|
Your new movie How
Deep is the Ocean - in a few words, what's it about?
It’s about a young woman running from her past but fails. She wants
to lose herself and fit in the crowd but never succeeds and ultimately
discovers an inner strength and resilience she never knew she had. I’d say it’s a dark comedy drama and coming-of-age film wrapped
into one. To what extent can you identify with How
Deep is the Ocean's lead character Eleanor, and is the film in any
(however roundabout) way autobiographical?
I identify with Eleanor in the extent she’s a rebel. I hope people
identify with Eleanor in the fact she’s defiant rebellious and doesn’t
put up with anyones shit. Eleanor endures a lot of negative male behavior throughout the film and
refuses to let it beat her down. It’s not the safest world for women and I wanted to authentically
portray what that experience is like.
Eleanor is very much her own individual but a lot of the situations she
found herself in throughout the film happened to me. Like Eleanor I moved to Melbourne with nothing trying to start my life
over again. I got a room in a run down boarding house in a very dangerous part of
the inner city, and it was here where I met someone who became the
inspiration for Roy played by Cris Cochrane. We became very close over the
next few years and unfortunately like the character of Roy he passed away
very young.
I also worked a lot of my jobs when I was younger that I didn’t enjoy,
that’s the only autobiographical element really.
(Other) sources of inspiration when writing How
Deep is the Ocean?
Inspiration came from many places - the film is autographical so
obviously my own experiences fed into the script. I think I was drawing a lot on my huge inferiority complex I had when I
was growing up, “oh man I’m such a fuck-up, nothing good will ever
happen to me because I’m so lost.” Now I’m older I realize we’re
all lost. Every single person Eleanor comes across on her journey is missing
something from their lives and they can’t explain or understand it. They’re yearning for something they can’t articulate.
From what I've read, How
Deep is the Ocean only had a very basic script with most of the
dialogue being improvised by the actors - now what made you choose that
approach to filmmaking, and what are the advantages and maybe also
challenges making a movie that way? Yes the script was divided into chapters rather
than a conventional script, each chapter was a couple of paragraphs long, somewere only one
sentence, but each was an episode in Eleanor’s life with a beginning,
middle and end.
For many years I’ve been intrigued by improvisation and had
experimented with it on and off with my short films and other feature
scripts I wrote which I was trying to workshop. I found the stuff that happened in the moment more interesting
than my writing and couldn’t figure how to sustain that energy for an hour and a
half. Then my collaborators and friends Ivan Malekin and Sarah Jayne Portelli
[Sarah Jayne and Ivan
Malekin interview - click here] released an improvised feature film called
Friends Foes and
Fireworks, which takes place over New Year’s Eve and was literally
shot in one night! That opened my eyes to the possibilities of that approach to
filmmaking. To my knowledge they’ve made three or four more improvised feature
films since then.
There were some teething problems in the beginning - in film every
second counts and every single word of dialogue should have an impact. Without set dialogue the actors tended to get distracted and go in a
different direction, which wasn’t really interesting to watch. That’s when I stopped and said “Alright guys this isn’t working,
let’s try a different way and try to really get the core of this
scene.” Once we all reached this understanding we moved pretty fast.
What can you tell us
about your overall directorial approach to your story at hand?
My role wasn’t so much to direct the actors' every move but help guide
them to where they had to go scene for scene. By the end of it we were such a finely tuned machine the actors
directed themselves.
When it came to post production I was in complete control of my vision
and had this intense sense of precision I’d never experienced before. For example when we did the colour grade there’s a scene where
Eleanor (Olivia Fildes) and Roy (Cris Cochrane) go into the a night club I
could tell our colour gradist exactly what shade of blue were reflecting
in the neon lights. When I did the soundtrack with composer Michael Mumford, I could
communicate how hard the drum snares should be, how high the notes should
be, how heavy the piano chords should be.
Ed Harris said “A director is someone who has something to say and
knows how to say it.” As a result our post production process was done fairly quickly.
Do talk about How Deep
is the Ocean's key cast, and why exactly these people?
The film has four main characters and focuses on the
positive and increasingly detrimental friendship between Eleanor (Olivia
Fildes) and Roy (Cris Cochrane), and the love triangle between Eleanor, the
shy and reserved Matthew (Will Weatheritt) and the married but compromised
Charlie (Adam Rowland)
We had over 500 actors apply for the main role of Eleanor Grey and
Olivia came in pretty late. We chose her because she couldn’t
possibly be more different from Eleanor in every way and embraced that
challenge. It was Olivia’s first lead role in a feature film and it was my first
feature film as a director and we both have a lot of faith in each other.
We had to, otherwise it never would’ve worked. With Olivia it’s not what she’s saying that’s important but
what she’s not saying. She has this unique ability to convey complex feelings and emotions
without saying a word. Very few actors can do that.
Adam Rowland was reccomended by a mutual friends of ours we met him for
a coffee and hit it off right away. Due to the pandemic he was unable to participate in screen tests but he
sent us a self tape which blew us away, and the rest is history.
Will Weatheritt is an old friend of mine, we go back about ten years, we
were always looking for something to do together so he was in from the
beginning. Will is a very extroverted charismatic person, so I thought it
would be interesting to see him play a more vulnerable person like Matt
I chose Cris Cochrane because in the script the character of Roy was
this cliche melabcholic self loathing alcoholic, and Cris Cochrane
approached it in a completely different way and gave Roy this crazy energy
in every scene. It reminds me of a documentary once I saw about soldiers who returned
from the First World War and were diagnosed with shell shock - the eyes, the
constant moving, they can’t stand or sit still. They were prisoners of their personal trauma just like the character of
Roy is a prisoner of his past trauma. He’s literally stuck in his past.
I'd grown up around a lot of alcoholism and it was important to me and
Cris to make that aspect of the character as realistic and authentic as
possible. A few words about the shoot as such, and the on-set atmosphere?
The shoot was spread across 14 days, and we had to capture at least 4 to
5 pages per day or we were screwed. Despite the pressure the atmosphere was very laid back and casual.
Being my first feature I was painfully aware of how many people were
depending on me so I was a nervous wreck not eating or sleeping much,
excessively drinking energy drinks and chain smoking the tobacco-free
cigarettes that were meant to be for or actors, to my producer's dismay. Everyone else had a great time,
so that’s all that matters. When it came to all the outdoor scenes they were all shot guerilla
style, no permits, no permission and no rules. There was no time to get anxious on those days. We did what we had to do.
Anything you can tell us about audience and critical reception of How
Deep is the Ocean?
Surprisingly good. I’m very much a worse case scenari- person so I was prepared for the
worst. I was very conscious that certain decisions I’d made with the story
and characters were going to piss people off. There’s been a few nasty comments made about me online, but the
positives outweigh the negatives. We’ve receive 25 critic reviews so far most which
are good. Our primary audiences are in the United Kingdom, America and
Europe. The industry in Australia treats us like we don’t fucking exist.
Any future projects you'd
like to share? Nothing at the moment. How Deep
is the Ocean took five years to finish and I’m exhausted and
burnt out. Making a feature film is a huge undertaking, you never truly understand
how physically and mentally tough it is until you go through with it. You’re not just creating a film, you’re building an entire world out
of nothing.
I’m thirty eight years old. I feel like best case I may have one or
two more feature films in me before the time is up, but I have to say
something different, and right now I have nothing to say. I would rather never release anything ever again
than create a film that is mediocre.
What got you into filmmaking in the first
place, and did you receive any formal training on the subject?
No real formal training to speak of. I started as a writer when I was 17 years old in my hometown of Whyalla,
and the nearest city was 5 hours away. I’d been fairly indifferent to cinema and didn’t consider myself a
particularly intelligent or creative person. I then saw the cult film Henry Fool by Hal Hartley,
and it permanently rewired my brain and put me on the higher path I’m still
onto this day. That was over twenty years ago and I’ve never seen another film quite like
Henry Fool. This was before social media existed but there were websites that
published Hollywood screenplays, Taxi Driver,
Fight Club and many
others. It was through this I was able to learn the basics of writing a
script. I used the town's isolation to my advantage spending many late nights
writing trying to find my voice.
 |
I spent many years writing mediocre scripts because I was writing about
people and things I knew nothing about. I was just regurgitating stuff I’d already seen made in films.
This changed when I looked inwards and stated writing about my own
experiences that’s when everything really started to take off.
What can you tell us about your filmwork prior to How
Deep is the Ocean? I wrote directed and produced five short films prior to making
How
Deep is the Ocean, The Comedian (2010), Rearranged (2011),
Empire Of Nowhere (2012), Growing
Out (2013) and I Miss The War (2018). All these films are available for free on my Vimeo:
https://vimeo.com/andrewwalsh How would you describe
yourself as a director? I am a master of nothing and a student of everything. Filmmakers who inspire you? Fatih Akin, Alkinos Tsimildios, George Roy Hill, Hidiaki Anno, Andrea Arnol, Wong Kar Wai, Alejandro
G. Iñárritu, Jacquis Audiard. Your favourite movies? In no particular order:
Slapshot, SLC! Punk, Henry Fool, Ovosodo, End Of Evangelion, Apocalypse Now, Cemetery
Man, The Adventures Of Sebastian Cole, On the Edge. ... and of course, films you really deplore?
 |
Feeling lucky?
Want to
search
any of my partnershops yourself
for more, better results?
(commissions earned) |
The links below
will take you
just there!!!
|
|
 |
I don’t really deplore anyone or anything anymore. There’s a lot of
films I don’t like so I choose not to watch them. I’m sure there are many who feel the same way about me.
Your/your movie's website, social media, whatever else?
www.Instagram.com/andrewwalshfilms
www.Instagram.com/howdeepistheoceanmovie
www.facebook.com/howdeepistheoceanmovie
How Deep
is the Ocean can be rented or purchased through our Linktree: https://linktr.ee/howdeepistheoceanmovie
Anything else you're dying to mention and
I have merely forgotten to ask? No I’m good! Thanks for the
interview!
|
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
amazon.de
eThaiCD.com
