many others.

Marino and Oyama originally conceived

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Successful Internet projects like Burning

Love (above) and Ghost Ghirls (opposite) highlight just how much writing for the web has evolved over the years

Burning Love as a television show before seizing upon the creative freedom that working on the web offers.

They could keep control and credibility.

In an ironic twist, Burning Love was such an online hit that an American TV network began airing past seasons.

At the recent South by Southwest film festival, one of the buzziest titles was a web show: Ghost Ghirls, written and performed by newcomers Amanda Lund and Maria Blasucci and executive-produced by Jack Black, who got involved after being impressed with what he saw. And YouTube have continued to separate themselves from their image by commissioning more original content with big names; they just hosted a Comedy Week, where some of the genre’s biggest talents made unique videos and series for the site. The Internet is not where writers’ material goes to die; rather, it’s where you can now thrive.

It should be noted, however, that if you are hoping to monetise your writing career via a web series,

then your expectations need to be managed. While that scenario is not necessarily impossible, it is highly unlikely. It’s not unreasonable to want to get paid for your creative work, but in this case you would be missing the point—while creating a successful web series won’t make you rich, it could jump-start your career and eventually lead you down that road.

There was a brief period a few years ago when many of the film studios tried to jump on the rising tide of original content being made on the web. They wanted their piece of what they thought would be a lucrative pie; many of them launched websites that have since gone defunct, which has actually worked out better for writers. Studios are no longer using the web to monetise new content, rather they are using it as a farm system of sorts. Though someone like Marino already had a solid career as both an actor (Veronica Mars) and a writer (Role Models), a series like Burning Love has changed his profile. Now, he’s the creator and director of a hit show.

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04/07/2013 14:50:18

One To Watch Jack Weatherley Director

This approach can amount to posting a resumé for yourself and your work. A web series is the easiest way for a studio, or even an agent or a manager, to decide if they want to be involved with someone on a future project. It’s the perfect showcase for an unknown writer; you get several episodes to tell your story and demonstrate you can successfully craft a narrative that carries over multiple episodes. You prove you can head up your own project and be the boss, and can showcase your casting eye. When a studio exec or rep calls you in for a meeting, they are already impressed with what they have seen and the breadth of your talents. A good web series gets your name around Hollywood and, in the right circumstances, can lead to pitch meetings for your own television show and film.

Just as studios are beginning to use the web as a farm system for discovering new talent, amateur writers can also take advantage of writing for the web as a means of honing craft.

Most web series are shorter than a general television show. Where you

would write around a 24-page script for a sitcom, a comedy web script could be around 10 pages. While that seems like less work, it can actually be more difficult writing in a compact way. You only have 10 pages to tell a beginning, middle and end, AND be entertaining.

Harder than it sounds. But if you can master that, writing a normal television episode or especially a film will seem like child’s play. By taking on the challenge a web series presents, your writing senses will immediately be sharpened.

We are all writers, so we know that the first screenplay we write is rarely the best. In fact, usually it’s horrid, clichéd and something we pretend doesn’t exist. Writing for a web series can be used as a tool to sharpen your skills.

Not everyone is meant to write film and television for the masses and no one is ready immediately; making your own series can be a trial and error for you as a writer. You can make your mistakes, discover your weaknesses and learn in the best way possible: on the job.

And since you’re doing this in 2013 as opposed to 2009, you can be assured that Hollywood is watching and waiting. l

Jack Weatherley’s first short film Straight Way Lost premiered at the BFI London Film Festival in 2011 before screening at festivals internationally and being picked up for distribution. His next film Pieces, starring Michael Smiley (Kill List), George MacKay (For Those in Peril) and Alice Lowe (Sightseers) is heading to festivals this year.

What training have you received?

No formal training, really. I’ve studied elements of film theory but didn’t go to film school, so had very little practical filmmaking experience. My first job in the industry was as a runner at a post house; from there I started working in TV before directing commercials and then making shorts independently.

What kind of projects attract you?

So far I’ve written the films I’ve directed and, in general, I enjoy cinema that challenges, provokes questions and stays with you. I love working with actors and the collaborative nature of filmmaking inspires me. On Pieces I was lucky enough to work with an inspirational cast and crew including DoP Laurie Rose (who has shot all of Ben Wheatley’s films) and amazing post talent. Exploring music and sound in film fascinates me, and collaborating with the collective sonic genius of Pablo Clements and James Griffith (Toydrum / UNKLE) and Martin Pavey (Kill List, A Field in England) on the film was a joy.

What’s the best advice you’ve been given as a director?

Nothing will happen for you in this industry, you have to make it happen. Just get out there and do it, make films, find your voice. Technology has reached a point where it’s possible to make a film affordably; there are no excuses anymore.

Tell us the most significant moment in your career so far.

It’s still very early days for me but my first short screening at the BFI London Film Festival was quite a moment.

I’d gone from Googling how to format a screenplay to introducing the film to 150 pairs of eyes in a relatively short period of time. The old cliché of shorts being calling cards turned out to be pretty accurate, and I wouldn’t have been able to make Pieces or collaborate with UNKLE on a commercial doc last year without that exposure.

You’ll die happy when…

I can look back at my career with no regrets. www.jackweatherley.co.uk / @Jack_Weatherley

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04/07/2013 14:50:19

24 Fps Finance and Funding

Another Boost For UK Production?

Dave Morrison examines HMRC’s Consultation Document on the future NIC status of entertainers, and the potential benefit for UK productions.

So, the UK is the place to be when it comes to filmmaking, right? We have film tax credits, high-end TV tax credits, animation tax credits, Lottery funding, a skilled workforce and world-class facilities. And, from April 2014, the UK could become even more competitively priced with a fall in the cost of hiring actors. Great news eh? (Well, maybe not for unemployed actors, but more about them later.)

It’s all about social security 'taxes'.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) are proposing a change to national insurance regulations, coming into effect in the next financial year, which could see producers save around 12 per cent of what it currently costs to engage actors in the UK. In fact, the headline figure should really be 13.8 per cent, which is the rate of national insurance, or social security, contribution that employers—i.e. producers—are asked to

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Big budget productions that choose to shoot in the UK, just as

Kick-Ass 2 (above) and Maleficent (opposite page,

bottom) have recently done, could benefit from changes to the NIC rules for entertainers

pay over and above the fee agreed with any actor, but the maths actually works out at about 12.1 per cent.

As you can imagine, employers aren’t always enamoured with the additional 13.8 per cent cost that employers’ national insurance currently imposes.

Furthermore, following a change in policy by HMRC, which brought musicians within this regime, the Musicians’ Union have suggested that this additional cost to engagers has the effect of cutting jobs for its members. Other lobbyists also go so far as to suggest that it makes UK film and TV production uncompetitive and mitigates the benefits of film and TV tax credit incentives.

Currently, most UK actors are treated as self-employed for tax purposes, but employed for national insurance contributions (NIC) purposes. This means that actors get the advantages

of claiming tax deductible expenses while, by virtue of their NIC status, remaining eligible for contributionbased jobseeker’s allowance when unemployed. This rather privileged position was designed to safeguard actors who are vulnerable to periods of unemployment.

There had been some exceptions to the rule outlined above; principally, so-called ‘key talent’ (‘stars’ in everyday language), certain foreign actors or where contracts were suitably drafted around these provisions; the actor would be treated as self-employed, thereby saving producers the employers’ NIC of 13.8 per cent. On the other hand, long-term contractees, such as soap stars, are usually treated as selfemployed by default.

One perceived loophole in the system was for an actor to be paid through a limited company. While this

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04/07/2013 14:54:40

meant the producer wasn’t liable for employers’ NIC, some actors are currently going through the potentially costly realisation that their own limited company probably was.

The catalyst for change to the existing system has been something of a courtroom drama. The ITV Services Ltd v HMRC case has not gone well for ITV. While they argued that they should not be liable for the 13.8 per cent employers’ NIC, the judge has not only sided with HMRC but effectively extended the interpretation to include even more actors. As a consequence, key talent stars are now, apparently, employees too. At the time of writing we are awaiting the Court of Appeal’s decision, but in the meantime HMRC have decided that things do need a bit of tidying up. They have also identified some other areas that need review, specifically the rules with regard to liability for employers’ NIC on repeat fees.

HMRC’s consultation document illustrates four potential proposals to address these various issues. The first two seek to address the collection of employers’ NIC on repeat fees where rights are no longer held by the original producer. The other two proposals (options three and four) suggest removing entertainers from the employees’ NIC regime and making them liable to self-employed NIC, which

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would effectively mean that producers are no longer liable for employers’ NIC. This does, however, raise questions over entertainers’ entitlement to contributionbased jobseeker’s allowance should they find themselves out of work.

Option three addresses this latter point, proposing the idea of a special class of self-employed NIC, with its own rate, for actors, which would entitle them to benefits. HMRC, however, goes on to say that it prefers option four, whereby entertainers would pay standard selfemployed rates of NIC. Actors’ union Equity are campaigning against option four, because of the potential loss of benefits entitlement for its members, in preference for option three. It is extremely hard to evaluate the real costs of option three, however, as HMRC has not provided a full economic impact assessment. Important questions that need to be answered include how many entertainers currently claim jobseeker’s allowance? How much would actually be saved by removing benefits?

How much would an enhanced rate of Class 2 contributions be for entertainers under option three?

Elsewhere, however, the Musicians’ Union will presumably support option four, as they have previously suggested that the imposition of Class 1 contributions on musicians—following a review of policy by HMRC in response to the ITV Services Ltd case—will cost jobs. Whether option three would be acceptable for working musicians remains to be seen.

The upshot is that plenty of lobbying is likely to ensue. Equity are currently reaching out to their members and, no doubt, PACT and other interested parties will file submissions to HMRC by the deadline date of August 6, 2013.

If you’re a producer and are budgeting for a film production next summer, then you may be advised to

British filmmakers like Danny Boyle (above on the set of

Trance) could also find their budgets buoyed by changes to NIC

do two versions of your budget. Maybe your fundraising is about to get easier, with less to collect. At the moment, that remains unclear. What is clear, however, is that the impact on actors and their potential entitlement to benefits is likely to be hard felt. In fact, this is where the debate is likely to focus. Unfortunately, available data does not yet give a clear indication of the financial cost and impact of benefit claims. Can actors still survive using universal credit and other means-tested benefits instead of jobseeker’s allowance, as HMRC suggest? Just as Equity need to attempt to quantify this issue, HMRC and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) must try and evaluate any potential impact more fully. Whatever the outcome, however, producers should benefit, and UK production may have inadvertently just got another tax break.

But, just like in the movies, we have to wait and see how it all ends.

Useful Links

HMRC National Insurance www.hmrc.gov.uk/ni Department for Work and Pensions www.dwp.gov.uk NIC Consultation Document www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/ uploads/attachment_data/file/198510/ HMRC_Consultation_NICs_and_ SEEnts_-_MAY_2013_final.pdf l

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04/07/2013 14:54:41

24 Fps Distribution

Breaking Windows

Mick Southworth and Martin McCabe explain why traditional theatrical release windows need to be broken.

There is a transparent and generally accepted agreement between most sensible manufacturers, wholesalers and retail outlets that should any product fail to sell sufficiently well to the target market—despite any market research, huge marketing campaign and gap in the market—then that product is offered at a knock-down discount price.

Seeing as any business folk worth their salt need to get their capital investment back, this would seem to be an obvious move. Well, not in the wacky world of cinema distribution it isn’t…

Traditionally, release windows—the holdback period that a distributor has to adhere to when exploiting their commercial rights through other media platforms after theatrical release—have been limited to such platforms as home entertainment, pay and free TV. The digital revolution, however, has seen these expanded to include numerous other home and mobile platforms including extant cable and satellite delivery systems, as well as such on-demand services as iTunes, Xbox, Netflix, Blinkbox, LoveFilm and VoD, SVoD, AVoD, FVoD, etc. But, whatever the platform, the cinema exhibitors will gladly kill you if you even attempt to break these windows.

In fairness, they were probably rightly put into place when broadcast television and the burgeoning video rental market were the main drivers of ancillary revenues, at a time when films had the opportunity to play on at the cinema, free from the bottleneck release schedules and self-cannibalism of a regular 15 films per Friday stealing all the oxygen. Back then, a successful picture like The Towering Inferno or Jaws could play uninterrupted to widespread audiences for weeks or months on end, before appearing on television following an FDA-mandated seven years after first theatrical release (subsequently

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Margin Call (above) was considered a potential gamechanger when it was simultaneously released across numerous platforms, but in reality nothing much has changed

reduced to five and then two years).

Come the late 1970s, however, the video rental market began to gain consumer traction, and an additional video rental window of nine to 12 months from first release was instigated. Just over half a decade later, the emergence of sellthrough VHS saw that window brought down to six months, which was where it largely remained until the DVD boom of the late 90s saw it reduced to a more typical four months.

With this rapid growth in consumer appetites for packaged film content, the stridently successful video and TV platforms often effectively supported the distributors’ financial margins if films unfortunately lost their shirts at the box office. And yes, it is true that these windows were initially designed through mutual cooperation and near parable benefit to protect the integrity and importance of the initial theatrical release.

But that was then, and this is now.

Currently, there are many industry players that desperately want to see the old holdback restrictions lifted to engage with the new reality of the dilution of revenues across the multi-platform environment of the

modern distribution landscape. The expansion of digital distribution systems, allied with new ‘second’ and even ‘third’ screen consumer technologies has led to an explosive demand for filmed entertainment and increasing competition amongst digital retailers to acquire and sell this high-quality content to a growing market of consumers, who no longer necessarily recognise the primacy of theatrical engagement within this transaction.

In recent years, the successful simultaneous multi-platform US releases of both Margin Call and Arbitrage were cited as a compelling argument in favour of increased flexibility in release windows. Not only did both films enjoy increased profitability, but were heralded as outliers for a coming renaissance of increased digital distribution opportunities. But have these ‘landmark’ examples led to any real movement in exhibition patterns? Well, since then very little seems to have changed. A few innovative distributors such as Magnolia and Radius Pictures have continued to experiment with release patterns with some success. Crowd-sourcing platforms such as Tugg and Gathr have begun to effectively utilise social media to put bums on seats, by aligning content with interested audiences in a more precise and targeted way. Some American majors experiment by releasing rental titles on Facebook, and have also offered customers the chance to watch a small range of selected digital HD movies— including the likes of Prometheus—a month before BD/DVD debuts.

Although these changes may be small, exhibitors are (understandably) feeling threatened; Universal’s attempt to release Tower Heist on VoD just three weeks after its theatrical premiere, for example, was shot down. Ultimately, however, the industry has to find ways of getting people to pay for digital.

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04/07/2013 15:01:05

And while no one can argue that the traditional release window format has been a valuable model for exhibitors and studios alike, the rationale behind this model is rapidly diminishing. The main catalyst for this need for change is the rise in Internet viewing, which canniballises audiences from impatient consumers that would otherwise pay for content.

Online piracy threatens to consume our ancillary markets and capital returns; despite the collective defences of the major studios, diligent search engine providers and determined

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anti-piracy law enforcers, illegal downloading is on the rise. The number of illegally downloaded films in the UK has increased by 30 per cent in the last five years, according to Internet consultancy Envisional. It reports that the top five box-office movies were illegally downloaded 1.4m times in the UK in 2012, and the top five TV shows—including Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad—were pirated 1.44m times; an increase of 33 per cent from 2009.

In the face of these horrifying figures, our decision makers seem almost paralysed with fear at the

Online piracy of movies and TV shows like Game of Thrones (right) is a problem that needs to be understood and

thought of trying to force through sensible change for the collective industry good. Of course, we understand why cinema operators would fight tooth and nail to protect their ground. Why wouldn’t they?

addressed head on

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One To Watch

24 Fps Distribution

Kibwe Tavares Short Filmmaker

Theatrical exclusivity is possibly the last (thin) wall between them and the avalanche of new technology, home cinema and delivery vehicles that will undermine the ticket price value. That’s all well and good for the exhibitors, but where does that leave the rest of us—the financiers, producers and distributors, etc. dependent on a successful revenue flow to make a living? Cinema owners standing their ground won’t make the problem go away; indeed, the only people who will ever see real value if the current draconian stranglehold continues are the burglars of our intellectual property.

Even those venerable progenitors of the modern blockbuster, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, included this very subject in their recent State of Cinema speech to USC students.

Lambasting modern release strategies and the studios’ increasing reliance on tentpole product, they predicted an industry ‘implosion’ where, following the failure of a number of high-budget releases, they could envision a future in which ticket prices would be more akin to a Broadway theatre experience for a limited number of studio products at a limited number of luxury theatres. (“You’re going to have to pay $25 for the next Iron Man,” commented Spielberg, perhaps unaware that this

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is cheaper than the current cost of a cinema ticket in London’s West End.) In this scenario, the smaller films would be left to fight for themselves between second-tier cinemas and cable TV. That may be an unfair précis of an attenuated argument, but the point is much the same; the industry must evolve, or we could be impacted in a far more devastating way than the music industry was a decade ago.

In the UK, the only current way of enjoying the freedom to exploit your owned rights simultaneously across multiple platforms is if a distributor, by pre-arrangement, hires the cinemas in the clear understanding that they intend to ‘break’ the holdbacks to maximise revenues with a day-and-date release.

Unless the film is something that the cinemas absolutely want for cultural reasons, and accept that they are just a part of the food chain, then very little cash—if any—will make it back to the distribution company daring to go this outrageous route.

In a brave release strategy, Ben Wheatley’s A Field in England (below) hit cinemas, DVD, free TV and VoD simultaneously in the UK in July. Film4, Picturehouse Entertainment, 4DVD and the BFI Distribution Fund are all working together on this simultaneous release model, the first of its kind for a film in this country. Might this presage a new model of exploitation for independent film? We can only watch and wait but whatever the results, good or bad, this need for change cannot be denied. Exhibitors simply need to be more flexible. Blockbuster releases may well continue to enjoy a longer theatrical window—akin to the aforementioned roadshow or platform releases of the past—but independent and mid-market films absolutely need a quicker transition to secondary markets if they are to survive. l

Kibwe Tavares is an architect turned animator, whose first short film, Robots of Brixton, found a huge online audience when it was released in 2011. After providing the digitial effects for Jonathan Gales’ short Gamma, Kibwe has most recently directed short film Jonah, a dreamlike story of two young men whose discovery of a gigantic fish transforms their lives, which has been supported by Film4 and the BFI Film Fund.

What training have you received?

I trained as an architect and engineer for around seven years, and during that time I started teaching myself a variety of animated techniques which resulted in my first short film Robots of Brixton. That led to Jonah being commissioned, and a slightly unorthodox but effective way of training as a film maker, by being literally thrown in at the deep end, never really knowing what was happening and having to learn through fear of failing.

What kind of projects attract you?

I like a whole bunch of projects; mainly I like ambitious visual projects, that are, at their core, about something real and have a lot of heart. I’m attracted to projects that somehow heighten the world around us but still remain grounded and human.

What’s the best advice you’ve been given as a short filmmaker?

Directing can be a bit overwhelming sometimes; at times there are huge external pressures for you to say yes to something that you're not ready to say yes to. I guess the best advice I had was from someone who recognised I was under this pressure, and advised me to stick to my guns and don’t rush things through that aren’t ready as, fundamentally, the success or failure of the films rests on your head. This gave me more confidence as a film maker and helped me trust my instincts much more.

Tell us the most significant moment in your career so far.

I think launching Robots of Brixton online, and getting an amazing response.

You’ll die happy when…

I’d probably die happy tomorrow because I’m pretty happy now. I think life is too short to worry about what you have to achieve by when…

You can watch Jonah at www.vimeo.com/58646255 www.factoryfifteen.com / @kibwetavares

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04/07/2013 11:01:17

24 Fps Announcements

Products and Accessories

From lightweight LEDs to new prime lenses and a mini stabilizer for action cameras, we take a look at the latest tech for filmmakers.

Rotolight RL48-B Ring Light LED Lighting Kit The Rotolight RL48-B is a compact, ultra-lightweight LED ring light that fits over your shotgun mic (or hot shoe, using the Rotolight Stand) to deliver warm natural light for HD cinematography and photography. Used recently by BAFTA-winning cinematographer Barry Ackroyd on Captain Philips, the unit comprises of 48 ultrabright LEDs arranged in a circular shape to provide a ring-light effect which eliminates red-eye or shadows. The light can be accurately dimmed (using the included neutral density filters) over a range of 1.5 aperture stops, while the matte black rubberized outer coating minimises reflectivity and acoustic resonance while simultaneously making the ring weather resistant. The package also includes a Filter-Holder and custom Lighting Gel Kit by industry leaders, Lee Filters.

RRP: £83.32 (exc. VAT) www.RotoLight.com / @rotolight

Hague Camera Systems Mini Motion Stabilizer for Action Cameras Hague Camera Supports have released an Action Camera version of their best-selling Mini Motion Cam (MMC) stabilizer.

Called the MMC-GO, the new affordable hand-held mini rig has been designed specifically to provide a lightweight stabilizing solution for the wide range of action cameras popular with adrenalin-loving sports filmmakers.

Free movement around the hand grip is ensured via a bespoke gimble, which comprises a highly polished ball with a nylon socket to give super smooth Steadicam-type shots.

Action and small form cameras, such as the Go Pro, DRIFT and Ego, can be attached directly onto the stabiliser via a standard 1/4-inch screw mount. Further adjustment is available via a counterbalance platform of weights to level off the camera.

RRP: £62 (exc. VAT) www.haguecamerasupports.com

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Canon New Cinema EOS System Lenses Canon have expanded their Cinema EOS System with the addition of two new compact primes to its EF Cinema Lens line-up. The CN-E 14mm T3.1 L F wide-angle and CN-E 135mm T2.2 L F telephoto lenses take the company’s current EF Cinema Lens offering to nine models; they join the existing CN-E 24mm T1.5 L F, CN-E 50mm T1.3 L F and CN-E 85mm T1.3 L F primes.

Designed for a wide range of professional users, both new lenses offer 4K resolutions, leading optical technologies and high-grade professionally-optimised designs, making them ideal for use in virtually any kind of production. Each lens features a full-frame image circle that offers compatibility with both 35mm and industry-standard Super 35mm formats, allowing videographers the flexibility to pair either lens with Canon’s range of Cinema EOS System cameras or EOS Digital SLRs. www.canon-europe.com

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05/07/2013 10:56:11

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05/07/2013 10:08:02

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Insider's Point of View Richard Jobson: Writer

A Different Paradigm Screenwriter/director Richard Jobson is one of the most fiercely independent filmmakers Britain has to offer. Here, he discusses why he will never relinquish creative control and how new technologies are broadening his horizons. Interview: Adam Thursby From his 2003 directorial debut, 16 Years of Alcohol, to last year’s Somnambulists and the upcoming Wayland’s Song, ex punk rocker Richard Jobson’s filmmaking output has been marked by its seriousness. His cinematic ambitions are never limited by budget. It’s “a different paradigm”, as he tells movieScope, one that relies not on public money but rather hard work, creative problemsolving, and a singleminded determination to get films made.

You were once the frontman for The Skids; how has your musical background informed your approach to filmmaking and screenwriting?

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Having an independent identity is a thing that came from punk and remains with me. Back in ’76,’77, we were just a bunch of kids from housing estates; we had our own record label and our own fanzine doing movie reviews, editorials; sharing views on local and national politics.

We were proactive young guys who had something to say and found a way to say it—everyday radicals, people who live a normal life, no privileges, who want to change things around them. Those songs we wrote were about stuff that meant something to me. They weren’t glib little pop love stories. I just had to find a new way to do

that—you can’t be in a band when you’re my age. Whereas in the medium of cinema, in my head, I still have the energy of a 16-year-old!

Your latest film, Wayland’s Song, tells the story of a British soldier returning from Afghanistan. How did you ensure authenticity while writing?

Wayland’s Song is about something that I feel strongly about: a man coming home to a country that doesn’t really give a shit. His family have fallen apart because of the horror of what he’s been through. It’s affected, if not infected, everyone around him. There’s a dualism running throughout the film, the sense

that he’s never really here—a ghostly presence, an avenging angel. It’s got more elegance and subtext than your standard British revenge thriller, which are mostly gangster stories or some completely trivial bollocks that has no meaning to our lives.

It’s an evolution of all the other projects I’ve been doing from the very beginning. I’ve chosen to go down a very specific route, using technology that enables high production value without being reflected in the budget.

You are a fiercely independent filmmaker; do you write your screenplays purely for yourself, or is it important to keep a potential audience in mind?

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Writer/director Richard Jobson found that using Adobe's Creative Cloud suite (below left) helped the production workflow of his new film

Wayland's Song (below right)

I’m definitely thinking about the audience. That’s why I transpose my stories into genre; in this case, the revenge thriller. I’m often surprised when I’m sitting on panels with other writers and directors at how little they go to the cinema. That again falls back to the punk days. You were playing your songs on stage and then you were offstage in the audience watching the next band.

There was never a differentiation.

I’m an audience member who also makes a product.

Similarly, you are vocal about the importance of retaining artistic independence during the creative process…

My process is the opposite of most directors’ careers: where their budgets go higher, I go lower. That’s to do with wanting to retain some kind of control and ownership. I want to own my projects. I don’t want to give them away for a pittance and never see a penny back.

I don’t take any public money whatsoever because I don’t want the public bodies involved.

I don’t want them telling me to

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change characters or storylines, I’d rather talk to the people around me who I trust—and who will be very critical of the work, I might add—but I’d rather listen to them than to people who for the most part have never even made a film. We are some of the truly independent filmmakers in the UK. If you take money from the public purse, you’re not an independent filmmaker; they’re all over you, your choices are nullified by their demands.

Your creative process differed quite substantially on Wayland’s Song compared to previous projects. Can you tell us more about your exclusive use of Adobe’s Creative Cloud toolset for this film?

Adobe took the bold direction of saying, ‘Why don’t we get involved with this film and see if it’s possible to use every bit of development and production software that we have available to make a movie.’ So we agreed to try. I found Story Plus to be advantageous because I’ve never scheduled before but I learnt how to schedule very

quickly. When we were happy with what we needed from script to schedule, we went straight into production. From the first day we were using something called Prelude to ingest the material, and [from that] straight into Premiere. All this software talks to each other; you can use all that metadata in a very productive, fast, economical way.

On set, we started to create graded templates with SpeedGrade. We were shooting with the Canon C300 and the raw data coming out of that looked really milky and soft; it was really alarming how bad it looked, but the whole point of those cameras is that you’ve got 12 stops of latitude in either direction. Once you apply the SpeedGrade templates, you suddenly see you’ve got something rather beautiful on your hands. That was an illuminating and exciting thing for us.

Once we got through the early stages of developing a cut of the film and applying grades, we went into After Effects where we did compositing and effects work, which normally would only be afforded by a film with a multi-million-pound budget. You have to find creative solutions for your problems and this software offers you that advantage. After the compositing and 3D modelling we pulled that work back into SpeedGrade to do a final grade and then created a DCP (Digital Cinema Package). I guess the idea from Adobe’s point of view was, ‘Can you start a project and go all the way to the very end?’ The answer is yes.

How do you see such cloud technology shaping filmmaking in the future?

For micro-budget filmmakers, it’s got to be the way forward. It’s like having a band again: you’ve got your drummer, your bass player, your guitarist, the right tools to create the right noise. It makes it possible to be more ambitious with your work visually. That’s why Adobe were interested in being involved with us, a small team who make small movies but with big ambitions.

The world of cinema is changing dramatically. To go off and make a £20m art-house film is impossible these days.

You’d be lucky if you got two or three million pounds. That’s a big change and it’s here now. So what we’re doing is where a lot of people will find themselves.

This Insider’s Point of View is supported by Adobe. You can find out more about Adobe’s Creative Cloud at www.adobe.com/creativecloud l

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State of the (Animation) Nation Any time there are shifts and changes in the evolution of an industry and the work it produces, it can be both unnerving and exciting. The contemporary animation industry is no different and, as developments in distribution and exhibition impact on content production, James Clarke looks at what the digital revolution means for big-screen animation.

Animation has always been a successful sector of the film industry, but the form is proving increasingly popular for studios and independents alike. With technology changing the game, animation now offers a broad spectrum of creative opportunity.

A strong film festival culture has also grown up around the industry, with the likes of Annecy, Anima Mundi and Flip Animation Festival just three in a growing range of global events.

Indeed, our daily lives are now saturated with animation; from movies and TV series to commercials, computer games, apps and music videos. If Who Framed Roger Rabbit?—celebrating its 25th anniversary this year—

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marked the beginning of one animation renaissance, and Toy Story the second on its release in 1995, it’s fair to say that audiences have benefited hugely from increased diversity of production and distribution, which has cultivated an animation culture hungry for new and different content.

“The animation industry is now in a stronger place to grasp the new opportunities that are coming our way than it has been for the past few years,” says Heather Wright, executive producer and head of partner content at Aardman Animations.

“The explosion of social media means that every brand and organisation is in need of

ever-increasing amounts of engaging video content to keep their audiences entertained and connected. Storytelling, characters, and unique design in animation are a great way of not only feeding this beast but also fuelling the fire. What’s interesting is how the brave new world that is unfolding, in terms of what technology is meaning for production, distribution and exhibition, remains allied with the old-school wisdom of traditions of narrative and story.”

It’s clear that the myriad new ways of reaching audiences means ever more opportunities for animation producers. Of course, competition is increasing too but then, as animation

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producer Walt Disney commented, ‘I have been up against tough competition all my life. I wouldn’t know how to get along without it.’

One of this summer’s biggest animation releases is Monsters University, the latest from industry behemoth Pixar Animation Studios.

It’s already proved a huge hit at the American box office and looks likely to replicate that success internationally; proof, if more were needed, that the Pixar name has asserted itself as a brand that audiences trust.

While Pixar reminds us of the dynamism that’s possible within the world of computer-rendered animation, however, it’s worth

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remembering that the industry is not confined to the aesthetic and production infrastructure of the American studio movie. Outside of the American scene, traditional cel animation continues to be used as the format for featurelength animation. Earlier this year, the cel-animated Ernest and Celestine won France’s Cesar Award for Best Animated Film. And released later this year is The Congress, written and directed

by Ari Folman (Waltz with Bashir), which is a startling-looking fusion of live action, cel animation and computer-rendered characters and settings.

Indeed, there are plenty of options out there for animators looking to do something different.

In the realms of independent animation production, New York based animator Bill Plympton turned to Kickstarter to finance some of his new independent work, notably his latest project, Cheatin’, which comprises some 40,000 coloured hand-painted drawings. Plympton’s Kickstarter page for the film provides a fascinating case study of how to develop an independent project.

Paul Wells, director of Loughborough University’s Animation Academy and author of the forthcoming Animation, Sport and Culture, is positive about the diversity of the current animation landscape. “The animation industry worldwide always seems in a boom-or-bust situation but somehow, some way, production does continue,” he says. “The US and Japanese industries remain buoyant servicing film, TV and the web, and co-financed work continues across Europe,

particularly in relation to distinctive features. The ‘student’ film is still made in abundance and along with professional independent shorts still finds extensive exhibition at festivals worldwide and, though there are less opportunities for broadcast, the web is providing distribution and exhibition possibilities. Against all the odds, animated film remains the ultimate survivor because it adapts best to technological developments, economic difficulty and creative opportunity. The situation is always difficult but animation can work in so many ways, and speaks to so many disciplines and visual ‘needs’, it remains the most flexible and progressive form of expression.”

This sense of optimism is shared by the Hollywood animation studios. “Animation is as vital to the creative process as it has ever been,” enthuses Rich Hoover, senior visual effects supervisor at Sony Pictures Imageworks, who

From computer generated studio movies like Cloudy With a

Chance of Meatballs 2 (opposite, top) and Monsters University (below) to independent projects like The Congress (opposite,

bottom), animation is booming

are responsible for generating animated effects for the likes of Oz the Great and Powerful as well as producing their own features, including the forthcoming Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2. “As I think about it, the future of the animation industry may be shaped by the skill of the artist. There are two different approaches to animation in my view: traditional forms and realistic. Each has its place and both can show great performances. But the challenge to the artist is to have the breadth of expertise to create both or something in-between; to be able to achieve the performance

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Feature Modern Animation with a range of techniques. The debate I hear often is in the use of motion capture and how that limits the use of the animator, as an artist and as an actor. But what the filmmakers are really after is something more realistic than what they believe can be achieved with key-frame animation.

“Shorter production schedules make an impact on the animation performance as well because we must complete the post process in less time,” Hoover continues. “I often hear from filmmakers that motion capture must be faster than key-frame animation. Their perception is that there is some implied efficiency in the process.”

Back in February 1986, the late Steve Jobs stated that: “Image computing will explode during the next few years.” Even he may not have imagined the sheer scale of change that the computer would bring to filmmaking, and how this would serve to reinforce the popularity of animation production.

Its future is undoubtedly one fuelled by technology, and disciplines like computer effects and motion capture are opening up possibilities in the form.

Filmmakers coming to animation in this digital era will likely think nothing of blurring the boundaries between creative disciplines to create unique and diverse content.

Animation is a world that continues to evolve, the old being remade anew, and offers more opportunity than ever before for the inventive mind and the entrepreneurial

“The technology we have today enables anyone with access to a computer to produce animation.”

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spirit to make their mark on a filmmaking tradition which has such a rich heritage.

“The landscape for the animation industry has changed out of all recognition over the last couple of decades, particularly in the last five years or so,” agrees David Sproxton, co-founder of Aardman Animation. “Technically, producing animation has never been easier; whether that be traditional style 2D, stop frame or full-on 3D CGI, the technology we have today enables pretty well anyone with access to a computer to produce animation. Of course you still need, skill, imagination and

great ideas to make great work and that aspect will never change.

“The business side has also changed massively; there is much more stuff out there, a great deal more competition for the available funds and an audience with ever higher expectations, led on by the magnificence of the highbudget animated feature films being presented to them,” Sproxton continues. “For the smaller players, one of the key challenges is making their films visible against the backdrop of the huge marketing spend of the big studios. But there are

Stop motion animation, such as Aardman's Shaun the

Sheep (below) and traditional cel animation, like French hit

Ernest and Celestine (above) are still proving popular

also other markets developing, in particular the online video-ondemand markets and the niche animation web portals. These all offer opportunities to get work seen, with the challenge being to find a way of deriving income from these sites. But the new business models are beginning to emerge and as more people move from linear TV watching to online streaming, there are growing opportunities for the animation industry to make a mark. There is no doubt that there seems to be an insatiable appetite for animation in its many forms. The challenge is in pushing an audience towards it and making it pay for what it sees.”

Monsters University is released in the UK on July 12; Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 is in cinemas from October 25; and Aardman Animation is currently in production on Shaun the Sheep.

Ernest and Celestine is now available on DVD l

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02

Insider's Point of View Claire Jones & Anna Higgs: Producers

New Horizons Ben Wheatley’s new film A Field in England marks a UK distribution first, as it’s released in cinemas, on DVD, across VoD platforms and on Film4 on the same day. Here, producer Claire Jones and executive producer Anna Higgs reveal how and why they came up with this groundbreaking new strategy, and the impact it had on the making of the film. Interview: Tom Seymour Ben Wheatley’s A Field in England —a primal, mushroom-fuelled trip about deserters fleeing the English Civil War—will, on Friday 5 July, is the first British film ever to be released simultaneously in selected cinemas, on DVD, on TV and online. This multi-platform distribution strategy, which will give audiences from all over the country the deciding vote on how, where and when to view the film, is the result of a partnership between Film4.0, Picturehouse Cinemas, 4DVD and Film4. movieScope sits down with Claire Jones, Wheatley’s long-term producer, and Anna Higgs, Film4.0’s commissioning executive and A Field in England’s executive producer, to talk about their bold attempt to find new audiences.

Claire, how did you first come across Ben Wheatley?

Claire Jones I met Ben about 10 years ago, when I was running

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Everyone involved with A Field in

England (below and opposite) realised that an innovative multi-platform release would be the best way for this experimental film to find an audience

an Internet viral company called Tomboy Films. At the time, no one was really doing virals, and we felt we were the only people working on them in London. Ben came to my attention; he was the king of the Internet. He was directing a lot of content, and was one of the big players on Beta.com. He was constantly making things at this point, so we decided to sign him to the company.

What was your working relationship like from early on?

Claire We were making digital content together for clients around the world, but because Internet content didn’t generate— and still doesn’t generate—any money, we had to learn how to stretch budgets and find leftfield ways of creating content for very little outlay. A Field in England, for example, had a smaller budget than Kill List.

Kill List was your breakthrough film; how did that come to being?

Claire Kill List was able to happen because [Wheatley’s debut feature] Down Terrace was such a big hit on the festival circuit. It’s very hard to get a debut film off the ground, but once you’re able to do so it does open some doors. Down Terrace managed to spark some interest from Warp X, who are the lowerbudget, experimental arm of Warp.

Warp’s standing in the industry led to people being willing to invest in the film and, once the money was in place, they very much left us to get on with it.

It was an incredibly challenging shoot. Our budgets were tiny but we were trying to achieve the highest production values possible. One night sequence

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involved hundreds of people stood naked in the forest, with flames going off left, right and centre. We had to push ourselves, but it gave us all confidence.

How has your relationship with Ben changed over the decade you’ve worked together?

Claire I try to be quite a handson producer, which you have to be on smaller films. When you work with a director for a long period of time, you develop a shorthand.

You know what’s important for them, and you know what they’ll be willing to compromise on. I have faith in Ben, so if he tells me he can shoot a certain scene in a certain amount of time, I don’t ask questions.

A Field in England is pioneering a multi-platform distribution strategy; why do that?

Claire It was a project that was conceived as more of an arthouse, experimental film, and for that to go anywhere you can’t look at traditional distribution models any more. You’re never going to put A Field in England on 200 screens across the country. The truth of the matter is this film can’t have as wide a release as even Sightseers did. It doesn’t have the audience market for that. It was never conceived as something for the mass market; it’s a black-andwhite art-house film about the English Civil War. It doesn’t have broad appeal and that’s a reality we have to face. You’re not going to make a lot of money; in fact you’ll probably get a loss. So you have to look at it in a different way.

Kill List only came out on 50 screens theatrically, but six months later it was screened on Film4 and got a million viewers.

Film4.0 are all about new ways of finding audiences; they live for different film and distribution models. We’ve partnered with Picturehouse and we’ll get it on a certain amount of screens across the country, which is fantastic, but not everyone in the country will even be near one of those cinemas. So how can we get the widest audience to our art-house film? A television slot, DVDs and a really high-spec streaming service, we thought, might provide some answers to that.

Did the unconventional distribution of the film affect the financing and production?

Claire In terms of the production of the film, it affects very little. What

you want, first and foremost, is to make a great film, and that never changes. Film4.0 fully financed the film, and that makes things a lot easier as well. You do have to think about developing assets for the different platforms; they’re not just an afterthought. You have to think about the extras—like the masterclass and streaming system—right from the top.

Anna, when did you become part of A Field in England?

Anna Higgs I’m the executive producer on the film, so I was involved right from the first conversations with Ben and the idea he had, right through to the financing of the film, how we got it made, and then onto shaping

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As well as simultaneous multi-platform availability, A Field in England's (below) distribution strategy includes targeted supporting activity

the release plans and distribution strategy. Ben and his producers Andy [Starke] and Claire seized the opportunity to take on an experiment here. Film4 financed the film completely, which is unusual for us, but that meant we had the freedom to shape it into something exciting.

Why jettison conventional distribution for this film?

Anna We decided this would be the best strategy for this film. Ben went to town on an idea he’s had for a long time. It’s an experimental film, and the team wanted to explore how we could get it out there. We’re looking at a landscape of 12 to 14 films being released every week in cinemas, and we never have the press and advertising budgets to match the big studios. In a conventional model, it’s very hard for an indie film to break through and create enough buzz to hold its screens. So we wanted to work a way that would allow as many different people as possible to see it in as many different ways as possible. But a way that would also create enough buzz to allow the film to break through and build a life of its own.

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Other films have tried a multi-platform release; what’s different about your strategy?

Anna I don’t think any other film has also aired on TV. That’s a bold experiment, I think. The audience want to see groundbreaking stuff, but it’s difficult for them to do so a lot of the time. We are going to

put this film out on every single platform, and really support each one and have something special for each one. Often you see films going straight online or to DVD with a one-day theatrical release that aren’t films that were ever really believed in. It feels like a ‘what the hell, let’s see what happens’ gesture. For us, we believe the audience is very much there for A Field in England. We think it could become a cult classic.

Are there any particular concerns you’ve talked about in pursuing this strategy?

Anna There’s a lot of eyes on us, and we’re aware of that. People have said to me, if it’s going out on telly, how is this going to impact on the cinema? But I’ve also witnessed plenty of people who are vowing to watch the film on different platforms.

With each platform we’ve made

something bespoke, and we’ve tried to craft each one in a way that ensures they complement each other. We’re in a joint venture, and if one platform gets a bounce then that benefits us all.

Is there a risk the film industry is more experimental than the audience?

Anna I don’t think so. You have to be agile these days. Cinema is an art form that has always evolved. People are talking about content maps now, because you see people on the train into work looking at a film on their iPad. Some people are horrified by that but, from my point of view, the more people are loving cinema because they’re able to enjoy it in the way they want to, the better.

A Field in England is now in select cinemas, and is also available on DVD/Blu-ray and VoD platforms l

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Feature Motion Capture

The

Evolution of Mocap With over 15 years working in mocap, Animatrik’s Brett Ineson has seen it widely adopted by the film, TV, video game and commercial industries. Here he explains why, no matter where the technology may be headed, artistry and story will always be essential to great VFX. Interview: Matt Ogborn After starting out in motion capture on TV projects including Heavy Gear: The Animated Series, Brett Ineson moved onto bigbudget video games such as Enter the Matrix and blockbuster films including The Lord of the Rings. These experiences were enough to convince him to strike out on his own in his native Vancouver and, combining his love of games with the increasing VFX opportunities in cinema, he started Animatrik Film Design.

With a particular focus on the growing fields of motion capture, pre-visualisation and virtual cinematography, Animatrik has since worked on film projects

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as diverse as Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 and his follow-up Elysium, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and zombie comedy Warm Bodies. movieScope caught up with Ineson just as he returned from California, where he saw Steven Spielberg and George Lucas speak to University students about the ‘implosion’ of the film industry; a debate which has struck close to the bone for Ineson and many others…

What did you bring away from your California trip?

It was a little shocking to hear those guys just flat out say what

they did. Spielberg was talking about Lincoln nearly not making it onto the big screen and just TV instead. I think the silver lining about the whole thing is that there are still opportunities for storytellers, except that now it is just a different model.

I am hoping that it still means good things for us as a company.

If the next year or two means there are only going to be $250m movies, then those tend to be the ones that go for full digital characters anyway so those are our customers. On the flipside, we are hoping the $10-20m movies, made for on demand, will still want creature [effects].

You’ve worked on big-budget features and video games; what are the differences between them, and do you think that video games are pushing the limits of mocap technology?

In a lot of the film work we do, we are thinking about matching plates. We have shots that are really ironed out and approved before we see them. In video games, generally it is all CG rendered from top to bottom.

There is more freedom, because we don’t have to go back and

reshoot a plate if you have a great idea to change something.

Video games production has been an early adopter of the technology, and continues to push things forward. Historically in film production, motion capture has been largely creature work while video games were interested in hero digital doubles, not just stunts or background work. That’s partly because the interactive medium was more forgiving to the uncanny valley than the big screen was. Realistic CG human beings are really the last technical hurdle left in computer-generated imagery; other difficult things, like water simulation, hair rendering, etc., are largely conquered.

So the fact the video game production has been relentless in the pursuit of human being representation has made them the driving force in its evolution.

You’ve also worked on commercial projects. Do they bring different challenges to your film and video game work?

The commercial work is very similar to what we do with film and video games; what is new is accessibility to the technology.

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Some of our commercial clients are creative houses that don’t necessarily staff animators to deliver a realistic human performance. So the fact that the creatives can direct a live actor and have that performance returned to them just gives them another basket of goods to do what they do.

How have you seen the industry’s attitude to motion capture change over the course of your career, and how has the technology itself evolved?

I had been working in motion capture for quite a while before I worked on The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Before that, mocap was more of a production tool, rather than a key part of the performance.

When I worked at Weta Digital, it became ultra-clear that motion capture was an integral piece in getting believable characters on screen. I don’t want to discredit animators, because I am a big key-frame animator fan and that was my job for a long time, but it’s just another way to look at it if you want to add subtleties to CG humanoids.

My work on the Matrix video game was also a game-changer, in terms of my view of the direction of the industry. They were one of the first games to utilise the characters from the movie, rather than have standins or stunt guys. They wanted great performances and they spent a movie-size budget on the cinematics for that game, which was something that really hadn’t happened on that scale before. And today, people want games that are increasingly realistic. I think there was an attitude 10 years ago when actors would see putting on a mocap suit as beneath them, whereas now it is the opposite.

Brett Ineson and his mocap team (opposite page) worked on Neill Blomkamp's District 9 and his follow up Elysium (right)

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Feature Motion Capture

The big actors are like, ‘Why aren’t I in a mocap suit yet?’

The camera technology itself hasn’t changed drastically in the last 15 years. There is an iterative nature to the gear, where it improves each couple of years, but the basics are still the same. The use of head-mounted cameras is a bit of a leap forward, however. It is infinitely easier to get great facial performance than it was even five years ago. Software wise, we have seen much bigger strides. Optical flow techniques have given us the necessary access to what is going on with the face of an actor, and I think we have turned the corner in this regard.

In your experience, are filmmakers and actors becoming more mocap savvy?

“Motion capture will continue to be an essential tool that great storytellers rely on to realise their vision.”

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Filmmakers and actors are definitely becoming more mocap savvy. We love this—it feels like a renaissance to us.

We were used to directors and production managers being quite uncomfortable with the prospect of motion capture on their set; any type of conservative budget would cross mocap out pretty quickly. Now we are seeing it as important and respected as the lighting department, for example.

It’s a new era.

District 9 was Animatrik’s first major film project; how did that come about?

District 9 was done by a local visual effects house called Image Engine and I had worked with some of the key players there in the past. They knew I had a background in high-quality performance capture, which didn’t exist in Vancouver at the time, so that was a really good fit. It took a total of eight to 10 days of capture, but we worked on the post-production over a sixmonth period.

Neill [Blomkamp] was involved in three or four of the shoot days, during the intimate moments when the alien is getting shot in the back of the head execution style. It was very detailed, and he wanted to make sure he got the

performance he was looking for.

Neill has the benefit of not only being a great writer and director, but he has a background in visual effects and speaks the language.

You’ve recently worked on his follow-up, Elysium. Was that a similar experience?

We had a smaller role on Elysium, as it’s not a creature film per se.

A lot of the work we did with them was virtual camera related [and] we also did digital double work

and performance capture work in a few key scenes with hero characters. With Elysium, they had some hand-held moments that are pure CG, where the animation director would come over and do virtual camera on our stage to achieve that believable look. We have offered virtual camera for a few years. It depends on the director’s shooting style. There are times like Elysium when it wasn’t used for 99 per cent of the film, but there are 25 shots that absolutely relied on it.

The technology hasn’t changed tremendously from District 9 to Elysium, apart from changing our backend pipeline.

We are constantly evolving how we solve the data to make sure that things never look computertouched. The industry has gotten pretty savvy in being able to render a beautiful image that looks realistic. People are used to seeing that now. With motion it is a different thing, because every single person is an expert in motion—they just don’t know it. When things don’t look right, it has that weird feeling.

And how do you think motion capture technology will evolve in the future?

There are essentially two directions in which we are headed. One is to get rid of the

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cameras, and the other is to use cameras to capture surface data instead of marker positions. So far, getting rid of the cameras is slow progress due to quality and accuracy of the data that the current systems return.

Capturing surfaces is suffering from the fact that the amount of data returned is so large that it’s unmanageable for the gains you receive. Furthermore, you still need lots of calibrated cameras.

However mocap evolves, story will always be king. I think motion capture is and will continue to be, an essential tool that great storytellers rely on to realise their vision. www.animatrik.com l Evolving mocap technology is benefiting films across the genres, from sci-fi thrillers like

Elysium (opposite, top) and District 9 (right) to comedies like Warm Bodies (opposite, bottom)

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Promotional Feature Audiomotion

Audiomotion Creates a Zombie Apocalypse

Having worked in VFX for over 15 years, during which time they have built a reputation for high quality, on-time service, Audiomotion was the natural choice when it came to creating that scenestealing zombie horde for World War Z. Here, managing director Mick Morris takes us behind the scenes of the enormous project, which pushed the limits of performance capture technology.

Audiomotion was involved from the very early stages in helping to create World War Z's aweinspiring zombie horde; can you talk us through the process?

We had collaborated with World War Z’s visual effects producer Robin Saxen and she asked us to do some early tests for the show, during which we worked very closely with MPC and Cinesite. Due to the scale of the movie it was

“Our job is to deliver the highest quality, highest fidelity clips, faithful to the performance.”

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decided that slow moving zombies weren’t going to work and, in order to meet this particular creative challenge, we shot a variety of performers who moved in markedly different ways. Capturing actions for digital doubles—and there were many in this production—is one thing, but we also knew that a lot of the zombies were likely to end up being up close and personal on the big screen. The results have

to be believable. Our guys have a technical skillset, but also an animator’s knowledge of weight and timing. Performance capture is as much a creative process as a technical one, something which is often overlooked.

You used 160 cameras on a stage at Shepperton; why were so many needed and how did you successfully manage such a large-scale shoot?

Animation consultant Andy Jones wanted a vast capture volume due to the speed the zombies were to run and turn, and so a huge arc was needed. Shepperton had a stage that was able to accommodate us, so we set about building the largest motion capture rig ever designed in Europe and, arguably, one of the largest the world has ever seen. It was a brutally cold week in winter, and it’s impossible to keep a stage that size warm. The stunt performers were running over and into things a lot, which kept them toasty!

How involved were the World War Z filmmakers in the process, and did you have a detailed brief of what they wanted to achieve?

There was a brief, in that the creative vision for the movement of the zombies was not unlike animal swarming patterns; a lot of time was spent discussing how ants exhibit emergent behaviour and how attack dogs lead with their head, with their teeth going straight for the bite. The early tests served the production well and we worked closely with the film’s animation

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160 cameras were set up at Shepperton Studios (left) to allow Audiomotion to help create the astonishing zombie effects seen in World War Z (below and

opposite, © Paramount)

consultant, choreographer and movement directors trying out different approaches, such as how the zombies move at that speed with, say, broken arms or a broken neck. It was a different way of working for us.

There is indeed a unique fluidity to the zombies; they move en masse like a virus. How did you contribute to this startling organic motion?

Our job is to deliver the highest quality, highest fidelity clips, faithful to the performance that was directed and recorded during the shooting sessions.

Then, in post-production, we solve or retarget these moves to the zombie character rigs. At this point it’s then very much over to the unsung heroes of the show; people like Adam Davies and his team at MPC and Cinesite, who are masters of their crowd systems. Those guys spent a very long time on the shots that make the movie so special, and they deserve the credit for the fluidity. We delivered almost four hours of motion capture clips,

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but those guys created the magic of hundreds of thousands of zombies.

Were there any memorable challenges you had to overcome while working on World War Z? Creating the 35 by 25 metre capture volume required every camera we had from our inventory of 160. It took days to set up in freezing conditions, with hundreds of meters of truss and a few thousand meters of cable runs, linking back to the system which recorded all of the moves. Delivering the clips was also tricky; a lot of the shots had the performers climbing over each other, pulling victims to the ground and occluding markers. Which all made the post production work at our end somewhat difficult!

This is not the first blockbuster Audiomotion has been involved with; what other projects are you particularly proud of?

We have been working on movies for a long time, and working closely with VFX. One of my favourite projects was the

wire stunt work for Angels and Demons, and I’m also very proud of our creature work on Prince Caspian, where we helped to create utterly believable centaurs, minotaurs and the like from a long capture session with horses and stunt riders.

Mocap technology and artistry is constantly evolving; how do you ensure that Audiomotion stays ahead of the curve?

We have always invested heavily in our equipment. When we started out we had less than 20 cameras in total; now, the number of cameras grows year on year and we have the very latest technology from Vicon. Realtime visualisation works better than ever before; the director can see the 3D character rendered in real time as the performer moves around the capture area, which is a huge benefit.

We have also developed unique selection tools which enable a client to review capture footage from anywhere in the world, along with Autocue video servers allowing playback from any witness

cam or head cam with the touch of a button. We also hire only the best people to run these systems and deliver the highest quality performance capture.

Additionally, this summer we are moving into a 21,000 sq ft facility which is one of the largest in the world. It will mean we will be able to handle these giant shoots internally, without having to hire location stages. We have been looking for the right property for many years and now we’ve found it, it will be our home for many years to come.

For more information, visit www.audiomotion.com l

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03

Insider's Point of View Oliver Hollis: Performance Capture Artist

Fluid Motion

During over a decade spent as a performance capture artist, Oliver Hollis has brought characters to life in films (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Iron Man 2), TV (Captain Scarlet) and video games (Paraworld, Terminator Salvation). Here, he describes how changing technology has pushed the limits of what he’s able to achieve on screen.

It was in November 2001 when I first eased my way into a lycra suit and ventured into the digital world of motion capture. I was 18-yearsold, and full of enthusiasm for this relatively unknown medium.

I had no idea that this was the beginning of a journey that would lead me to work on over 60 video games, a dozen movies and a television show.

Things were very different in the early days. The technology was in its relative infancy, and the actor was far from the centre of the process. The suits were uncomfortable, and the reflective markers used to capture my movements were rock-hard; I would often wake up the next day covered in bruises. During the winter, the studio I worked for had little heating, and lycra, as I’m sure you can imagine, offers little protection from the elements.

I had to use all my concentration

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to avoid shivering through takes, and there were no runners on standby with coats or blankets.

Back then, actors were treated more like human marionettes.

The people I worked with were certainly not unkind, and I was always treated with respect, but the creative process so integral to film and television had yet to arrive within the video game world.

I was working with animators and designers, people who had never directed actors before, only CG characters that could be adjusted by hand until they fit the shape the animator had in mind. My direction consisted of: ‘Left hand a bit lower. Up a bit. Down a bit.’

It wasn’t until 2004, when I played Captain Scarlet in the animated TV show, that I began working with television and film directors. Shot at Pinewood, we were in the studio on and off for around eight months. I was

able to experiment with mocap techniques, as well as greatly advancing my knowledge of the technology, finding its strengths and weaknesses. Having a director made an enormous difference. For the first time, the studio began to resemble a film set. I received scripts in advance, and scenes were rehearsed. Yet in spite of these advances the

filming process was still unusual.

Between takes, the actors had to sit in a corner of the studio in almost total darkness, wearing black hooded capes to hide our markers from the cameras.

We resembled a sort of Sith Council. The audio performances were recorded in advance by other actors, and I would have to synchronise my physical

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Performance capture artist Oliver Hollis in a shoot with Crytek at Pinewood (opposite) and with Kezia Burrows on the 007 Legends game (below)

performance to that audio. We always strived to physically express every nuance we heard in the vocal track, while still making the performance our own.

There was no face capture, and I often worked with actors who saw this as an excuse to not learn lines—but you could always tell the difference. There was this attitude of well, it’s not real acting, is it? At first I was offended at the notion that what I worked so hard at wasn’t ‘real acting’, but I grew to see this as shortsightedness.

Video games had not yet reached the level they are at now; many actors saw the job as a joke and behaved as such. While at drama school, one of our guest voiceover tutors said that people who played video games were just ‘pathetic, sad loners’. Not only had I had been working in mocap for five years by that point, but I was also an avid gamer. I refrained from reminding him that those loners were paying his wages.

It was 2005 when I did my first face-capture shoot. I remember how strange it was to have little dots glued to my eyelids. At that time we shot body and face separately so, sitting in a chair, I recreated all the emotions—eye movements, dialogue and even breathing—that I had done in the previous body shoot, while lip-syncing lines perfectly.

Seeing the finished product was disappointing. So little of the performance got through the tech.

As a result, I was asked to move my face in horribly contorted ways just to get some kind of life out of the CG face. I hated doing it, but in the end I accepted that it was simply where the technology was at.

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Several years ago, I had the privilege of doing the mocap for the character of Iron Man, in the second film in the franchise. I was in it for about 10 seconds, but full screen. I went to the cinema and was so thrilled to see my work up there, even though I knew the audience had no idea. My name wasn’t even in the credits. Thus is the fate of many mocap actors; I have done many games where only the voice actors are listed in the credits. Although things are changing, it shows how mocap acting can be perceived.

As face capture improved and became more widespread, motion capture was renamed as performance capture. I welcomed this new title, as it showed that people were beginning to take the medium seriously. Ways were being found to allow actors to capture both face and body movements at the same time. I remember how liberating it was to be able to just act… well, almost. We still couldn’t touch our faces, look down, get too close to each other or kiss (always disappointing).

Today, the technology still has a long way to go. Head cams are bulky, with a lengthy stretch of trailing cable or a heavy, wireless video kit strapped to your back.

But I can honestly say that, even with markers on your eyelids, bulky helmets or a perpetual blinding light shining into your eyes, you do learn to forget that it’s there. There is one thing that always overcomes these distractions: human connection. Even in the midst of the overwhelming technology, you can make it all disappear when you look at your fellow actor. It’s a reminder that what we’re trying to

achieve is to convey relationships between people. We want to see every emotion, every thought that crosses their minds, whether it’s in video games or film.

I have now been working in the field for 12 years and I am more excited about its potential

than ever. With the likes of James Cameron, Andy Serkis and others promoting the use of performance capture as a serious storytelling device, we are entering an age of wonder, where storytelling is hindered only by the imagination. I am thrilled to be part of it. l

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04/07/2013 15:48:40

Feature VFX

The

Dark SideofVFX While astonishing VFX work might be the backbone of every summer blockbuster, the industry itself is in a state of turmoil. As the work of VFX artists goes unacknowledged, and effects houses succumb to bankruptcy, former Digital Domain founder Scott Ross explains why he’s desperately trying to save the VFX industry from itself...

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Scott Ross is an outspoken advocate for the visual effects industry. In the 1980s he was general manager of Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). In 1993 he founded Digital Domain, Inc., with James Cameron and Stan Winston, one of the largest digital production studios in the motion picture and advertising industries. In 2006, Ross sold Digital Domain to director Michael Bay, and a group of private equity investors led by John Textor. The company went bankrupt in 2012.

Now, Ross is on a mission to establish an international trade organisation for the visual effects industry, to protect it from similar situations to that befell Rhythm and Hues, which was filing for bankruptcy while collecting an Oscar for its work

on Life of Pi. With three decades of experience, Ross is perfectly placed to comment on the industry’s current state of being.

Why do you think the VFX industry is in a crisis state?

The industry has not been a healthy one for as long as I can remember. Over the last quarter of a century that I’ve been involved it’s not been healthy and, from what I can tell, it hadn’t been healthy for years prior to that. It’s never been a healthy industry; it’s just gotten worse.

There is the perception that it is buoyant; is that because of the sheer quantity and quality of the FX work seen in bigbudget movies?

It was a cottage industry for a long period of time, and now it’s a much larger international industry.

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With there being more work and it being global, the disparity between the haves and the have-nots has become so great that it’s got a lot of press lately, and the chasm has opened even wider.

Are the VFX houses partly to blame for their own demise?

The demise of the industry has everything to do with the visual effects industry itself. The main culprit for its failure is the VFX industry, both on the artists’ side and on the management side.

Basically it has been, and in some ways continues to be, a fanboy industry on the artists’ side. There are all of these schools churning out graduates, who have little-to-no experience but who are prepared to take the work at very low wages, and at times for free, which has been going on for years and years. It really harms the industry because it doesn’t appreciate what the artists bring to the work itself. The management, most of whom have come out of the fanboy mentality, are prepared to do the work at no cost—or even at a loss at times—so they can continue to keep ‘busy’, but that work that doesn’t pay their bills.

With technology becoming more powerful and less expensive, are the studios expecting to get the work faster and cheaper?

The studios are very good business people, and as business people with no value judgements, they are just trying to get the best possible price for the best possible product, in the shortest creative time. It’s really up to the vendor, the visual effects companies, to say we can’t do that. The visual effects

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industry has been unwilling to say no to the client.

Should the industry get itself better organised?

The visual effects industry needs a trade organisation; someone to speak out on behalf of the industry. Seemingly, that’s not going to happen, which is unfortunate.

As I look at the possible solutions that are out there, an international trade association is probably the most viable alternative before any solution is possible.

Is this to ensure that the Asian market doesn’t always undercut US and European facilities?

This is not about price fixing.

That’s illegal. The trade

association is about different things that have nothing to do with price fixing. If there’s a company located in Bangladesh and can do the work that a company in the UK could do, for example, at 10 cents on the pound, then that company in Bangladesh should get the work.

We’re not trying to legislate for price fixing or that work should only go to English-speaking countries; that’s not what the trade association is about.

The real mission of the industry association would be number one, change the business model, which is right now a fixed-bid model, which

While many of this year's blockbusters, including Pacific

Rim (above) and Gravity (opposite) rely heavily on VFX, the industry itself is in turmoil

has been the industry standard for as long as I can remember.

It doesn’t work. I would hope that the industry as a whole would say that that model does not work and we reconsider the way in which we are selling our services. For example, the commercials industry has what is called the costs-plus-fixed-

04/07/2013 18:53:15

Feature VFX fee model. There are lots of different business models that could be considered, but the model of a fixed price is not working. It’s time for the industry to collectively look at what the appropriate way is to charge our clients from a business model point of view, not ever addressing pricing—which, again, is illegal in the United States.

Can you see the industry getting out of this slump?

The visual effects industry put itself in the slump. There’s more of a need for visual effects today than any time period of filmmaking.

Now what has to happen is we have to start running our businesses like businesses and try to get a return on equity and investment, and bring profitability to the organisation.

Many see tax breaks and incentives as positive for the industry; why do you believe they are fatal for the VFX industry?

The offering of tax incentives is one of the main causes of turmoil, and could be the ultimate ruination of the industry. It’s like trying to treat heroin addiction with methadone. It’s shocking to me that your government is funding major, multi-billion-dollar American global corporations and allowing them incredible tax subsidies to come and work within the UK. As soon as the subsidies end, Sir William Sargent [CEO/founder of Framestore] said

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he would lose 70 per cent of the business. I don’t understand how that’s fair. I can understand, in the short run, if a government says, we think there is a great opportunity for this clean business, we want to feed it, so we’re going to give tax subsidies for two or three years to build an industry, and then see if they stand on their own. The visual effects industry in the UK and London has been sucking off the teat of your government for 15 years.

If London’s work is as good as everyone believes it is—and I frankly believe it is because London has built an incredible

visual effects group of artists— then let those artists compete on the worldwide stage like everyone else. Let’s take the tax subsidies away and have them go towards school teachers and firemen.

I’m not sure why the citizenry of the UK continues to give billions of dollars to US film companies.

If you’re looking to build a film industry in the UK, why not give that money to London and British filmmakers to make British films?

Is there a way of getting the studios to better support the VFX industry, because they are the ones that rely on it the most?

There needs to be some education and some reaching across the aisle between the visual effects industry and the major motion picture studios and collectively coming up with some solutions that benefit everyone.

I personally believe that visual effects would be less expensive if visual effects and production were hand-in-hand right from the get-go. Right now we’re a very expensive afterthought where we have to fix things, and we can’t really tell the director what to do because he’s a billion-dollar director, and we can’t tell the studio what to do because they’re the client.

Visual effects is the most important part of filmmaking in blockbuster movies. It’s the most technical and can add up to be

Films like The Lone Ranger (above) and Life of Pi (below) showcase exceptional VFX, but the work of the artists is routinely undervalued by the industry

the most expensive, and it can get away from you. There’s a lot of education that needs to be done on the working model, and I think a trade association would be best suited to do that.

I have not been successful in organising a trade association, and I’ve been trying for 25 years.

I will continue to try because I still believe it is the only remedy to an incredibly ill industry. I’ve tried desperately to have the UK facilities [come on board]; after multiple attempts to try and contact Framestore and DNeg, and people like that, British effects houses are seemingly not interested in joining an international trade association. I don’t understand why, but they’re not interested. I will continue to knock on the doors of Sir William Sargent and the like and hopefully at some point they will understand that this is for their benefit. It’s the old adage: you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.

Follow Scott Ross on Twitter @DrScottRoss l

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04/07/2013 11:23:49

04

Insider's Point of View Shane Carruth: Director

Against the Tide

Eight years after his blistering debut, Primer, writer/director Shane Carruth returns with his follow-up Upstream Colour. Here, the filmmaker explains why funding, making and distributing a film outside of the system was such a rewarding experience, despite the long journey to bring it to the screen. Interview: James Mottram After winning the Grand Jury Prize at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival with his debut film, the enigmatic time-travel tale Primer, Shane Carruth returns—finally—with his second film Upstream Colour, in which he stars. Self-distributed in the US, this daring headscratcher—part Cronenbergian horror, part philosophical investigation into mind, body and soul—was born out of the ashes of an abandoned studio project, A Topiary, which confirmed for Carruth what he already knew about his relationship with mainstream cinema. movieScope met him at the Berlin Film Festival to find out more.

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It’s been a long time since you made Primer. What happened?

After Primer, I spent a lot of time working on a project called A Topiary. I spent years writing it, and it was very heavily dependant on visual effects. It was basically about kids in a rural environment that were given the ability to construct creatures in whatever form they thought was appropriate.

I really think it’s a beautiful story, and I was really passionate about it. I spent about a year doing meetings, whatever that means, trying to get the financing. Nobody said no and it was met with a lot of enthusiasm, but the reality was it was not happening.

Do you think it was commercial?

That project was, not through design, but the most commercial I’m ever likely to be… It’s kids with robots! So the fact that nothing was moving forward, it was discouraging. But I don’t want to paint it that because I couldn’t do that; I did the second best thing. The reality is, while that was happening I was collecting the story elements that became Upstream Colour. And there was a moment where my discouragement with A Topiary was overcome with a passion for Upstream Colour, and when I realised that not only is this a project I’m fully passionate for,

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Director Shane Carruth (opposite) found self-funding and self-distributing

Upstream Colour (below) gave him much greater creative control

I can potentially go and make this and not ask anybody’s permission. And nobody out there even has to know.

Wasn’t it painful, spending all that time on A Topiary?

Watching something slowly disintegrate… that’s painful. After Primer, I really thought that there was not a lot of common ground between me and the studio system, but I thought there might be a sliver, and that’s what I was wasting my time figuring out; now I know there is no sliver, there is no common ground between us, which is fine. Now I know that I don’t have to waste a moment investing in that.

So once you set out on Upstream Colour—which was self-funded—was it a swift process in getting it made?

It was, but almost wrongly—so it was maybe an error. I was in such a rebellious mode, once I was consumed with this; once I had all the story elements collected, it was probably two to three months of writing. I then pointed at the calendar and said, we are shooting this date and we’ll be done by this date. It was just a complete act of rebellion. It wasn’t based on anything logistical.

As well as writing, directing, producing and starring in Upstream Colour, you also coedited the film. Can you talk about that process?

In the first third, we pretty much have a straightforward—as much as this film’s ever going to be—thriller. It’s dense with plot. But almost all of it is about control; somebody being handed down the assembly line. So the

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compositions are very precise and the editing in some places is methodical and slow. The second third is almost completely about the lead character’s reaction to this haunting that is happening and continuing to happen, and their inability to even speak to it, so it becomes more subjective and the camerawork becomes more flowing and the cuts become more rapid. We get very close to a found-footage type mode, which I hope services that moment in the film. And the last third—the way I view it is that it just comes off the rail completely!

The film is very difficult to summarise. Have you had to write a synopsis for it?

We have; it’s horrifying. The one we had in the official media kit was ‘a man and a woman are drawn together entangled in a life cycle of an ageless organism’. That was the one-line synopsis. So I was OK with that.

But I know how obtuse that seems to people.

What was behind your decision to self-distribute the film in the US? I started looking into this last summer, as we were done shooting by March/April of 2012. I started trying to figure out how to bring this to the world, and that’s when I started interviewing theatre bookers and PR people. I didn’t have a bad experience with Primer, but I did have an experience.

And I came to understand two things—firstly, that a distributor hires elements. They hire PR, they hire theatre bookers… so in a sense, they’re a central office that outsources bits of the job, at least on this level.

The other thing is, whoever writes the cheques makes the final decision, regardless of what any contracts say. I had that experience once, so going around fact-finding, it was like, what would this look like if I just hired these people?

Has it worked for you?

I believe that we are going to do better than make back our money and, more importantly, every dollar we make goes into the next project. I don’t need to win the lottery. I don’t need to make $100m. I just need to make enough to continue telling stories, and I think we can definitely do that this way.

What is your next project?

It’s called The Modern Ocean. It is a continuation of a lot of the emotional language of Upstream Colour and the way it reveals information, but there’s no otherworldly or genre elements in it. It’s people that work in the shipping industry on container ships, building up routes across the world and trading different commodities here and there. It’s a very tangled mess of characters with different ambitions that are seemingly tripping over each other. You have pirates, repo men, sniper rifles, bolt cutters… all fun!

Upstream Colour opens in UK cinemas on August 30 l

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05/07/2013 10:58:13

Gap Feature Second-Time Directors

Mind the

No matter how successful a debut film, many new directors fail to move on to a second feature, let alone build a filmmaking career. But why are so many talented filmmakers falling through the cracks, and could the UK industry be doing more to help? Here, five British directors— who have all made or are currently making their second features—and representatives from major industry bodies discuss this essential issue.

The Filmmakers

ANDREW DOUGLAS Director: The Amityville Horror (2005) & uwantme2killhim? (2013) GARETH EDWARDS Director: Monsters (2010) & Godzilla (2014) TOM HARPER Director: The Scouting Book For Boys (2009), War Book (2014) & The Woman in Black: Angels of Death (2014) MARC PRICE Director: Colin (2008) & Magpie (2012) ROB SAVAGE Director: Strings (2012) & untitled second feature (in development) What support did you have while making your debut feature?

ANDREW DOUGLAS Where [The Amityville Horror] came from was a kind of recognised industry boot camp, which is to say that a studio—in this case MGM—takes a chance on a commercials or music-video director for a genre project. The idea being that the

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film is the hero and, with strong producers overseeing the project, not that much can go wrong!

The director is brought in on his strength as an original shooter, and is so keen to do his first feature that he will work for low fees. It’s kind of an apprenticeship for some of us. Its value for me was in the shocking realisation that the director is only a cog in a bigger business machine, and that studio films are not the way forward for a filmmaker interested in personal expression—unless you’re lucky enough to be as strong a contender as a Chris Nolan or a David Fincher.

GARETH EDWARDS At the start the support was mainly from Vertigo [and] producers Allan Niblo and James Richardson. Even though it was very low budget, I was still really worried the film would not make its money back.

[James] told me that, even if the film was a flop, everyone at Vertigo would be glad they took the risk,

and just to go and make the best film I could. He was probably lying through his teeth, but it was the best thing he could have possibly said to me. For me, that’s what makes a great producer; someone who challenges your decisions but ultimately backs you all the way.

TOM HARPER I had received a good deal of industry support up until making my first feature, both from facilities companies for my shorts, to getting onto new talent schemes (Pulse Digital Shorts / Coming Up). Film4 had

always been supportive of me and they were the first to commit finance to Scouting Book, which was incredibly helpful. During the filmmaking process I had lots of support from my producers and execs—not that we always saw eye to eye, but for the most part they backed me.

MARC PRICE We didn’t really look for any support with Colin.

Early on, I thought it would be impossible to raise any finance for a 50-page script that consisted entirely of stage direction involving

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a zombie who goes for a walk! I think the Film Council put £5,000 into creating a digital transfer for cinema screenings, but that was something organised through the distributor and not the filmmakers.

ROB SAVAGE All of the support for Strings was from our local community. I was a 17-yearold with only a few handicamshot shorts under my belt, so our pool of resource was very small. We initially approached a number of industry funding schemes, all of which rejected us on the basis that we did not have enough experience, and eventually self-funded the film from working summer jobs, and from the proceeds of one of my shorts winning an award at a Canadian film festival. Shrewsbury, my hometown, also got behind the film, allowing us use of some great locations for free, and local businesses donated clothes, food and free use of their facilities.

What level of support have you found when moving onto your second feature?

ANDREW [uwantme2killhim?] is more independent than Amityville but, even though I found the original material and developed the film, I still had to frame the project in a way that was attractive to commercial interests. We had to piece the money together from distributors, sales estimates, tax rebates, foreign sales and then a gap financier who covered all those IOUs—and all of them had an opinion.

The perils of piecing finance together is that it can disappear any time. There is no real imperative to an indie film; it doesn’t fit into a business model. A studio film, however crap, will likely be scheduled, marketed and screened. No such guarantees exist for an indie; we enter the festivals, which are our route to distributors [or] we stand around in the film markets if we can’t get into the festivals, alongside hundreds of other films, equally good, from equally impassioned filmmakers.

GARETH I was amazed how supportive the UK press were

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towards [Monsters]. I remember thinking that it would be different with people in the actual industry, that maybe they wouldn’t like the fact that it was all done so cheaply and outside of all the unions, etc., but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Everyone was so supportive, and had so much goodwill towards the film.

Monsters was considered a British film, but was entirely shot in America with American actors. The film I’m working on now [Godzilla] is considered American, but is shot with a British DoP (Seamus McGarvey) and stars a British actor (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), so I think the lines are blurring more and more. I guess the main difference between what is considered a British film and an American film are the budgets. I would happily make another film for the budget I made Monsters with; I think it was just right for that kind of movie. And I think that’s the most reassuring thing; that, come what may, you can always just pick up a camera and go make something.

You don’t have to wait for someone to write a giant cheque.

TOM After Scouting Book I had a couple of big disappointments on films that were all set to go and then took a tumble right at the very last minute, but I think that as a director you have to accept that films falling apart is part of the job. And, touch wood, I have two features that are about to go back-to-back, so it’s swings and roundabouts.

My producers and my team are all incredibly supportive but I don’t think I’m getting any official ‘industry support’ on either War Book or The Woman in Black: Angels of Death in terms of development funding, personal support or subsidised finance.

Having said that, as we are making War Book for a very low budget, people are being generous with the terms they are offering us for their time and equipment. Without this kind of support it wouldn’t be possible to make the film.

MARC Magpie was made in much the same way as Colin. We were trying to raise finance for another film [Thunderchild] but that had

stalled. I had another story I was desperate to tell and we had everything in place to crack on. Jo Mitchell and Dom Brunt were fond of Colin and offered to finance the film through their production company [Mitchell-Brunt Films].

We didn’t have a title at the start of production, but it became Magpie [and was] all shot on HDSLRs and edited on a laptop.

I may have been able to find some support for Magpie, but I was so impatient after the last search for finance and knew we wouldn’t get far without a script, which I was reluctant to spend another few months writing. So I designed a tight structure for the story, developed characters with the primary cast, workshopped scenes and then shot the film.

My natural tendency is to discard the script when shooting anyway.

Shooting Magpie without a script saved me the effort of throwing away pages... and we were able to start three months earlier.

Above: uwantme2killhim? is very different to Andrew Douglas' first feature, studio movie The

Amityville Horror Opposite: The success of Gareth Edwards' debut Monsters led to him helming the remake of Godzilla

ROB I’ve actually found a lot of support, with a film currently in development with Vertigo Films, who are releasing Strings later this year. I was initially worried that it might be an uphill struggle convincing people that I could work in other genres and apply the same visual approach of Strings to more commercial projects but, since signing with my agent (Jack Thomas at Independent) and having Strings acquired by Vertigo, I’ve had a lot of support for a variety of different ideas.

Have you found it easier or more difficult than expected to build a career after your first film?

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Feature Second-Time Directors

“Pay for it yourself, then you can do anything you want and try to sell it later.”

Andrew Douglas ANDREW Way more difficult.

Some people’s film interests align perfectly with the commercial world.

Zack Snyder is a perfect example of someone who loves comic books and would do those films in any world, I think. Michael Bay is making films he genuinely likes [and] Fincher, Nolan and Ridley Scott have found their voices in a commercial world. I hated the word genre, but now I think genre can be my friend. Genre is, for me, a form that is recognisable and marketable but that I can fill with my own ideas. The other route is suggested by my self-financed [documentary] Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus. Pay for it yourself, then you can do anything you want and try to sell it later.

GARETH It’s definitely been easier.

That said, it’s nearly three years since our premiere [for Monsters] and I still haven’t finished the next film. That was a surprise; the amount of time it takes after your first film before you can move onto trying to make a second one. If you look at filmmakers’ credits, typically the longest gap between films is between their first and second movie.

MARC It’s tricky. Raising finance is something I’ve never explored.

We didn’t really succeed in finding enough to make Thunderchild, but we still managed to get Magpie finished. That was dropped into our laps thanks to Colin. I’m also very excited about a small production company we’ve started called NextExit Productions. The company has a focus on lowbudget genre films with market appeal—that sounds like a horribly

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businesslike way to put it, but we’ve just finished our first feature and had a lot of fun making it. The plan with NextExit Productions is to surprise an audience, tell a fun story and embrace the low-budget ethic, not use it as an excuse to be lazy filmmakers. Hopefully as the company grows we can pour more money into the productions, and apply the old Roger Corman ethic of focusing on interesting subjects and telling some fun stories.

ROB Easier, by far. Since the success of Strings I have been able to develop ideas on much broader canvases, and with much greater support. While developing larger projects I have always found time to make my own short films or work on music videos that give me a creative outlet. Much of my approach to feature films is built upon techniques learned through trial and error on these smaller projects, which help me to know exactly what I want and how to best achieve it when working on something as intense as a feature-film shoot.

Why do you think so many filmmakers struggle to make it past their debuts, and what more should the industry be doing to support them?

ANDREW I’d love it if there was more money available from sources such as the BFI, Film4 and the BBC, but in the current economic climate it’s difficult to see that happening. What’s exciting is that I think we have some good, entrepreneurial producers in the UK who are finding creative ways of accessing money and

structuring film-funding. I love films and the cinema and everything about the experience and, personally, I want more than a slightly different superhero saving the world every week. I believe other people do too. In these turbulent times where traditional finance seems particularly risk averse, filmmakers need to be creative, open and innovative in finding ways to tell the stories we want to tell.

GARETH I guess ultimately it’s all about money. For some reason it’s easier to make your first movie than it is your second. When you are getting your first off the ground, people don’t know what to expect; maybe it’s going to be brilliant, maybe you’re the next big thing, maybe it’s going to make a fortune. With your second film, for better or for worse, all those unknowns are more defined.

I guess when I look back on how I got a second film (or even the first one), the main thing that stands out is having a great agent. I think that’s the biggest misconception I had before all of this happened; I thought I would have to learn so much about the industry, about producing, about the whole game of it all. But the reality is that if you find the right agent, then all you have to really worry about is making the best film possible, and they will take care of the rest.

MARC From what I’ve seen in other filmmakers, I think part of it may be down to expectations and ego. That attitude of ‘I’ve proven myself! Now people should come to me!’ But it

doesn’t really work that way.

What happens with directors like Gareth Edwards and Godzilla is rare and exciting, but it’s certainly not the norm.

If film organisations designed to support and nurture new filmmakers put just £100k into 10 feature-film productions, and split it so that £10k went to 10 young filmmakers, we’d end up with 10 feature-length films.

Nine of them could turn out to be terrible, but if just one film was another Monsters or Down Terrace we’d have found the next Gareth Edwards or Ben Wheatley.

This approach makes more sense to me. It’s certainly more up-to-date with the way people are making movies. £10k will go very far in the right hands!

ROB As a filmmaker who is only just beginning work on their second feature, I can only offer a (possibly ill-informed) opinion on this. As my first feature was made for almost nothing, I am much more comfortable working on a low budget for my second feature.

Even making an ambitious piece on a budget under the halfmillion mark, I am working with markedly more money than I have been used to and see a great opportunity to demonstrate that I can stretch a £300,000 budget in the same way that the £3,000 on Strings was stretched to give the impression of much higher production values. Many firsttime directors, however, will have had first features funded within the same bracket as my second feature, and understandably want their next project to be a step up in terms of budget and scale, meaning that they may spend longer developing and financing their follow-up.

The Industry

CHRIS COLLINS Senior Executive, BFI Film Fund DAN SIMMONS Head of Film, Creative Skillset JOHANNA VON FISCHER Director, British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) How important is it for the UK industry as a whole to help

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new filmmakers develop long and successful careers?

CHRIS COLLINS If you look at the UK’s internationally recognised filmmakers like Ken Loach, Mike Leigh or Michael Winterbottom, they have all made many films.

Part of what has enabled them to build their reputations and audiences are the opportunities they have had to hone their craft and identity simply through the process of making films. Often it is the third or fourth film when a filmmaker finds their groove and breaks out internationally.

We have to try and help our filmmakers make two or three films before they are genuinely established—and this is very much the Film Fund’s approach.

This takes commitment and faith and involves a lot of risk, especially if the first films are only partially successful.

DAN SIMMONS Film is a fastmoving sector which sees rapid advancements in technology, and the high skill levels of the professionals within it are fundamental to safeguarding success and growth for years to come, meaning that ongoing training is a priority. Creative Skillset offers funding for training for existing professionals, in areas that have been identified by the industry as needing attention. We recognise that in order for the UK to compete globally, filmmakers need support to stay at the top of their game.

JOHANNA VON FISCHER At times there is significant attention (and some money) going into developing first-time directors, but if they do not make enough of a critical splash with their first

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outing, or have a disappointing box-office return, it can be hard to find the support for the next stage. Consequently, we are at risk of losing some strong voices that need a little more time to be nurtured and develop because we expect too much and we don’t invest in their potential. So it’s very important that funds, in particular subsidies, are there to support these voices, but sadly it seems everyone needs to show a more immediate return on investment these days.

How is your organisation specifically looking to support upcoming filmmakers past their first feature?

CHRIS Whilst there is always a demand and hunger for discovering new talent, the BFI is very aware that we need to nurture our talented filmmakers

to help them through the next steps of their career. There are some impediments to this though as, while it is relatively easy to finance a first low-budget film from a mix of cultural and broadcaster support, the second film is nearly always much more ambitious and the market has to believe in the filmmaker and their commercial potential. Sometimes it’s a hard learning curve for filmmakers to understand what the realities are for them and where they sit in the marketplace.

We can help here by supporting them in development and hopefully guiding them with projects that are realistic next steps, but are also aware that the realities of distribution and learning about how audiences respond to their films can be dispiriting experiences. The best

Above: Director Tom Harper suffered setbacks after The

Scouting Book for Boys but is now working on two films

Opposite: Rob Savage is currently developing his follow-up to the award-winning Strings

filmmakers learn from these and apply this knowledge to their next project.

DAN Addressing the need to provide support for emerging creative talent is one of Creative Skillset and the BFI’s key priorities, as outlined in the BFI’s five-year strategy Film Forever. Creative Skillset’s Film Skills Fund invests in many schemes which support filmmakers to progress to their second and third features, and continue to develop their skills

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Feature Second-Time Directors and knowledge of the industry.

Elevator, for example, which is a scheme run by Creative England and supported by Creative Skillset, sees 15 directors, writers and producers, who have won awards for their short films, participate in a six-month programme designed to accelerate their careers and support them to make the leap to feature films. The filmmakers have access to high-level training courses and talent labs, mentoring, professional shadowing, industry networking support and assistance for attendance at markets and festivals. It’s a tailored approach which analyses the career needs of the individual.

This, and many other schemes, provides bespoke training weaved throughout specific areas identified as those in which this level of filmmaker might need support, such as finance or distribution. In plugging these skills gaps, the filmmakers are able to continue their careers with a more rounded understanding of the filmmaking process in both a business and creative sense.

JOHANNA All BIFA can really do is talk about it whenever we can and make sure that our members, who represent a wide range of the film industry, are able to see films made by firsttime filmmakers. Whether they get nominated or not, they may get noticed by the right person, who will go on to develop a relationship with the filmmaker or introduce their work to someone else. We have a category specifically for debut directors, the Douglas Hickox Award, and therefore new talent is highlighted to members, and then the industry as a whole in the case of the nominated films. Our awards ceremony, on some level, is a marketing tool for the talent we have in this country and we hope we are able to particularly push forward any new talent in some way.

So many filmmakers struggle to make a second feature; is it a problem of support, or is there a knowledge gap when it comes to developing creative talent into a business?

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CHRIS Filmmakers often struggle to get their second feature for a variety of reasons. First, it’s really hard to make a successful film at the low budgets that first-time filmmakers often have, and which has enough elements such as known cast or scale to excite the market. Second, once filmmakers have made a low-budget first film, they want to step up with bigger budgets and these films can take years to develop and get financed. The market can be particularly fickle and loses interest in directors very quickly, so the longer it takes, the harder it is. Some filmmakers put all their energy into the first personal film and don’t have projects which they can follow up with quickly and this can lead to delays and, of course, the field is very competitive, with many filmmakers fighting for a small number of opportunities.

Having said that, filmmakers who come out of the gate with an artistically successful first film can go on a fast track to establishing themselves. Andrea Arnold and Steve McQueen are really good examples of this. Both made relatively small first films and their second films were exemplary next steps with modest budgets and further demonstrations of their considerable directorial abilities.

DAN The film business can be tough, and it’s often difficult to maintain the momentum of a successful first film because there is so much competition for development support, film finance and, ultimately, for audiences. It is even more difficult to break through to a second film if the first does not reach its full potential. So it’s vital that the right talent, from across the UK, is empowered through training and development to experiment, find their voices and identify the audiences for their films.

JOHANNA Yes, on both points.

These seem to be issues, although probably not the only ones. We need to remember what a ‘business’ filmmaking is. The creatives need to be told the changes they have to make to their vision in order to be financed, which can be soul-destroying

if you don’t have the support to navigate through the process.

What more could be done by the industry to assist filmmakers in navigating that gap between a debut feature and a successful career?

CHRIS The biggest thing we can do is keep supporting those filmmakers who have demonstrated some ability to develop projects that might help them to get another film made. We attempt to spread our development funds wide enough to give the maximum number of people opportunities, and a lot of these funds go into working with writers and directors to help them get projects into a strong enough shape to be able to raise their finance. Sometimes this isn’t quick. We have just completed an ambitious period film, Belle, directed by Amma Asante, which is a striking second feature film and which promises to have a wide international reach. Her first film was a low-budget film made in 1994 and, even though she won a BAFTA for that project, it has taken nine years and significant support from us to get her second film made. It can be a long game.

DAN The continued support of emerging creative talent through schemes such as those mentioned earlier is vital.

Creative Skillset’s Film Skills Fund has released £750,000 of UK-wide funds in the last month, within identified priority areas including camera, art department, hair and make-up,

Director Marc Price self-funded both his debut, zombie drama

Colin (above) and its followup, Magpie; an approach that an increasing number of new filmmakers are taking

international scholarships and health and safety. You can find out more about the funds open at www.creativeskillset.org/film/ funding. Applications which encourage diversity and regional growth are encouraged.

JOHANNA Mentoring schemes seem like a great idea to us. We were approached last year by Louis Tisné about getting involved in some way in a mentoring scheme he wants to establish here, called So What Next? It is particularly focused on second- and thirdtime directors and helping them navigate their careers into a more commercial mindset.

Having said all that, it would be a real shame if we focused too much on the commercial.

As we all know, some of the most disappointing films have been made to be commercially successful and some of the most commercially successful were passion projects that hit a collective nerve at the right time.

And in the end, I do believe that the most important issue is the strength of the story at the heart of any film.

The interviewees were speaking with Nikki Baughan, and you can view the extended discussion at www.moviescopemag.com l

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05

Insider's Point of View Kevin Howarth: Actor

Into the Light After his breakout role as garrulous serial murderer Max in Julian Richards’ award-winning The Last Horror Movie (2003), Kevin Howarth has become Britain’s go-to guy for nuanced villainy, bringing memorable life to a rogues’ gallery of assassination contractors, undead monsters and murderous pimps. But, as he explains, it’s the romantic and comedy roles he craves… Text: Anton Bitel What draws you to the dark side?

Every role—even if it was a romcom or a comedy—you find that character, and if that character has these depths of darkness then that’s what you have to go and find. Funnily enough, the first thing I look for

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is their lighter sides; the sides of the character that account for what made that happen. Even if it’s not in the script, I have to have some idea why this person became that way, because every one of these guys is somebody’s son. I think we all have a dark

and a light side, it’s just that the characters I’ve played are very extreme—and I would imagine their light sides would probably be equally as extreme…

Did you have to do special preparations for the role of paedophile pimp/murderer Viktor in Paul Hyett’s Balkanset Seasoning House?

I always dig very deep; a lot of homework, a lot of reading. I also watched a documentary on the Serbian Tigers and a couple of interviews with that guy Arkan.

He had this babyish face, quite a soft voice as well, and looked normal really, and yet he was this monster. I remember thinking, gosh, you wouldn’t think in a million years that this guy was the brutal beast that he was— and he was phenomenally brutal.

That was shocking. I got a little bit annoyed with an interview

when I was doing The Last Horror Movie, when some critic said [my character] seemed too normal, and he didn’t have any scar. In fact, that’s how they are, they look normal; they could be someone living next door to you and you wouldn’t have a clue.

They could be anybody.

You will also soon be seen in Andrew Goth’s Gallowwalkers, but the principal production for the film took place way back in 2006. What was it like shooting in Namibia, and why has it taken so long for the film to get released?

Namibia was astonishing; it’s like landing on the moon or Mars, the backdrop and the landscape, it’s phenomenal.

Wesley [Snipes] was lovely with me. We didn’t spend an inordinate amount of time together, because our

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Kevin Howarth (below) has made his name playing shadowy characters like The Seasoning House's brutal pimp Viktor (bottom and opposite), but would love to take on lighter roles

characters in the film are on two separate, parallel journeys, but we did have a lot of conversations, and we had a good laugh. He is very humble, very quiet, and he likes to get on with things; he’s a real pro. Why the film’s taken so long to come to fruition, Wesley was having his problems whilst he was there with the tax thing [Snipes faced charges of tax fraud, and was ultimately convicted], but there were also issues with the production of the film and money and this, that and the other, so it was a little troubled, there’s no doubt about it. I haven’t even seen the film.

Is there any truth to the rumour that you and Julian Richards are working on a sequel to The Last Horror Movie?

First time I knew about it was that I suddenly had a phone call from someone saying, hey, great news, congratulations, The Last Horror Movie 2, fantastic. I knew nothing about it. I think Julian’s always had it on his mind to do it, and I think he would still like James Handel to write the script. There’s always been ideas puffing about, but until someone puts a script in my hand and says ‘this is a go’… And for me to have to go back and reprise that role, it would have to be a really, really cracking script and also the money would have to be good because it feels a bit strange revisiting someone, for me, and it would have to have a lot of elements on the right place.

I don’t know whether it’s a factual thing that really is in the pipeline.

I’ve accepted nothing. If anyone’s going around saying I’m attached, that’s not true.

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You’ve made a name for yourself playing a certain kind of character, but what is your dream role?

I don’t have a problem with playing dark characters, edgy characters; it seems to be something that I’ve been doing a lot. I would love to do a comedy, because I love making people laugh and having fun, and I think that would be a great chance to show off another side of myself that people don’t often get to see. But emotions are what’s important in front of the camera. I would love to do the range, everything. I’d love to be in a romantic comedy; to do something romantic and emotional as well, just so I could show a few more facets of me as an actor. I certainly wouldn’t want to get a horror tag. Of course I’ve chosen to do those roles, because those

were the ones that were offered to me, but I have turned certain projects down, when I thought, hmmm, not really, the script’s not good enough. I’m not going to name them. I don’t want to be pigeonholed as the horror actor; that I would hate, you can

print that! I’m an actor and I’m available for anything. If someone wants to send me a script of a completely different subject matter, fine; I would welcome it and read it and see.

The Seasoning House is available on DVD and Blu-ray from August 12 l

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05/07/2013 09:28:01

s ’ k c u L Feature Get Lucky Set Visit

Got Nothing to Do With It…

A visit to the set of Sacha Bennett’s neo-noir caper Get Lucky one frosty morning revealed the awful conditions in which filmmakers sometimes have to work their magic. DoP Peter Wignall and star Luke Treadaway were on hand to discuss the skill behind the chill.

Text: Anton Bitel Call your film Get Lucky, and you are tempting fate. Luck was hardly with the production on the bitterly cold February morning in 2012, when movieScope visited a location shoot in London’s Wharf Docks area. Despite the arctic

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conditions, the dedication of cast and crew enabled everything to run smoothly during multiple takes of a complicated scene in which suited, hatted Seb (Craig Fairbrass) and Kramer (Terry Stone) leap ashore from their

speedboat amidst gunfire (in fact a marksman firing pellets precisely into the stone wall near their heads).

As cinematographer Peter Wignall admits, the UK’s unpredictable climate can be difficult. “It is quite challenging

when you’re doing exteriors over many days. I mean, this scene— yesterday it was sunny. Now, it’s grey. Lucky enough we kept it mainly backlit; you can get away with murder that way. A lot of this has either been night or interior, so it’s all been able to be lit.”

Luke Treadaway, who stars as the eponymous Lucky, is equally stoical about the icy conditions.

“Just put your thermals on, and keep moving your toes! You’ve got people bringing you hotwater bottles and things like that, which I struggle to take, but I do sometimes. It can be distracting, but you’ve just got to crack on with it. You could be sweeping roads in Siberia, so a Dagenham container yard with a bit of a chill to the air that morning; it’s not really too bad.”

In fact, this day on set was relatively mild compared to the freak weather that plagued previous weeks of the shoot.

“Snow was a bit of a challenge,” Wignall explains, “because we’d shot two days in this container yard the weekend before, where the first day it was sunshine, so we had to get a big 20x silk sock to actually block the sun.

Second day it was misty, so

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obviously take away the silks, get the 18K out, and put a bit of an edge to it, which there wasn’t the day before—and the following weekend, it snowed, so they had to get containers. Adam [Bohling, executive producer] and the boys, they did a grand job of clearing the snow. They couldn’t clear it all, so we had to just clear the bits that we were looking at while they were working on the other bits.

I mean, it was thick; it was like a foot of snow. They were getting brushes, sweeping the tops of containers. It was a nightmare.”

Weather aside, Get Lucky presented other challenges. The role of protagonist Lucky, for example, required Treadaway to acquire some rather specialised skills. “I had to be a getaway driver and do some stunt-driving, and I haven’t got a licence,” he explains. “So that was fun; I got to learn how to do some good stuff.

And then I also had to do a load of magic in it, like close-up magic with coins and cards and keys and things. So I had to learn all of that. And the lovely Derren Brown showed me some magic tricks.

I’d met him at a New Year’s Eve party, and he said, ‘you can come and I’ll help you out’. So, bless his heart, he gave me a few pointers.

I had to annoy all of my mates for weeks while I was doing it.”

For Wignall, Get Lucky’s biggest difficulties came from the stylisation. “This one’s like a 1940s noir sort of look, so it’s hard lighting, big shadows—not so much today, mind you, but normally hard shadows, just to keep the noir look. So you can’t just do a big soft source and let it all wash through; you’ve got to have little lights to keep shadows on the face, stuff like that. That is the challenge, and it means a little bit more work. You’ve got to have backlights going, all hard sources, lots of little lights.”

That said, Wignall loves working on films with their own distinctive visual signature. “Every film, you want to actually try and find a style. Something where, when you read the script, you can actually picture it in your brain, how you want it to look.” His favourite

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production—“other than this one”— was Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998). “It was so badly paid,” he says, “but it was a really good project to work on. Guy was just doing his stuff, trying to work out his style, and what he wanted. I really enjoyed it, but every single one, apart from a few exceptions, has been good fun. It’s not delivering babies.”

Of course it helps that Wignall has enjoyed long working relationships with certain directors, regularly operating cameras for the films of Ritchie (Snatch, Swept Away, Revolver, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows) and Matthew Vaughan (Layer Cake, Stardust, Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class), and having previously worked steadicam for Bennett’s Bonded by Blood (2010).

This creates a shorthand rhythm on set, agrees Wignall, and “you kind of know what they want anyway, you don’t really need to mess around too much. There’s not really that much confusion, it’s good; it’s all lots of give and take.

I haven’t actually lit for Guy, and I haven’t lit for Matthew, but I’ve operated for both of them a lot. It’s good, having a working relationship, because they trust you as well, and if you keep in the family, the best

results come from that, because there are no personality conflicts. It allows them to do their job, it allows me to do my job.”

Get Lucky is released in UK cinemas on August 9, and is available on DVD and Blu-ray from August 23 l

Despite the freezing conditions on the London set, the cast and crew of Get Lucky managed to work their magic

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06

Insider's Point of View Mat Newman: Editor

Making Shapes Having worked on Nicolas Winding Refn’s Bronson, Drive and Only God Forgives, editor Mat Newman has developed a unique style all of his own. Here, he explains why it’s so important to shape any project in line with its creative intention. Interview: Tom Seymour Born in Yorkshire, Mat Newman decamped to Rome at the age of 22, where he spent seven months working for free at the Italian office of Panavision in order to secure a job as a handler for Martin Scorsese’s cinematographer on Gangs of New York. Following that, he worked as an editor on BBC TV movie Miss Marple: Nemesis, where he met the film’s “broke and indifferent” director Nicolas Winding Refn, who had declared himself bankrupt after the commercial failure of Fear X. Together, Newman and Refn made Bronson, and have continued that working relationship with Drive and now Only God Forgives.

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Editor Mat Newman has helped realise the unique visual style of director Nicolas Winding Refn on films like Only God

Forgives (below) and Drive (opposite)

How long have you been aware of Only God Forgives?

I read the script long before Drive, which was brought to Nic. He was essentially a director for hire on it, and he just gave something familiar his twist. Only God Forgives is all him. He was offered the world on a plate after Drive. I don’t think that film made anyone a lot of money, but the business loved it. They all wanted him to bring that to their project. But Only God Forgives has been boiling for three years, and I think he thought, ‘I may as well do this now’. Drive was all politics; on this, Nic did whatever the fuck he liked.

The film has a very unique look, like most of Refn’s work. What was the editing process like?

This edit was very hard. On other films the editing room was very social; there was always a conversation around the film, which is really important. On this, I was on my own for a long time because Nic was making commercials. My first cut was 140 minutes, which is tight for a first cut, and then we just sat down and worked it.

A lot of directors pride themselves on 50 different angles a day; they want to do a lot of coverage and create a lot of options, before choosing the right one in the editing suite. Nic’s theory is narrow and deep. He’ll shoot a scene from five angles but he’ll do each angle 20 times.

So, as an editor, you have a lot of time, but not much choice. It means you can’t do something clever in the edit; Nic’s already done that.

It was a case of sitting there and finding those moments. I think Nic was concerned about the shape of it, because there’s very little plot

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and dialogue is said very quickly in scenes, with a lot of space in between. But we got there.

Ryan Gosling and Vithaya Pansringarm perform a remarkably choreographed fight sequence; how did you approach that?

Nic decided he was going to shoot a fight scene like the end of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It was guys fighting in an empty room, shot in wide lenses; nothing is ever blurry or messy. And it was shot with 22 frames per second to speed it up a bit, allowing us to play it as it was shot. In Drive, there was a lot more dynamic in the editing; you had long sequences when the editing was built up and then you’d release it in a burst. You’d be lulled into a certain rhythm, and then it would switch up before you knew what was going on. This film has less action, but I think we managed to achieve a similar thing with Ryan’s fight.

How has your working relationship with Refn developed since Bronson?

You have to be bold with a director.

Nick’s a very brave director; he makes strong choices and he doesn’t do anything by half and he’s very deliberate. Once he decides to go down a path, he goes all the way down it. That’s emboldening to the people around him; he lets his crew know we’re not doing the same old thing, he lets you go further in your own work and he pushes you to have a choice. He wants to see what everyone can bring to the table, and then he’ll decide what he wants. He doesn’t prescribe things, he lets you make your offers and he brings you out of yourself. I throw everything at Nick’s films;

some of it sticks and some of it doesn’t, but what he likes is the fact he had a lot to choose from.

[As an editor], you have to offer the director a shape to a movie. You have to make the film play, so you’re constantly asking yourself 'Where do I get bored? Is it coherent? Is it digestible?' That’s mostly technical decisions made to serve the material, and knowing-alwayswhat the intention of the material is.

Gangs of New York was your first feature; did your experiences on that project inform the way you work today?

Gangs of New York was extremely intense. It was a seven-month shoot, and I think I spent the first three months just holding my breath and trying to hide the fact I didn’t know anything. I felt very intimidated, but I was very lucky because I fell in with good people. It’s very easy to get eaten up on those big films; I think that film had 300 crew and 500 extras floating around, so you are constantly in a sea of people.

At the end of the day, Scorsese or Daniel Day-Lewis or Leo DiCaprio are just normal people, and they seemed to value me because I could speak Italian, brought them coffee on time and could tell them where best to eat out! The whole process was demystification. Movies seem flawless, but behind them there’s a lot of problems, a lot of sweat, blood and tears, with a lot of temper tantrums and scared people who don’t know what to do next.

Only God Forgives opens in UK cinemas on August 2 l

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Theatrical

Lovelace: In Conversation

Directors Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman Screenplay Andy Bellin Stars Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgaard, Chris Noth, James Franco, Sharon Stone, Robert Patrick DoP Eric Alan Edwards Editors Robert Dalva & Matthew Landon Locations California, USA Opens August 23

movieScope editor Nikki Baughan and critic James Mottram discuss Lovelace, a biopic of porn star turned feminist activist Linda Lovelace.

JAMES MOTTRAM Linda Lovelace is a really out there role for Seyfried; it took a lot of courage and she approached it with no hesitation. You can’t fault her efforts, or those of Peter Sarsgaard as her vile husband Chuck Traynor. I thought all the cast were good, but I felt the narrative stopped at the most important moment of Linda’s life, just as she becomes a feminist icon NIKKI BAUGHAN You’re right, it didn’t go far enough. For a film called Lovelace, I was expecting a more complete view of her life; this should have been called ‘Lovelace: The Deep Throat Victim Years’.

JAMES At the press conference in Berlin, the filmmakers said they thought the real drama

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of the story was between Linda and her husband. There’s a certain truth to that, but it certainly doesn’t tell the whole story. When she got out of porn, she continued to be equally as fascinating, and as tragic.

NIKKI Absolutely. And I also don’t think it went far enough in terms of its tone; although the way they told the story was interesting, I thought the men of the story came across as complicit fools, and Sarsgaard almost like a comedy villain.

JAMES Yes, he was quite one-dimensional as a character. That’s not Saarsgard’s fault, I think he played what was on the page.

NIKKI The whole thing had this kind of Seventies gloss, when it should have been really gritty. The best bits were the scenes between her and Sharon Stone, who I thought was brilliant as Linda’s mother.

When she refused to listen to Linda’s pleas for help, that was brutal and underscored

the mentality of that era; it just wasn’t carried through to the rest of the film.

JAMES Epstein and Friedman’s last film, Howl, was much more interesting in the way in which it blended animation, courtroom scenes and poetry. Lovelace was so much more conventional, and wasn’t nearly as interesting a narrative to watch; particularly as it almost completely ignores her feminist U-turn.

NIKKI If you’re going to focus on one bit of the story, then really tell that story. Push it to its limits. And the end, where Chris Noth’s character finally helps Linda, he almost becomes the knight in shining armour, her saviour. Linda was such a strong character and I think she saved herself, really; that aspect of her character was never fully explored. l l l l l Nikki Baughan l l l l l James Mottram

www.moviescopemag.com

04/07/2013 16:52:18

You're Next

Blackfish

The Frozen Ground

When affluent Paul (Moran) and Aubrey Davison (Crampton) and their mostly feckless adult scions all converge on their country estate for the first dynastic reunion in years, petty familial frictions soon erupt into something more murderous with the arrival of three masked intruders. What follows is a smart genre hybrid, as a finely observed social comedy of dysfunctional manners is slyly infiltrated by bloody home invasion tropes, and the generational decline of the haute bourgeoisie on display fast gives way to a more fundamental (but intimately related) struggle for survival.

Here, as with their earlier collaboration A Horrible Way to Die (2010), director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett bring a refreshing mumblecore sensibility to genre cinema, with an unusually strong focus on quirky character and witty dialogue, and an added preoccupation with class that has for too long been absent from American horror. Australian Erin (Vinson) casts an outsider’s perspective on the claustrophobic set-up, while proving, with her unexpected resourcefulness, to be the most deserving inheritor of this family’s flagging fortunes.

Full of black humour and escalating grand guignol, You’re Next amiably reconstitutes The Shining and The Strangers as deep-piercing social satire for a nation as over-entitled as it is under-achieving. l l l l l Anton Bitel

The ‘blackfish’ of this documentary is beautiful killer whale Tilikum who, during a life spent in captivity at SeaWorld, has injured and killed several people. As filmmaker Gabriela Cowperthwaite delves into his story, so emerges a heartbreaking study of man’s delicate relationship with nature.

In summer 2010, trainer Dawn Brancheau was mauled to death by Tilikum, and the reactions of her colleagues open the film.

It’s telling that many are not only unaware of the full facts of the case, but also about other victims. We learn that SeaWorld used plenty of resources to hide these incidents, along with other unsavoury truths about their business. Some of these revelations are genuinely appalling, even for those under no illusion about their profit-making priorities; the separation of baby whales from their mothers; the too-small enclosures where frustrated whales fight to the death, etc. The film’s assessment is clear; these killer whales live up to their names only when driven to it.

There is plenty of contextual evidence to support this theory. Whale experts assert that orcas are passive in the wild; legal experts discuss the myriad court cases that have been bought by the likes of PETA. There’s video footage highlighting the animals’ poor treatment, and damning testimonies from ex-employees. It’s all smartly edited together

by Cowperthwaite, who understands that this story effortlessly tells itself. l l l l l Nikki Baughan

Nicolas Cage films normally fall into two categories—the stinkers (The Wicker Man, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) and the goodies (Bad Lieutenant, Con Air). While true-life drama The Frozen Ground walks a line right down the middle, it just about emerges as a ‘goodie’ despite some ham-fisted script work.

Much of the reason it sporadically rivets is down to Cage and Cusack, who ignite the too-few scenes they share. Cage is Jack Halcombe, an Alaskan State Trooper on the trail of a serial killer who kidnaps, rapes and kills young women. His only hope is teenage prostitute Cindy (Vanessa Hudgens), who managed to escape the clutches of suspected killer Robert Hanson (Cusack), except her testimony was thrown out.

Shot through a suitably chilly lens by debut filmmaker Scott Walker, The Frozen Ground is unremittingly grim. It’s also subtle as a smack in the face (witness Cusack’s final line, plus numerous troweled-on clichés). Though there’s room for genuine complexity and ambiguity, Walker’s script frequently shrinks away from it.

In particular, Cindy’s initial unreliability is quickly swept aside in favour of a more straight-forward cat-and-mouse scenario.

Whether that’s because this, like many crime dramas, is based on a real-life case remains to be seen. Still, Hudgens’ performance is admirably grown-up, and the film is worth checking out for the gorgeous Alaskan landscapes and the odd thrilling moment. l l l l l Josh Winning

Director Adam Wingard Screenplay Simon Barrett Stars Sharni Vinson, Rob Moran, Barbara Crampton Opens August 28

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Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite Features Carol Ray, Tilikum Opens July 26

Director & Screenplay Scott Walker Stars Nicolas Cage, John Cusack Opens July 19

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04/07/2013 16:52:20

Theatrical

Upstream Colour

Director & Screenplay Shane Carruth Stars Amy Seimetz, Shane Carruth, Andrew Sensenig, Thiago Martins DoP & Editor Shane Carruth Opens August 30 “I’m not going to need any signage, ok,” says Jeff (Carruth) to Kris (Seimetz), some way into Upstream Colour.

Having been fed a mind-altering grub by a Thief (Thiago Martins) and fleeced of her money, credit and identity, Kris now works at a printer’s shop, cast adrift with feelings she no longer understands. Inexplicably drawn to Jeff, a fellow traveler and lost soul living out of a hotel room, Kris slowly starts reconnecting to the world in a manner that is all at once meandering and mysterious. Meanwhile a man Kris once met—credited as ‘the Sampler’ (Andrew Sensenig)—records and remixes ambient sounds into musique concrète, when he is not tending the pigs on his farm or vicariously observing the lives of strangers...

Shane Carruth’s time-traveling debut Primer (2004) conceived a world where multiple versions of characters co-existed uneasily while repeatedly fine-tuning the past. But even if there is a far stricter chronological ordering to the way the parallel events unfold in this long-awaited followup, Carruth’s use of narrative ellipses and elisions, not to mention a total absence of exposition, make Upstream Colour an even more confounding experience. Here, viewers are left to link together a chain of suggestive connections between grubs, humans and swine, between mesmerism and déjà vu, between phantom pregnancies and drowned litters, all coordinated by Carruth—much as the Sampler orchestrates his music—from a

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cycling, repetitive intermixing of apparently unrelated sources. With individual scenes presented in choppy fragments yet matchcut perfectly to other scenes involving different characters in entirely separate locations, the film is tightly edited (by Carruth) and coherently scored (again by Carruth) to suggest an organic principle underlying the film’s many disparate elements.

The bewilderment expertly modulated

by Seimetz and Carruth in their characters’ quest for connection will certainly find its analogue in viewers, desperate for some kind of signage amidst all the noise of freefloating associations, sympathetic storylines and evocative motifs; scattered papers, underwater swimming, the works of Henry David Thoreau. Of course, this disorienting, dreamlike quality is one of the key pleasures (and frustrations) of Upstream Colour, as we, along with the two leads, are made to feel like rats in a maze (or perhaps pigs in a pen). Solutions to the film’s hermeneutic challenges are certainly out there for those who want to look (and readily searchable on-line), but subjecting this multi-faceted film to a simple, overarching explanatory frame proves as banally disappointing as reducing humanity to mere DNA and parasitology. Better to turn off your mind, relax and float upstream, surrendering to the film’s cool—chilly, even—beauty and extraordinary sound design. l l l l l Anton Bitel

The Moo Man

Directors Andy Heathcote & Heike Bachelier Features Steve Hook Opens July 12 In this unexpectedly mo(o)ving documentary about a passionate dairy farmer struggling to make ends meet, directors Andy Heathcote and Heike Bachelier choose to quietly raise the issues within the dying family farming industry through the experiences of farmer Steve Hook.

Hook comes across as a patient man, choosing to rear a small herd of cows and going to painstaking lengths to look after them. His dedication and hard work is admirable, but it’s his love for the animals that gives this documentary its emotional heart, and makes it more than just a plea to buy local produce. Ida is the cow that has been with Steve for the longest, and he cares for her like a pet. She stands as something of a symbol for what he is trying to achieve with his small farm; he wants his herd to have a happy life, and believes his produce is better for it.

Calming pastoral shots of the farm are contrasted with tense birthing scenes of calves, and it’s all held together by Steve’s ponderings and compassionate interactions with his animals. Heathcote takes his time in building up his narrator so you feel sympathy for his situation, but he also manages to impart an important message.

A charming character study, The Moo Man not only paints a pleasant picture about a dying breed but also says much about our changing times and social responsibility. l l l l l Kat McLaughlin

www.moviescopemag.com

05/07/2013 09:31:18

Frances Ha

Get Lucky

Wadjda

Wannabe ballerina Frances (Gerwig) is having trouble finding her place in the world. Her best friend, and roommate, Sophie (Sumner) has ditched her for a dream apartment in Tribeca, the people at the dance school she works at are giving her the boot and she is, in her own words, ‘undateable’.

This sharp but sweet coming-of-age comedy is character-driven narrative at its best. The blaring New York backdrop greatly facilitates director Noah Baumbach, as its intemperate nature vastly contrasts to the gentle geniality of France’s character, so underlining the alienating hardships she faces. The overall direction is smart without being distracting, but it is Gerwig’s candid performance that seizes the attention.

Shot in monochrome, Gerwig’s expressive face is akin to that of a silent screen starlet; every flicker of vulnerability, each glint of possibility ripples out from those wide, earnest eyes. She is a performer who is completely unafraid of her body, one who uses every movement and tick to convey meaning and, consequently, despite the fact that her character is lost, clumsy and awkward, we want to follow Frances on her journey.

The film’s greatest triumph is a refreshing conclusion that circumvents cliché. The independent spirit runs through the film—and Frances—to the very last frame; a rarity in modern mainstream cinema. l l l l l Helen Cox

From the outset it should be emphasised that this is not the third part of the ‘Get’ trilogy that segues Get Carter and Get Shorty. There are some similarities in that it is a gangster movie, although much closer to Lock, Stock…, or any other number of lesser East End gangster movies that followed Guy Ritchie’s template. It’s a convoluted tale of fraternal loyalties and revenge, as two brothers try to steal from the local crime boss.

Despite having a stellar cast that includes this year’s Olivier Award winner Luke Treadaway and the always imposing presence of James Cosmo, along with a host of other familiar TV faces, Get Lucky suffers from an overly clichéd screenplay.

The locations (run-down boxing gym, fancy apartments, dockyards, London landmarks) are exactly what you expect from a film of this genre, and the situations the characters find themselves are preposterous, dependent on too many coincidences, convenient or otherwise. It is the dialogue that is the film’s biggest weakness, however, verging on parody but without the humour—even when there are supposed to be laughs. With British independent film still trying to find a strong local voice, it is a pity that so much good talent is wasted on such mediocrity. l l l l l Chris Patmore

Ten-year-old Wadjda (Mohammed) wants nothing more than a new bike; this being Saudi Arabia, however, such activity is forbidden for women. Nevertheless, Wadjda is determined, and enters the school’s Koran competition, hoping to win the prize money.

While Wadjda is the first Saudi film to be directed by a woman—a remarkable achievement—it has a life of its own beyond that novelty. By distilling the far-reaching themes of Middle Eastern gender traditions into this endearing story of a fesity young girl, Al-Mansour has made her political subtext universally accessible without diluting the power of her message.

Wadjda represents the innocence of youth, and perhaps, as the film progresses, a new generation more prepared to challenge the status quo; although she would never think of herself as such. The adults around her—most notably her frustrated mother (Abdullah), an ambitious woman constrained by her role as passive wife and mother—shoulder the weight of social responsibility, and effectively showcase the extreme limitations placed on females.

That leaves Wadjda to be the free spirit this story needs; while her future may be an immovable cloud on the horizon, for now she lives in colourful contrast to the expectations of the world around her. She is an inspiration for girls (and women) everywhere, no matter where they might live. l l l l l Nikki Baughan

Director Noah Baumbach Screenplay Noah Baumbach & Greta Gerwig Stars Greta Gerwig, Mickey Sumner Opens July 26

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Director Sacha Bennett Screenplay T.J. Ramini & Walter Taylaur Stars Luke Treadaway, T.J. Ramini, James Cosmo, Emily Atack, Craig Fairbrass Opens August 9

Director & Screenplay Haifaa Al-Mansour Stars Waad Mohammed, Reem Abdullah, Sultan Al Assaf Opens July 19

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Theatrical

The Call

Director Brad Anderson Screenplay Richard D’Ovidio, Nicole D’Ovidio & Jon Bokenkamp Stars Stars Halle Berry, Abigail Breslin, Michael Eklund Opens September 20 On paper, The Call sounds like another run of the mill thriller; a veteran emergency services phone operator (Berry) takes a call from abducted teenager Casey (Breslin), and must do all she can to save her life from afar. In the flesh, however, it rises above the potential trappings of its premise thanks to solid performances from Berry and Breslin, and some slick, intimate visuals from cinematographer Tom Yatsko. As the action switches between Casey, increasingly frantic in the trunk of a moving car, and Jordan, fighting alone in the bustling operations centre, Yatsko’s claustrophobic camera effectively ratchets up the tension.

While these may be women under extreme pressure, they are certainly not weak. It’s interesting to see this story play out from the female perspective, particularly as Casey is not prepared to simply accept her fate like so many of her ilk. That her saviour is also a woman is refreshing, and watching them work together gives the narrative a dynamism that these kind of films rarely enjoy. It’s a real shame, then, that the ending loses its nerve and has them revert to type by indulging in some rather ridiculous behaviour; a silly climax to a clever story. l l l l l Nikki Baughan

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The Great Hip Hop Hoax

Director Jeanie Finlay Features Gavin Bain, Billy Boyd Opens September 6 Jeanie Finlay has a talent for spotting interesting subject matter that both entertains and runs deeper than its initial story may first suggest. We are introduced to two ambitious Scottish rappers—and close friends—Billy Boyd and Gavin Bain as they try to enter the music business. On attending their first audition in London their hopes are dashed by music executives who laughed them out of their office. Scottish rap was not viable in their eyes. The two then hatch a plan to try again, but this time with American accents under the guise ‘Sillibil n’ Brains’—and they get the record deal.

Archive footage, creative animation and interviews with those who were fooled alongside the bad boys themselves makes for highly amusing viewing. But underneath it all is a cautionary tale about the fame monster and celebrity lifestyle that gobbles up many young, aspiring acts. It also highlights the shallow and fleeting nature of the industry. With talent shows and reality TV constantly launching the next big thing before spitting them back out within a couple of years, rejection has become something of an entertainment business itself. As egos inflate and wild ways go untamed, friendships crumble-leading to an unexpected turn of events. The price of fame costs these boys their identity; the question is, was it worth it? l l l l l Kat McLaughlin

The Conjuring

Director James Wan Screenplay Chad Hayes & Carey W Hayes Stars Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Lili Taylor Opens August 2 With his sixth film, director James Wan has built a time machine. Going far beyond merely setting his eerie ghost story in the 1970s, he’s taken that setting as an opportunity to create a film that feels like it’s from the 1970s. With its paranoid zooms and mahogany colour palette, The Conjuring is a loving ode to Seventies horror, replete with plaid shirts, floor-length nighties and shaggy hair. It’s also really, really scary.

Based on a real-life case investigated by paranormal experts Ed and Lorraine Warren, the story follows two families: the Perrons, whose farmhouse has a few unwanted visitors, and the Warrens (played by Wilson and Farmiga), who attempt to get to the bottom of escalating spooky goings-on.

The opening scene alone is enough to fray nerves to snapping point. Involving a creepy doll called Annabel, it stretches tension out like a rubber band. That’s the film’s main strength—Wan takes recognisable horror tropes and twists them in on themselves. With Insidious, he proved he was capable of orchestrating a good scare. The Conjuring offers that and more; there’s an inescapable sense of dread permeating every frame. Not to get too serious about what is essentially a good old-fashioned boo flick, but this is Wan’s most accomplished film to date—and one that’s sure to cause more than a few sleepless nights. l l l l l Josh Winning

www.moviescopemag.com

04/07/2013 16:52:25

Eden

Prince Avalanche

Although it is grossly under-reported in the mainstream media, human trafficking is now the second largest illegal trade in the world, with most of the victims being exploited for the sex trade. Eden takes the real-life story of a Korean-American teenager who is kidnapped and forced into prostitution and turns it into a drama, without resorting to sensationalism or graphic scenes of sex and violence. Acts of degradation and abuse are clearly alluded to, but are rarely ever on display and are never glossed over.

This is more a story of hope and survival, directed with great sensitivity by Megan Griffiths. Chung puts in a stellar performance as the abducted Hyun Jae, renamed the titular Eden when she is incarcerated in a storage unit turned brothel with other young girls. Beau Bridges is at his unlikable best as the corrupt Federal Marshall who oversees the sex and drugs business with the help of Vaughan (Matt O’Leary), a conflicted young man who is something of a victim himself.

While the film addresses a tough subject, it doesn’t leave the viewer with a sense of despair but rather an air of positivity. This is the sort of film independent cinema was made for, featuring great acting, writing and direction as well as a powerful message that isn’t preached, trivialised or compromised. l l l l l Chris Patmore

Rural Texas, 1988. Alvin (Rudd) and his girlfriend’s brother Lance (Hirsch) are spending the summer working to restore a country highway that has been decimated by wildfire. As they spend hours together it’s clear that while their personalities couldn’t be more different, they will come to rely on each other in this alien landscape.

Best known for raucous comedies like Pineapple Express, Your Highness and The Sitter, Prince Avalanche returns David Gordon Green to the more introspective territory of early works Undertow and All the Real Girls.

While his adaptation of Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurdsson’s 2011 Icelandic drama Either Way may feature familiar male bonding tropes, this story unfolds at an altogether more languid pace. There are long periods without dialogue, and Tim Orr’s stunning cinematography lingers on the ethereal fragility of the ravaged woodland. At odds with this natural beauty is the discordant soundtrack; hard-edged arrangements by Texan rock band Explosions in the Sky and composer David Wingo provide an aural assault that jars—satisfyingly—with the peaceful scenery.

While it may be a disorienting assault on the senses, the narrative message is obvious; these are two lost souls, men adrift not just in this isolated location but also in their own skins. Alvin’s stoic exterior belies an inner turmoil, one that we first see unleashed when he spends a weekend in solitude. Fuelled by prescription meds, Alvin rampages through the

Director Megan Griffiths Screenplay Richard B Phillips & Megan Griffiths Stars Jamie Chung, Beau Bridges, Matt O’Leary Opens July 19

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Director & Screenplay David Gordon Green Stars Paul Rudd, Emile Hirsch, Lance LeGault DoP Tim Orr Editor Colin Patton Locations Bastrop, Texas, USA Opens September 20 forest and comes across the tragic figure of an elderly woman (non-actor Joyce Payne) digging through the wreckage of her home. This encounter fuels a hallucinatory episode that lays Alvin’s deepest fears (and desires) bare.

As the story progresses, more of Alvin’s façade is laid waste until, finally—with Lance’s help—he is revealed. It’s a remarkable performance from Rudd, and one that proves there’s more to him as an actor than the ‘likeable stooge’ stereotype he seems to have fallen into.

While Lance (an equally excellent Hirsch) may be more of a free spirit, discussing his sexual conquests in naïve detail, he’s no less conflicted. He takes pleasure in human interaction, whether stilted small talk with Alvin or spirited conversations with a passing trucker (the charismatically gruff LeGault, who died not long after filming), yet seems unable to make genuine connections. Although his immaturity is evident, his growing friendship with Alvin ultimately proves a tonic for them both.

This may be a more nuanced and brooding project for Green, but it’s certainly not without humour. There are frequent moments of hilarity, whether born from the 1980s fashions, the tiffs between the pair or a booze-fuelled riot that is as cathartic as it is comical. A bromance-ofsorts that marches to an entirely different drum, Prince Avalanche has an organic, contemplative aura that is a edifying tonic to the endless chest-beating that has become Hollywood shorthand for the entire male experience. l l l l l Nikki Baughan

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