Goldbricks In Bloom
The difficulties where the usual things, no budget, no time. It was made for hardly any money. I didn’t find funding outside of friends. I kept it simple.
Husbands and Wives, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and a bunch of Godard films are what inspired the idea. I’ve always been influenced by Goddard, mainly the attitude to creating. I try and create work that has my own voice and way of telling a story. At least if I try do that and everyone hates the film, I can at least say that I did it my way and I can’t blame it on anyone else.
I tend to write all of my personal projects. When I started, I asked people to write stuff but they were too slow, so I did it myself. Now I have a particular voice so I prefer working with my own scripts.
Husbands and Wives is one of my all time favourite films. It’s had the most effect on the way I edit and what I look for with performances.
I skipped forward in my own film. At the start of the film I thought most people would watch online. If they got bored, they’d skip ahead. So I decided to put that in the film and skip before they did.
I skipped forward in my own film. At the start of the film I thought most people would watch online. If they got bored, they’d skip ahead. So I decided to put that in the film and skip before they did. I also turned my narrator into subtitles because the narrator didn’t want to distract from the scene, however I still needed him to be distracting.
I used two Canon C300’s and mix of Zeiss and Canon Cine primes. I like to shoot dialogue with two cameras. I did the edit myself. The colour grade was done by my long standing colourist Jack McGinity at Time Based Arts. The sound design was done by another long time collaborator Patch Rowland at Machine. Both in London.
I tend edit the majority of my work, except commercials as it takes up too much of my time. I love editing but I never usually credit myself as an editor. I’m already down as the writer/director. I’m not looking to edit for anyone else. I usually plan out my films and can see the edits as I write. Usually when I get the final footage, it’s very close to what I originally planned, structurally speaking.
This was my favourite shoots I’ve ever done. It was also the hardest project I’ve ever done. We shot 120 pages in 12 days for $35k. Multiple locations and a fairly large cast. We only had 8 crew members (including myself). It simply couldn’t be possible without everyone putting in the work with the best attitude I’ve ever witnessed. We all pulled each other up when it was getting tiring. There was one morning when I had 1hr of sleep. At 5am my 2nd camera assistant arrived. He cracked a joke and instantly built my energy up.
Nobody was there that didn’t want to be there, this created an unbreakable spirit.
