As the release of his debut feature Blackwood edges ever closer, we had the pleasure of catching up with British director Adam Wimpenny, to discuss the brooding, psychological thriller.
Wimpenny discusses how he came to be involved in the project, and how he went about remaining faithful to the tropes of the ‘ghost story’ genre, and yet remain unique in his own right. He also tells us if he too is able to feel the suspense of the piece as an audience member, and a little about his sophomore endeavour, The Mandrake Experiment.
So how did you first get involved in Blackwood, and what was it that attracted you to the project?
I worked with Adam Morane-Griffiths the producer, and Joe Hill, the writer, ans we teamed up eight or nine years ago. We met through mutual friends and we all liked similar projects, so we made a short film with Russell Tovey, which was a dark story about a key cutter, following him on a journey one night around London. It was a 15 minute thriller and we thought we could use that as a calling card to try and start finding money for a feature film. That little film started winning awards at film festivals which helped us, and people started taking us seriously. So we found the money and thought Blackwood would be a nice first project to do, there aren’t too many locations, it’s more of a mood piece and felt like it was a manageable first feature.
At its core it’s a classic ghost story – so was it fun to play on the conventionalities of that genre, and affectionately embrace them?
I love ghost films. Things that are atmospheric I really like. I grew up in Yorkshire, in an old farm house, miles from anyway. So as a kid growing up my mind was always running wild and anything to do with gothic ghost stories. So to now make my own ghost story was great from my point of view. As a director too, there’s almost like a tool box of devices you can use, like the cinematography, the music and the sound design, I love seeing changing those and manipulating them to get a response from the audience.
The premise itself is archetypal of the genre – a family with a sweet, young kid, moving to a big spooky house. Was it a challenge to find that balance, and be unique and compelling in your own way, and yet remain faithful to the tropes of the genre at the same time?
You’re always walking a fine line when trying to do a genre film like that, because you want the audience to come along for the ride. But then you want to subvert it a little and play with the audience’s expectations, is something we tried to explore when developing the script. We thought it would interesting to have the audience come in feeling like there was a familiarity to the story, but then to shift it as the film moved along. The audiences these days are very smart and savvy and recognise when coming to watch a film like this that there’s a rulebook. Almost unspoken, with that back and forth between the audience and filmmaker. The audience know there will be breadcrumbs laid out for them, and if you can play against expectation a little bit, with twists, you try and offer something different that the audience haven’t seen before.
Given the suspenseful nature of the picture, are you able to watch it back and get caught up in the moment and feel the same feelings an audience member would – or are you almost too close to the project?
You see it so many times, it’s such an unnatural thing to do and go back and watch the same film over, and over again. It gets to the point where it just becomes a series of images. The first time you lay a piece of music on, you get excited and feel it worked, you get that lovely pay-off, but that is diminished over time. But then you step back from it and you haven’t seen it for a couple of months, and you forget the whole experience of making it and the days when the generator went down, or we had to cancel the shoot cos we were knee deep in snow, all that gets forgotten about and you can immerse yourself in the film.
A big part of that is the fantastic location – which is so key to this film working. How did you stumble across that house?
We spent a long time looking, and I was travelling up and down the country. At one point we thought we would shoot in North Yorkshire, then Cumbria, then to the Cotswolds, almost for 12 months we were exploring and never quite found what we needed. In my evenings I was online trying to find house and stumbled across one and it turned out it wasn’t too far out of London. Because we had so little budget, that answered all of our problems, because we could use cast and crew from London, take them out to shoot all day, then take them back again, making the film a viable option as we didn’t have the money to take people to the other end of the country. So we used some movie magic, as a lot of this was shot in Surrey, which is where the house was, and then we went off to shoot additional stuff in Wales before slicing it together. So it does feel a lot more rural than it really was.
In regards to the performances, Ed Stoppard is fantastic in the lead, particularly in how he mentally declined as the film progressed. Did you shoot in chronological order? Because it certainly felt that way.
I’m glad you said that! We did absolutely nothing in chronological order at all. It made my life a real nightmare because if you’ve got the time and the money it’s always preferable to try and start at the beginning and work your way through to the end as much as possible, but because we had the house exclusively for three weeks we had to shoot everything out of order and never had that luxury. Every time we would do a day in the kitchen, every other room in the house became a make-up room, wardrobe room… So even if I wanted to do a tracking shot in the corridor, you’d swing the camera round and there was just stuff everywhere, so we couldn’t work that way. Ed’s a really good guy, he’s one of those people who likes to ask a lot of questions about the character. I think as he comes from a theatrical background he likes to work closely with the director, so we had some really enjoyable conversations, trying to map out on the day where his decline would rise and fall. He’s the protagonist in the story and you want to root for him, but at the same time he makes some quite questionable decision along the way. We wanted our audience to feel like we was moving away from them, and start to question his motives. To get to the point by the end of the film where you’re not sure where your allegiances lie.
As for yourself, this is of course your feature film debut. How much did this differ to the TV work you had done in the past?
I’ve been doing TV for about 12 years, directing shows since coming out of university. That taught me how to work quickly on low budgets and thinking on your feet, so doing this as a first feature film, a lot of that stuff I had learnt really came into play. We didn’t have a huge amount of resources, so that was very helpful. Where it was different, was the size of the crew. Sometimes I could turn up and there would be anywhere between 70 to 100 people on set. So to have that amount of people to communicate with really made me feel like I had to be on my toes all the time. Throughout the day you’re always being asked questions. I would arrive in my car in the morning and as soon as I set out there are people asking questions. Then all the way through lunchtime there are constant questions, so you never get an off moment. TV is more relaxed, you can switch your brain off here and there.
When having that many more people on set, did it bring about more pressure on you? Knowing they’re all here working together for something you’re at the helm of, meaning more more people to appease in a way. Was it a pressure you felt you thrived on?
I think so. It makes you more focused, you really have to have all the answers for everything. So there’s a huge responsibility. Especially with a smaller film like this, everyone is on board not for the pay-check, but because they believe in the project, so you want to do right by them. So you just want to try and show them that they were right to invest that time and effort in you.
So what’s next for you? Anything in the pipeline?
We’re setting up a film called The Mandrake Experiment, which is conspiracy thriller. We’re looking to shoot it in the far East, hoping to maybe shoot it in Singapore. Hopefully as soon as January. The funding is looking good and it looks like it may happen, and it would be on a much bigger scale than Blackwood in regards to budget and resources. It’s a script that was actually written before Blackwood and we’ve been working on for some time. We had been trying to get the finance but we needed Blackwood to help push it over the line. If it all goes ahead it would be amazing.
Blackwood is released on August 1st.
