Reviews/Interviews

Chris Blaine and his brother Ben began their journey as filmmakers with ‘The bible according to Charlie’, described by Chris as a ‘piss take of the bible’. Now the pair have been nominated for ‘Best Debut Director’ at the 2015 ‘British Independent Film Awards’ and received wide-spread critical acclaim for their debut feature ‘Nina Forever’.

I attended a Sheffield screening of ‘Nina Forever’ and the post-screening Q&A with Chis Blaine who kindly agreed to an interview with me and Barnabus Thomas (who’s Facebook you can find here: https://www.facebook.com/BarnabasThomasFilm/) concerning the trials and tribulations of short-form/ long-form filmmaking.

Chris’s answers provide valuable insight into the filmmaking process and is a crucial read for those hoping to make it as a filmmaker in Britain whilst retaining artistic vision.

You can find some of the Blaine brother’s work on their website here: http://blainebrothers.co.uk/# including the ‘Hallo Panda’, a short film which includes a talking Panda wanking into a bottle (a film we discuss at length within this interview).

A.C.: Before we begin I was just wondering about the origin of your film ‘Hallo Panda’. We watched it earlier today and we were both very curious.

I got the idea from a place I was working at. We used to always make a joke about pandas; that they are always talking about needing artificial insemination. ‘So what? Are you getting the panda to wank into a bottle? How are you making that thing happen?’ And that’s the joke. And then there was this particular place I was working, that sense of boredom but also this entire frustration with the world. The story kind of just came to me whilst sitting on the bus going to work and it just sort of fit; the compare and contrast between man and bear.

Originally, I talked to Ben about it as a feature film idea, we’d been making short films for up to four years at that point, and Ben went to this pre-Cannes party which he got wangled into by somebody from ‘Shooting People’. Somebody from Film4 was there: ‘Oh my god, you’re the Blaine brothers, we’ve been looking for you guys everywhere. We really want you to apply for Cinema Extreme. From that, we had some really cool workshops with them up here in Nottingham. I got to meet Simon Ellis who’s a fucking great filmmaker, so we were excited about that and about meeting a load of other filmmakers. It was a really good experience, for that part of it.

We’re still quite puzzles as to why they commissioned ‘Hallo Panda’ because all the other films in the strand were really arty and then you’ve got this one film which is about wanking off a talking bear. It kind of fully formed out of that, but we were originally thinking feature film.

A.C.: Well we loved it, definitely.

 

B.T.: ‘Hallo Panda’ and ‘Nina Forever’ just feel so different, but you can make the connection.

A.C.: I can see the connection between the two, strangely. You mentioned before about having a deep love for Rom-Com, you can definitely see that in both of those film.

There’s definitely a romance thing going on for both of them, absolutely, and that’s one of the things that appealed to us with Nina. A lot of the features we’d be writing up until that point had been much more serious whilst the shorts we’d been making were all funny. We really enjoyed doing funny stuff and, generally, we end up putting jokes in.

With Nina it felt quite nice because it was combination of all the dark shit we’d been writing about for quite a long time but also the comedy, and bringing those two together, and it feels like from here we’ve got a little more leeway because if we’d gone and done a comedy first they’d be like ‘Okay great, what’s the next funny thing you’re going to do?’

A.C.: So it’s like cementing your signature?

Yeah, so if the signature is a bit mixed, then it’s a little bit easier to go ‘Oh, we think you can do this’ or ‘you could do this’. And then there’s people talking about out and out horror, and then all the way over to much more caper ones and everything in between because there is that mix of genres going on.

B.T: So what first attracted you and Ben to film?

So basically I always wanted to be some sort of artist in some way and I was always drawing and painting and I kind of got into the idea of wanting to do animation. And Ben was always writing stuff, he was always writing plays from maybe eight years old, or something ridiculous like that. He’d written this thing with his mate Keith and they wanted to make it and I’d just bought this camera to do animation with so we ended up spending the whole summer making this film which was basically just a piss take of the bible, which is weirdly the sub-‘Life of Brian’ with nowhere near as many jokes or anywhere near as good, because obviously we’re just a bunch of kids and we’re sticking up a camera and doing something in front of it with a lot of fake beards. But it was fun to do, and we were kind of like ‘Yeah, this has been a really fun summer and a really fun film to make and maybe we should try and do it seriously’ and the two of us said we really enjoyed doing it together.
That’s actually part of the fun of filmmaking, that you’re not going ‘Well, every day I go and I write and then I write another thing and then I write another thing’ when really for a bit I write then I’m shooting and you get to investigate all sorts of different worlds in the editing as well. The process is really enjoyable to us and the fact that it keeps changing makes it a lot more enjoyable. You’re not just – ‘Okay, this is my job, day in day out’. It’s really variable.

A.C.: So do you edit your films as well?

Yeah, we write, direct and edit, and we’ve done quite a bit of editing with other people as well. We’d love to do more, it’s a really good thing to do. It’s really a great – for both directing and for writing, actually – because you know how people talk about editing being the final re-write of a film? It is! It’s basically like writing again. So it still seems weird to us to be giving that side up to someone else, because all the way through you’ve been going ‘Well, when you’ve got a script editor, the script editor gives you notes and helps you bring out the thing you’re tapping down on a typewriter.’ So it’s really weird to have an editor who comes in and re-writes everything, you know?
A.C.: Since they haven’t been there for that process?

Yeah.

B.T.: (To A.C) Well, you edit everything you do.

A.C.: I was just wondering when it comes to writing, how much do you consider the audience? Usually, do you write for yourself or is it something you think; ‘Oh, the audience will like this’.

There’s definitely a certain thing of audience, but the industry way of talking about it can be generic as: ‘all four quadrants!’ Like, what the fuck are you talking about? Then there were other people who were like; ‘No, no, no, you only need to think about one single person and imagine exactly who they are and what are the things they’re into and that’s the person you’re talking about.’ But then most of the time you’re writing it for yourself, really. And if you want to go and see that then there are probably other people who would want and go and see that as well. And, I know, it’s not as if we’ve made a big blockbuster that’s going to be appealing to everyone – it’s not. But we knew that when we were doing something that was kind of expecting to have a small audience who would love it and then one audience who would be indifferent to it, and then a bunch of people who would fucking hate it. It’s always interesting because you always get somebody who walks out in your screening of the film, pretty much every single time and tonight she was a bit late, because normally it comes after the first Nina scene, and then you’re like; ‘This isn’t my film, I’m going.’

B.T.: So what was it like moving into doing a feature from doing all these shorts?

It’s a very different experience and one you’re not necessarily prepared for from having made shorts. It takes fucking ages to make shorts, It’s not as if you’re going ‘Oh, I just knocked that out’ it took a year and there was all this prep time and you’ve put in so much work to actually get that one weakened, maybe a week, of shooting. And it takes ages in post because you’re trying to catch favours and all the rest of it, so it takes bloody ages to get the thing done! And you feel like ‘Well, that feels pretty similar to making a feature’ when actually the big difference with a feature is the machine of it. So with a short you’ve got space to be able to stop and go ‘Oh, we’ll need to do a thing differently’ and there’s only a few days, so there’s only so much you can build up whereas with a feature, we were shooting six day weeks? Five and six, actually, so we had two days off on the weekend which was all just prepping for the next week but as soon as you get into a six day a week you’re pretty fucked in terms of being able to plan ahead.

So time becomes really tight, and if you haven’t got your storyboard entirely done before then you’re really struggling to storyboard the whole thing, so like for us we storyboarded a lot of the film and we story-boarded as we were going as well with the DP, every night when really we were writing a shot list because we couldn’t draw everything out because it takes too long. But it’s just the build, and that’s the big thing were you’re just like… it’s quite relentless on a feature and you’re just going ‘shit’ whilst it happens. But then, what is good is having done a lot of shorts because then you kind of… the more you do of them and the variety of experiences you can have with them where it’s not like; ‘I’ve planned this perfectly each time’, sometimes you’re going ‘Whoa! This is a fucking bonfire! How are we going to get this thing done?’

Then it’s really useful to have some disastrous experiences.

So years ago, when we were doing ‘Hallo Panda’, and the shoot on that was pretty hard for us and the post-process was really hard on us as well - so whilst the writing process was joyful, the rest of it was really painful. But we felt like that was a really good thing to go through in terms of getting to the feature film. So you’ve got a sense of ‘Oh okay, when this shit happens this is what you’re going to be faced with’. We saw some other people who’d got to make a short and did it perfectly and then they went off and did their first feature and they’re stumbling on all these little things, and that’s because the short just went really nice and easy.

A.C.: So they didn’t have that experience?

Yeah. What’s really useful for us is editing for television. We did a 60 minute thing and we did a TV Feature as well, and seeing those things come together and just seeing the process when you’re outside of it; when you’re not actually emotionally attached to every single word. It’s a really useful thing to see and to be like ‘Well, this is how you shape it’ and I can see why those battles happen, but just being able to see those battles from the outside and not just hearing about them second hand, but to actually be like ‘Okay, I’ve witnessed that happen.’ Because it all happens in the edit room, you’ve got all the execs coming in and they have all those battles right in front of you and you’re the one usually trying to solve them. It’s a really good learning experience for coming into the feature; ‘these are the battles you’re going to have.’

It is a different thing between a short and a feature. So in a feature, the first week is hard but after that it gets smooth whilst with shorts we never worked on a rhythm, it was always hard all the way through. And I always remember with shorts being like ‘Oh ,you fuckers, you’re saying that the first week’s hard and then after that ‘Oh yeah, fine. Everything’s cool.’ You know? You can probably disregard the first week whilst with a short film you’re lucky if you’ve got a week. You’ve got like the first couple of days when people are just getting to know each other. It’s really hard to make a film when you’ve got the first two days when you’re doing nothing but crap but nothing that’s hard in the first two days of a feature because you’re like ‘Oh, this probably won’t end up in the film, actually’ whilst with a short that’s all that’ll end up in the film; that’s the final film. Yeah, it’s hard to do a short and to actually make them good.

A.C.: Ultimately, do you think a short’s harder than a feature?

Different. Very different. So feature is going to be so much more about structure in terms of just the construction of a story, to draw someone through the entire thing however that structure works, and a short is more like a little poem. The simpler you can make a short the nicer, usually.

A.C.: What is it you think makes a strong script? Something people will want to watch and something, in terms of characters, that people can connect or relate to? During a lot of films, I feel like an outsider, whilst with Nina Forever I did genuinely feel real discomfort. So what is it that you think is the key to creating characters that people do actually feel for – or a story that you want to be engaged with?

So as a writer you’re a bit fucked because your job is to be really painfully honest. And some other people talk about it being telling the stories you don’t really want to talk about until you’re in the grave, and that might be involving your parents or something that you know is going to upset somebody else that you care about. We find, actually, that this is just as much about yourself, so actually working with your brother you go – well, that could potentially be embarrassing, because you actually need to be completely and utterly honest about the weirdest, most horrible shit in your head and in your heart. That’s the stuff that’s going to be really good on the page and that’s the stuff that people actually connect with; It’s when you’re being completely horribly honest about the bad stuff, whatever way that is, but your real feelings of like ‘I shouldn’t tell anyone this ever.’ Put it on a page and everyone is suddenly like ‘Oh wow, this is really cool, because I think that too and I’m scared to tell anyone it.’ And that’s the stuff that really works for screen; for us anyway.

When you’re really getting to that point where it’s all the stuff you ideally wouldn’t tell anyone and now you’re writing it down and having to explain it to everyone again and again and again to the point where it’s like: ‘Okay, I have told you all my deepest, darkest, horrible secrets’ but that’s the stuff that works. We see it so often with people writing a script, they’ve got the thing they want to talk about and they feel like it’s there, but they’re not talking about it. They’re not actually putting it on the page.

A.C.: Because they’re too afraid to be honest?

Yeah; too afraid, so the film comes across as a bit afraid and it comes across as a bit bland and the stuff where you’re all like ‘Oh, okay. This is really going somewhere’ is the stuff that is like; ‘Okay, you’ve told me something really honest about yourself. Whatever that is.’ So yeah, honesty, man. That’s really important.

B.T.: What about as a director? In terms of getting connected to the audience? Is it different as a director or pretty much the same thing?

So as a director it determines which way you’re coming in at it. So if you’re a writer/director, potentially, you’re talking about the same shit – ‘where is this coming from.’ But then if you’re directing someone else’s material, the place you need to get to – again it’s all about honesty, but it’s about understanding the intention of what the writer’s written and why they’ve written that. So we’re learning a lot at the moment in one of the projects we’re attached to as directors because to start off with the writers were like; ‘Give us notes. Tell us what to write and we’ll write exactly what you want to. So we did. We didn’t know what they were asking for, so we basically just wrote this big outline for a feature film.’ And then they didn’t really do what we’d asked them to do and it’s like: ‘Well, of course not. You’re the one writing it, we’re supposed to be finding out what it is that really excites you about the film. What’s the deepest, darkest secret in the middle of it’ and that’s the thing we need to be pushing. And we can’t tell you plot points – do this plot point, do that plot point – because it’s meaningless; because it’s got nothing to do with the kernel that you actually care about. So that’s really important as a director, to find that kind of kernel, and then that’s the thing that drives to whole film.

Do you know the director Gillies MacKinnon? He made this film called ‘Regeneration’ and ‘Hideous Kinky’ and ‘Small Faces’ and ‘Pure’ and he’s just done ‘Whisky Galore’ which is coming out this year at some point. He’s a really great director, especially for actors. And there’s this scheme called ‘Guiding Lights’ where you can get mentored by a much more established film-maker, and we got advised by Gillies and he had this bit of advice for us which was really useful on Nina that sometimes you’ll get into a fight with an actor which is, essentially, that they don’t seem to want to do anything that you’re asking them to do and they just seem to be a pain in the fucking ass, and essentially what they’re doing is looking for a fight. And he was like: ‘When that happens, clear the room, take everyone out, and confront them with it. ‘Why are you doing this?’ and then you have this heart-to-heart, you have this completely honest conversation where, for the first time, you’re actually talking honestly and you’re not going ‘Oh yeah, it was great, let’s move on’ because we’ve got no time, because you’re coming down to brass tax. And it’s about being honest again and being totally brutal about everything that you’re feeling and what they’re feeling; and then it clears the air.

It’s all about honesty, especially with actors, who really need to trust you implicitly. You need to be able to gain their trust and often that’s by having the fight which is kind of what we’re doing on this project with the writers. We’re having this fight because yeah, it’s not a fight where you’re calling them a cunt or anything – it’s a creative fight to get to the point of what each of you is talking about. It does kind of depend on the people you’re working with, you know? So it’s interesting as a director, the different ways it works and the different spheres. So if you’re doing a feature film; you’re the God, and if you’re doing television; you’re the whipping boy, or at least with a lot of British telly, it’s kind of like easy for you to be getting the blame because the writer’s kind of King, but the writer’s not there so it’s kind of the producer and essentially you’re just going – ‘Okay, there’s a bonfire as to who’s actually in charge here, who has the final say?’ Because actually, it’s really hard to know and you have to always work it out; but it’s definitely not the director.

The director is doing what everyone else wants them to do. And with commercials it’s even more so that you’re doing whatever it is they want to do because the creators have already written a script and they’ve probably done storyboards as well, it’s like ‘Can you please enact my creation?’ And with music videos you get to actually write the pitch and write the treatment and it’s kind of your baby again. It really changes depending on the format and that changes how you’d have to behave as well because sometimes you’re there to deliver somebody else’s baby. You’re the midwife, you’re not the mother and then sometimes you are the mother.

A.C.: So what were the first steps you and your brother took to become recognised within the industry? To get to the level you are now; doing feature films?

So long story short, but basically the first short that was any good - we made one short film we never finished and then one short that got into the Edinburgh film festival and then we were like ‘Oh, this is totally going to be easy. We’re totally on the way’ and at that point Edinburgh was a really good one for the industry. We met loads of people including Jim Wilson who’s John Glazer’s producer. We were having all these round-tables with these people and they were like ‘Who the hell are these kids?’ And we were just kids - we didn’t know what the fuck we were doing.

So you have people like creative England doing these sorts of things, and they do schemes and we applied to all of those things and we kept on making short films. We were making them on MiniDV which was like the format of the time. We kept learning to get better at it but they always looked a bit shit because we were always working on MiniDV. We were trying to get an agent and one agent pulled us aside and said ‘I can’t represent you, your stuff doesn’t look good enough. It doesn’t look professional enough’ and then we began to concern ourselves with making it look more and more like a film as possible.

We started working with our DP who did Nina as well and we’ve worked with him for over a decade. He learnt alongside us, really. We learned alongside him in terms of how to make something look good. And then there’s like a certain point where we made a short film called ‘Free Speech’ which is five minutes long – it’s a guy in a bath with his girlfriend having this sort of post-coital talk about sex and it creating all sorts of awkwardness between the two of them. It was fun little thing and it had Danny Dyer in it, we were really lucky to get Danny Dyer, so that kind of got us noticed.

It’s weird because in terms of asking us onto a scheme, it’s literally just because Ben gate crashed a party and met somebody from ‘Film4’ there where we applied for the scheme and got onto there with ‘Hallo Panda’. We had loads of meeting with everyone around town because we were like the hot things because we were on ‘Cinema Extreme’, but none of them ended anywhere so we spend a lot of time in the wilderness wandering around writing more stuff and getting more and more involved with work for money, because we were broke by this point and we had made a lot of shorts.

Nina was our chance to be creative; to get back into the artist side of stuff. It’s like your head space. As a film-maker you can get into the ‘Well, I have to make money because I need to earn a living’ and that’s kind of being more on the corporate side of things and if you’re lucky, great, you’ve gone on to do a big budget music video and then you’re getting to meet the right people and then you’ve gotten onto commercials and meeting the right people or if you’re unlucky then yeah, you’re making some more corporate videos, making some money and fuck all else is happening. It was really important to us to be like ‘we need to be artists and by having the artist’s mind set where you’re making a thing you want to make and therefore have to live cheaply because you’re not going to be earning anything. But it was really good thing for us to do. We really want to keep doing it that way rather than getting involved in trying to chase the money because it’s not a nice thing to be doing. It isn’t an attractive quality as well. As soon as you go ‘I’m doing a thing’ – ‘ooh what is it you’re doing?’ rather than ‘I’d like to do a thing, I need your help to be able to make the thing happen. Basically, I need your money and I am willing to wait sixteen weeks for you’ It’s a recipe for everyone getting a bit upset. So yeah, it’s not like an easy simple quick break, and there’s so many things or jobs that we’ve worked on or people that we’ve met; friends we have made who don’t mean anything here but three years down the line suddenly you’re working with them.

Cassandra, who produced Nina, we were friends with her a couple of years before we started working for her. We were just mates, and she thought we were writing a project that somebody else was producing for us but we were like ‘No, we were on our own’ and she was like ‘I want it.’ And that was just after meeting up and having a couple of drinks with her. It wasn’t like we were chasing her to be like ‘Oh, could you rep me, could you read my script?” Really, we’re just friends. And most of the time it is just friends; they’re the people that are actually going to be really useful.

It’s almost like if you’re doing the industry thing and you’re going to all these schemes, then there’s the thing of ‘oh, you’re going to have to talk to the person who’s come and done the talk, and you’re really hoping they’re going to notice you and “please help me make my career happen”’ and it’s like ‘no, they’ve already got however many people they’re already working with’ who they’ve already known for ten years who they’re kind of still not quite necessarily trusting to be wanting to let them loose ever. So then somebody that they’ve met at a talk is just somebody that they’ve met at a talk. Whereas the people you always keep bumping into at the talks, and you get to be mates, you’ve already built that connection. So yeah, it’s a long game, it’s not a short one.

A.C.: What is it you think makes a strong script? Something people will want to watch and something, in terms of characters, that people can connect or relate to? During a lot of films, I feel like an outsider, whilst with Nina Forever I did genuinely feel real discomfort. So what is it that you think is the key to creating characters that people do actually feel for – or a story that you want to be engaged with?

So as a writer you’re a bit fucked because your job is to be really painfully honest. And some other people talk about it being telling the stories you don’t really want to talk about until you’re in the grave, and that might be involving your parents or something that you know is going to upset somebody else that you care about. We find, actually, that this is just as much about yourself, so actually working with your brother you go – well, that could potentially be embarrassing, because you actually need to be completely and utterly honest about the weirdest, most horrible shit in your head and in your heart. That’s the stuff that’s going to be really good on the page and that’s the stuff that people actually connect with; It’s when you’re being completely horribly honest about the bad stuff, whatever way that is, but your real feelings of like ‘I shouldn’t tell anyone this ever.’ Put it on a page and everyone is suddenly like ‘Oh wow, this is really cool, because I think that too and I’m scared to tell anyone it.’ And that’s the stuff that really works for screen; for us anyway.

When you’re really getting to that point where it’s all the stuff you ideally wouldn’t tell anyone and now you’re writing it down and having to explain it to everyone again and again and again to the point where it’s like: ‘Okay, I have told you all my deepest, darkest, horrible secrets’ but that’s the stuff that works. We see it so often with people writing a script, they’ve got the thing they want to talk about and they feel like it’s there, but they’re not talking about it. They’re not actually putting it on the page.

A.C.: Because they’re too afraid to be honest?

Yeah; too afraid, so the film comes across as a bit afraid and it comes across as a bit bland and the stuff where you’re all like ‘Oh, okay. This is really going somewhere’ is the stuff that is like; ‘Okay, you’ve told me something really honest about yourself. Whatever that is.’ So yeah, honesty, man. That’s really important.

B.T.: What about as a director? In terms of getting connected to the audience? Is it different as a director or pretty much the same thing?

So as a director it determines which way you’re coming in at it. So if you’re a writer/director, potentially, you’re talking about the same shit – ‘where is this coming from.’ But then if you’re directing someone else’s material, the place you need to get to – again it’s all about honesty, but it’s about understanding the intention of what the writer’s written and why they’ve written that. So we’re learning a lot at the moment in one of the projects we’re attached to as directors because to start off with the writers were like; ‘Give us notes. Tell us what to write and we’ll write exactly what you want to. So we did. We didn’t know what they were asking for, so we basically just wrote this big outline for a feature film.’ And then they didn’t really do what we’d asked them to do and it’s like: ‘Well, of course not. You’re the one writing it, we’re supposed to be finding out what it is that really excites you about the film. What’s the deepest, darkest secret in the middle of it’ and that’s the thing we need to be pushing. And we can’t tell you plot points – do this plot point, do that plot point – because it’s meaningless; because it’s got nothing to do with the kernel that you actually care about. So that’s really important as a director, to find that kind of kernel, and then that’s the thing that drives to whole film.

Do you know the director Gillies MacKinnon? He made this film called ‘Regeneration’ and ‘Hideous Kinky’ and ‘Small Faces’ and ‘Pure’ and he’s just done ‘Whisky Galore’ which is coming out this year at some point. He’s a really great director, especially for actors. And there’s this scheme called ‘Guiding Lights’ where you can get mentored by a much more established film-maker, and we got advised by Gillies and he had this bit of advice for us which was really useful on Nina that sometimes you’ll get into a fight with an actor which is, essentially, that they don’t seem to want to do anything that you’re asking them to do and they just seem to be a pain in the fucking ass, and essentially what they’re doing is looking for a fight. And he was like: ‘When that happens, clear the room, take everyone out, and confront them with it. ‘Why are you doing this?’ and then you have this heart-to-heart, you have this completely honest conversation where, for the first time, you’re actually talking honestly and you’re not going ‘Oh yeah, it was great, let’s move on’ because we’ve got no time, because you’re coming down to brass tax. And it’s about being honest again and being totally brutal about everything that you’re feeling and what they’re feeling; and then it clears the air.

It’s all about honesty, especially with actors, who really need to trust you implicitly. You need to be able to gain their trust and often that’s by having the fight which is kind of what we’re doing on this project with the writers. We’re having this fight because yeah, it’s not a fight where you’re calling them a cunt or anything – it’s a creative fight to get to the point of what each of you is talking about. It does kind of depend on the people you’re working with, you know? So it’s interesting as a director, the different ways it works and the different spheres. So if you’re doing a feature film; you’re the God, and if you’re doing television; you’re the whipping boy, or at least with a lot of British telly, it’s kind of like easy for you to be getting the blame because the writer’s kind of King, but the writer’s not there so it’s kind of the producer and essentially you’re just going – ‘Okay, there’s a bonfire as to who’s actually in charge here, who has the final say?’ Because actually, it’s really hard to know and you have to always work it out; but it’s definitely not the director.

The director is doing what everyone else wants them to do. And with commercials it’s even more so that you’re doing whatever it is they want to do because the creators have already written a script and they’ve probably done storyboards as well, it’s like ‘Can you please enact my creation?’ And with music videos you get to actually write the pitch and write the treatment and it’s kind of your baby again. It really changes depending on the format and that changes how you’d have to behave as well because sometimes you’re there to deliver somebody else’s baby. You’re the midwife, you’re not the mother and then sometimes you are the mother.

A.C.: So what were the first steps you and your brother took to become recognised within the industry? To get to the level you are now; doing feature films?

So long story short, but basically the first short that was any good - we made one short film we never finished and then one short that got into the Edinburgh film festival and then we were like ‘Oh, this is totally going to be easy. We’re totally on the way’ and at that point Edinburgh was a really good one for the industry. We met loads of people including Jim Wilson who’s John Glazer’s producer. We were having all these round-tables with these people and they were like ‘Who the hell are these kids?’ And we were just kids - we didn’t know what the fuck we were doing.

So you have people like creative England doing these sorts of things, and they do schemes and we applied to all of those things and we kept on making short films. We were making them on MiniDV which was like the format of the time. We kept learning to get better at it but they always looked a bit shit because we were always working on MiniDV. We were trying to get an agent and one agent pulled us aside and said ‘I can’t represent you, your stuff doesn’t look good enough. It doesn’t look professional enough’ and then we began to concern ourselves with making it look more and more like a film as possible.

We started working with our DP who did Nina as well and we’ve worked with him for over a decade. He learnt alongside us, really. We learned alongside him in terms of how to make something look good. And then there’s like a certain point where we made a short film called ‘Free Speech’ which is five minutes long – it’s a guy in a bath with his girlfriend having this sort of post-coital talk about sex and it creating all sorts of awkwardness between the two of them. It was fun little thing and it had Danny Dyer in it, we were really lucky to get Danny Dyer, so that kind of got us noticed.

It’s weird because in terms of asking us onto a scheme, it’s literally just because Ben gate crashed a party and met somebody from ‘Film4’ there where we applied for the scheme and got onto there with ‘Hallo Panda’. We had loads of meeting with everyone around town because we were like the hot things because we were on ‘Cinema Extreme’, but none of them ended anywhere so we spend a lot of time in the wilderness wandering around writing more stuff and getting more and more involved with work for money, because we were broke by this point and we had made a lot of shorts.

Nina was our chance to be creative; to get back into the artist side of stuff. It’s like your head space. As a film-maker you can get into the ‘Well, I have to make money because I need to earn a living’ and that’s kind of being more on the corporate side of things and if you’re lucky, great, you’ve gone on to do a big budget music video and then you’re getting to meet the right people and then you’ve gotten onto commercials and meeting the right people or if you’re unlucky then yeah, you’re making some more corporate videos, making some money and fuck all else is happening. It was really important to us to be like ‘we need to be artists and by having the artist’s mind set where you’re making a thing you want to make and therefore have to live cheaply because you’re not going to be earning anything. But it was really good thing for us to do. We really want to keep doing it that way rather than getting involved in trying to chase the money because it’s not a nice thing to be doing. It isn’t an attractive quality as well. As soon as you go ‘I’m doing a thing’ – ‘ooh what is it you’re doing?’ rather than ‘I’d like to do a thing, I need your help to be able to make the thing happen. Basically, I need your money and I am willing to wait sixteen weeks for you’ It’s a recipe for everyone getting a bit upset. So yeah, it’s not like an easy simple quick break, and there’s so many things or jobs that we’ve worked on or people that we’ve met; friends we have made who don’t mean anything here but three years down the line suddenly you’re working with them.

Cassandra, who produced Nina, we were friends with her a couple of years before we started working for her. We were just mates, and she thought we were writing a project that somebody else was producing for us but we were like ‘No, we were on our own’ and she was like ‘I want it.’ And that was just after meeting up and having a couple of drinks with her. It wasn’t like we were chasing her to be like ‘Oh, could you rep me, could you read my script?” Really, we’re just friends. And most of the time it is just friends; they’re the people that are actually going to be really useful.

It’s almost like if you’re doing the industry thing and you’re going to all these schemes, then there’s the thing of ‘oh, you’re going to have to talk to the person who’s come and done the talk, and you’re really hoping they’re going to notice you and “please help me make my career happen”’ and it’s like ‘no, they’ve already got however many people they’re already working with’ who they’ve already known for ten years who they’re kind of still not quite necessarily trusting to be wanting to let them loose ever. So then somebody that they’ve met at a talk is just somebody that they’ve met at a talk. Whereas the people you always keep bumping into at the talks, and you get to be mates, you’ve already built that connection. So yeah, it’s a long game, it’s not a short one.

Reviewed and Recommended by A. A. Coburn - Feb '18

Everything about Yorgos Lanthimos's pitch-black comedy is peculiar.

The film takes place in a dystopian future in which single people are forced into a hotel where they must find a compatible partner within 45 days or else be turned into an animal of their own choosing. We follow Colin Farrell's recently divorced protagonist and his quest to find a partner; preferably someone who shares his short-sighted vision.

The film revels in its own self-aware bizarreness, exploiting the absurd premise for many priceless moments of deadpan humour. Much of the film's humour derives from Lanthimos and co-writer Efthimis Filippou's dialogue, and the comically blunt way in which the characters speak. It not only makes for good comedy, but also accentuates the disconnection the people of this bleak future have from common emotions, building a world in which this unusual premise is believable.

In Lanthimos's own words, the film is about the apparent pressure given to single people to obtain and maintain a perfect relationship. Whilst this theme runs clearly throughout the film, the story is better enjoyed without excruciating analysis and instead accepted as a piece of absurdism. If you're unwilling to dive headfirst deep into Lanthimos's odd world, then you're unlikely to find much to enjoy.

Either love it or hate it, 'The Lobster' is one of the most unique British films of the last decade and is essential viewing for those with a taste for the peculiar.

Reviewed and recommended by A. A. Coburn – March 2nd

The past is a long dark shadow and can present itself in many forms, be it a deceased loved one or as the memory of an excruciatingly awkward thing you once said to someone at a party when trying to make small talk. Sometimes, in a relationship, a partner’s past can rear its ugly head in the form of a dead ex-girlfriend, popping in from the afterlife during moments of romantic intimacy… or perhaps that’s just in ‘Nina Forever’, the haunting directorial debut of British directors Chris and Ben Blaine.

Don’t be deceived by the film’s outrageous premise, ‘Nina Forever’ is by no means a comedy. Humour is tastefully sprinkled throughout, but the jokes are funny in the same way it might be funny if a clown appeared at a funeral; a slight relief from the morbid main event.

The film stars Abigail Hardingham and Cian Barry as Holly and Rob, two co-workers who’s blossoming romance quickly becomes invaded by Rob’s dead ex-girlfriend, Nina, played by Fiona O’Shaughnessy. O’Shaughnessy accurately portrays the uncomfortable, tormenting nature of unwanted history resurfacing with hideous effect, twisting her body into all manner of grotesque, zombified shapes and spitting snarky, bitter one-liners throughout.

The true crux of the story, however, is Hardingham’s character. She craves Rob’s devotion, but through her eyes we watch Rob’s obsession with Nina slowly possess him, and soon enough, it begins to possess her. Her descend juxtaposes Rob’s arc, who’s development, in many ways, is a reverse of Holly’s. The contrasting arcs highlights the destructive nature of obsession, and as there is no closure to be found in obsession, the film refuses us the same. We are offered no answers and are instead forced to endure Holly’s torment and derive whatever answers  we can from that.

The film’s minimalistic look and sound design accentuate the unpleasant details; be them splats of blood in a plain white bedroom or the grating sound of body parts twisting and creaking every time Nina materializes into existence. This is a calculated effort to torment the viewer in the same way the repetitive dripping of a tap might. By stripping away the music and the gloss, which would typically disguise such ugly sounds, we’re forced to notice and endure them.

What the Blaine brothers have crafted is a sinister dissection of the banality of obsession; specifically an obsession many people can relate to (whilst, perhaps, not openly admitting it).  This is an impressive directorial debut and a rare film which does not fit comfortably into any distinct genre (unless ‘malevolent rom-com - but not quite com or rom, horror - but not quite full blown horror’ is a genre; perhaps this film has just given birth to it.)