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Your new movie White
Crow - in a few words, what's it about?
White
Crow is an ambitious spy thriller following now rogue agent JD
on a mission to hunt down members of his organization following
a dark realisation on a mission. I like to describe it as Winter
Soldier meets Jason Bourne.
From what I know, White Crow
is based on a webseries of yours by the same name - so what can you tell
us about the series, what inspired you to turn it into a feature film, and
what are the main differences between series and film?
We shot series 1 which consisted of 3 episodes. This was fairly well
received and it also won a couple of awards. Gearing up for series 2,
we were contacted by producer Djonny Chen who was keen to turn it
from a webseries into a feature film. We knew it would be a
massive undertaking but we jumped at the chance! Essentially the
first 15 minutes of the film is series 1 of the webseries. It was
great to have the chance to revisit your work and give it more scope! With
White Crow being an
espionage/conspiracy thriller, is that a genre at all dear to you, and
some of your genre favourites? And how would you decribe your approach to the thriller genre?
I will proudly admit I am a huge James Bond fan! I grew up with the VHS
collection, and every weekend I would watch a different one. My
first DVD was Mission: Impossible 2. There's a theme here. I just love
the spy genre. I am a terrible reader, awful at reading (funny coming
from a writer), but John le Carré's espionage world pulls me in, I just
love the mystery and treachery of it all! The Spy Who Came in from the
Cold is a favourite of mine.
Thrillers for me are cinema, they are not just action, they are not just
story, they are a combination of the two with incredible characters
to drive the story alone, and that is what drove this story for me,
incredible characters that we could grow. (Other) sources of inspiration when
writing White Crow? Homeland, Jason Bourne, many many spy films. White
Crow featured its fair share of action sequences - so what can you
tell us about the action and the stunt work in your movie?
Patience and practice, well for most of it. My assistant director and
great friend Matt McCartney comes from a stunt background and was first
port of call when discussing these sequences. The webseries had 2
technically difficult fight scenes in it, so it was looking at
them and how to improve them and make them more realistic. With the
assistance of Gareth Henry as well with the choreography we
practiced the main fights as much as we could to make sure we were being
as safe as possible. It's easy to improvise lines, but you can't all of a sudden
start improvising a fight scene as people are going to get hurt! Safety is
key in these situations, especially at such a low budget, everyone
needs to know their timings and their moves. With everything
in this film, we tried to make it as ambitious as possible!
Do talk about your overall directorial approach to your story at hand!
That's a good question. I was blessed to have such a fantastic cast and they really
helped with my direction. This is my debut feature film and some of
these actors are veterans of their art, so I would be lying if
I said I wasn't nervous! A lot of these days had to run like clockwork as there was so much to fit in, so a lot of the initial
direction came in prep Zoom calls to really flesh out the characters
before we reached the set. A few of
the actors had lived with the characters since the webseries so
they already had the characters fleshed out. In terms of the story,
I knew what I had set out to achieve. I had lived with this story in my
head for years, so it was a case of bringing it to life the best we
could with what we had. We had such an amazing team of people to work
with, Sam Wain our brilliant DoP whose cinematography really
elevates our locations, Suzzette Ortiz as our gaffer, she worked so
hard to light the scenes to our moody feel, and so many castmembers that worked so hard. I know I've gone a little off topic from
the direction but without this superb team to lean on I never would have
made it through directing this, I owe so much to them for helping make a
dream come true! What
can you tell us about White
Crow's cast, and why exactly these people?
White
Crow's cast for me is a perfect ensemble of talented actors,
each beautifully bringing their character to life. For most of the
cast, the journey has been nearly as long as mine. For the original webseries
we held an audition day in a theater in London and had
a good response from actors and actresses wanting to audition for
the various roles! For most of the roles we had clear stand-our
performances and others we had a much tighter affair. I enjoyed that
process. It was great to see these roles played slightly differently with
each performance, and to have a chance to experience that. I find
sometimes as a creative you can become quite narrow-minded
with an idea, you obviously have your own personal vision but
sometimes I feel you need to be somewhat flexible to get the best result.
It's cliché, but the cast is like a family to me. They all worked so hard
to bring their characters to life! Julian Gamm is perfectly as programmed and trying to break free JD, Andrew Rolfe is
sinister and power grabbing as Mason, James Graeme is a fan favourite as the
angry section chief Clifford, Noa Bodner and Christopher Mulvin as
a mysterious third party, they are all equally as brilliant in their roles.
Anything you can tell us about audience and critical reception of White
Crow? So far, so good! It's hard to gauge viewership at this stage, but
from who has seen it there have been great reviews! Very
positive, very much asking the questions we wanted to be asked. But time
will tell where it lands. Any future projects you'd like to share? Me and my team have 3 projects in the works, two I would like to
direct, one I am attached on as a producer. Lets just say one is
close to home, one is a short we would like to expand on, and one is a
different flavour altogether. What
got you into filmmaking in the first place, and did you receive any formal
training on the subject? The love of it! I love cinema! I love sitting in the dark and
watching stories unfold before me. I will be honest I self taught myself
90 percent of my career. I have attended Raindance for some evening
courses but I have learned as I have gone. Filmmakers
who inspire you? Denis Villeneuve, Gareth Edwards, Robert Eggers. Your favourite movies?
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Die Hard, SkyFall, Inception, Sicario, Mission: Impossible - Fallout. ...
and of course, films you really deplore?
Deplore is a strong word! This is a hard one. I find comedy hard
sometimes, it really needs to be witty for me! Your/your
movie's website, social media, whatever else?
https://www.instagram.com/whitecrowmovie/
https://www.instagram.com/newearthproductionsuk/
Thanks for the interview!
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