Off the Beaten Path - A Q&A with John Bradburn and Robert Chilcott of Vertigo Magazine

A young woman, alone in a cottage, with no-one to speak to. She appears troubled, quietly self destructive. There are clues that suggest she may have had a miscarriage, or an abortion. She finds a young man in the woods nearby – a primal figure that grunts, punches trees and wounds his leg. “You should put some ice on that?” she says, finally, after fourteen minutes of screen time without any words. His actions parallel her state of mind. There are occasional cutaways to an abandoned room, hinting at genre devices such as money and violence, but remaining unexplained.

Wrists paints a picture of an English countryside that is not so very English at all, much more akin to the brutality of Peckinpahs Cornwall, or the rural nightmares of Borowczyk. The ambient music permeates, like discharge, under the green, green grass, creating a texture of murk and discord. There’s a lot going on that the characters are unwilling to verbally express. They need to bleed out.


RC So, where did all this start?

JB The first idea was just imply seeing a house alone by a field. Then wondering who lived inside. Slowly this idea of a woman watching a man ride a motorbike emerged. I think the film is a selection of images that show some time for these people. I then got stuck with the idea of whether or not this is real time or imaginary time. I worry that cinema is too insistent on objective reality and I think we do not live in objective reality. We live in a mess of fantasy, fear and some reality that all merge together. We all have trouble remembering an event as 100% real it is always messed up with the thoughts we had at the time, things we wish we had said and so on. So I wondered how possible it would be to make a film that tried to flow in this type of way.

RC How/where did you choose these actors?

JB Auditions. Heather, Mish, Dave and Nicola all came from auditions with a large amount of improvisation. All the scenes were rehearsed and written at the same time through improvising the scene over and over again. I like to discover rather than plan.

RC What form of script did you work from?

JB 6 pages I think. Outlines for scenes mainly and ideas for images. The previous film I made – Kyle – was made in much the same way. I like to know where the film is going but not how it will get there. My background as a cameraman has made me interested in observing the actors perform and I want to be excited and surprised each time we go for a take. With Kyle there was a large amount that wasn’t shot that was in the outline yet I think the film improved without these scenes. With this film I let myself be a little more of a victim of chance to see what scenes would get shot or not. Narrative Darwinism.

RC Who were your influences before you started, and looking at the finished film, who would you say the influences are?

JB My first influence was Philippe Grandrieux. I think this is quite obvious in certain scenes and yet remains fairly well hidden for the majority of the film. I think looking back at it the Dardenne brothers are still having an influence on me especially their use of timing and pace. Also Andrew Kotting and his views of the English countryside. Some shots rip off Stalker and I guess the whole narrative comes from David Lynch in its use of subjective experience. It’s interesting to look at your film, I think, as a product of irrationality. What can you learn about yourself and the world through film? I love open texts because they include the audience in an ongoing dialogue about the world – you are involved in bringing yourself to the film to decode it’s meanings in a way specific to you.

RC The ‘torture’ scenes feel like a dream, or a nightmare, but maybe the rest of it is as well – the man in the woods could be an imaginary friend, or an imaginary child – the one she has perhaps lost.

JB Maybe.

RC The mothers presence threatens the internal psychological indulgence of the daughter. When she turns up, it suggests that the girl needs to grow up, that her angst is perhaps a generational thing and she should snap out of it?

JB Exactly. The mother has no real sympathy for the daughter, but a lot of love. She still sees her as a daughter. One question I always ask myself is how can a whole relationship be simplified to a scene or a moment and how can that become an image. The image of the mother combing the (grown up) daughters hair does that in the film. To read the image you get a fairly good idea about their relationship.

RC You shot this without recourse to external funding. Cheaper equipment and formats have made this more possible. Production, and post production, is easier, more accessible, but is there still a problem with distribution. Are the powers that be wary of films made outside the system?

JB I think there is still an idea that an audience will not see a film that cost less that £500,000. Yet this ‘art house’ audience is not big enough to support this in any way. Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant is so far a flop (Taking $9 million from a $25million budget), and that should pull in the crowds. I accept my film has a small audience and so it was made for a small budget. The next question is how to find that audience. That’s why as well as international festivals I will be taking the film around the country and arranging small screenings to show to people. Like a band would gig an album.

RC You’ve been working on a short film scheme via the UKFC, where a decision is still pending as to whether it will go through. This decision period has been going on for 22 months? Will they see the fact that you’ve made this as enterprising, or will it confuse them?

JB I don’t know. We did not get the money in the end and Wrists was written, shot and finished before we got the final judgment. I think the Film Council still sees this sort of film making as an anomaly – something to be grown out of before making a proper film. There are exciting international film- makers who’s works are shown once or twice in this country and never seen again. I think it’s a viscous cycle here – don’t show different films and people do not know the possibilities of cinema, and then people do not try to make more personal or experimental or truthful films. The same goes with our idiotic belief that young people will not watch old films. Most kids find Buster Keaton’s The General the best film they’ve ever seen but Britain gets stuck in ideas about things rather than reality. So maybe the problem is with distribution or funding I don’t know. Certainly we need a shift to making films with far lower budgets (A full feature for £15k with everyone paid) and new distribution methods for different types of films.

RC But it seems unlikely that an industry will support a feature film made for 15k (unless it had a hook or gimmick attached that could be easily marketed), because, if you pay everyone a set rate, the crew would be skeletal, you would probably be shooting on a domestic camera bought on the high street, and editing it on your laptop (rather than employing a full crew, hiring a mid-range ‘professional’ camera, and a plush Soho post-production facility house where a runner brings you Mars bars and Coca cola every 15 minutes), therefore there’s nothing in it for the industry to promote a film that ‘costs nothing’? And I’m sceptical about digital distribution, because many of the independent cinema chains will not have the money, or the grants available, to keep updating their digital projectors on a routine basis. And also, a six page script would not be exploitable enough for a development period – how could a reader or script editor be employed? I think I’ve answered my own question here. Maybe there’s a case for a model of, say 150K, as a compromise/doff the cap, to the industry?

JB Maybe. It’s a question of if you alienate yourself from the industry or try to run with it. The industry has made some great films but I worry this is despite rather than because. Lynn Ramsay hasn’t made a film for eight years and is this because of her or the industry? My film was shot on a mid range camera in HD and edited on a home computer. The music was recorded on the same computer and the mix was also done on the same computer. The blog page and the stills were made with the same computer and I am writing this reply on the same computer. Broadcast spec is achievable on an out of the box computer. So why spend all of the money on hiring anywhere else? Any problems with my film looking a little rough are issues than can and will be resolved in my next film by more planning, more testing and more research.

I think glamour plays a big part in the industry and my system is very unglamorous. There is a lot of physical work. I have always had problems with the role of director and the differentiation caused. There is a lot of magic to the industry that is ultimately – I believe – wrong. Maybe ‘art’ filmmakers are the worst of all because they demand large budgets for niche films. I can take Kevin Smith’s Cop Out costing $30 million, as it will make $50 million but when you want millions for a film with a small reach then you have to ask yourself why. The industry might not support my film but in truth I have had nothing but good words coming from the UK Screen agencies. I think I am outside of their way of doing things and so they can’t offer much help. It is a lonely business when you only have yourself to look at and blame for the quality of your film.

As for digital projection – show it anywhere with a data projector or buy one yourself. Own the means of production and distribution. There is certainly a case for compromise – but we should not be realistic but empirical. How much are the living wages for these professions and how quickly can we make the film and make it very high quality. It costs what it costs.

RC What’s next?

JB I feel I pulled a lot of punches in this film. It’s sitting in the middle, not quite being anything narrative or non-narrative. The next film will be far more ambient and emotive. It will probably be a horror. But horror in an Adam Curtis sense and not a Wes Craven sense.