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Title: Between the Lines
Runtime: 8 min
Country: USA | UK
Director: Rollo Hollins
Placement: Award of Merit
Competition: December, 2015
Synopsis: Two young actors, strangers thrown together in a casting, spend a fleeting summer rehearsing and learning to fall in love on stage.
OR: What was the inspiration for your film?
RH: I think it had been brewing for a long time. It’s a mixture of themes that have aways been of interest and I think will continue to be. I come from a documentary background, so I’ve always been interested in the idea of reality vs. fantasy and how our own wants, fears and even external forces can blur that divide for us.
I mean – really it’s a very simple, basic love story – we ‘get it’ in the first 5 seconds of the film, even the two characters who we expect to fall in love, understand the overbearing sense of fate that surrounds them. But what I wanted to explore was what it meant for the them to accept it.
The situation came from a very close family friend I grew up with, who was just coming out of three years of training as an actor at RADA. Having being broken down and then built back up in the most traditional sense, he had some incredible stories in which he had to essentially choose what he felt was real or not about various situations, on and off stage. I instantly thought it would be a great background for a narrative.
Amazingly that same pal happened to be in LA when we were casting the film and ended up playing the lead – The great Josh Collins, who played opposite the incredible Arienne Mandi.
OR: When did you conceive the idea for your film and how long did it take before it was realized?
RH: It took about 6 months to secure the money and situation to make it. It was a strange process that was actually funded by a brand in the UK, so was more akin to winning a music video pitch than producing a short – I pitched the idea first which took a lot of time going back and forth to secure the money and support, only then did I write the actual script, which probably only took about 2 weeks. After that I flew to LA (I’m based in the UK), to start preproduction and work with Mandy Kahn who wrote the poetry in the play.
OR: What was the most challenging aspect of working in a short film format?
RH: Probably persuading everyone that my 16 page script would cut into a 7min short without issue and be affordable on the budget – This was my first short, but I’ve been directing for a while and was previously a DoP for a number of years, so experience told me that we’d shoot a lot that just wouldn’t make the cut, for whatever crazy reason that we’d never be able to foresee (mostly budget wise) – so I knew we’d have to over shoot and even over script to get a good finished film – even with a very ridged storyline.
That took a lot of explaining and trust I think, because it’s an edit process rather than production, especially shooting 35mm with very limited stock.
OR: What was the most challenging aspect of your production?
RH: Actually making the film was a dream. I loved every second of it. I got incredibly lucky with the cast and crew, lucky with the locations, weather and all the other day-to-day challenges AND had a great time in the edit to get to this cut.
There were naturally a lot of issues, but nothing more difficult than any other production. Film making is hard but we knew what to expect; money was always going to be tight, we fought very hard to shoot on film, we compromised where we had to and yet everyone worked very intensely and put a lot of honest heart into it – but I think that’s just part of the process you have to accept and also part of the joy.
We all had a very clear idea of what the film was supposed to be going into it, so we were all clear in our argument and resolve to make happen what we needed to – You gotta know what your fighting for.
OR: Do you have any advice for first-time filmmakers?
RH: So much and yet so little, haha.
As a wise woman once said “J.F.D.I.” (Just F**king Do It). Follow what feels right, find your taste and the consistencies in your own voice. Then repeat, repeat, repeat.
That’s the short version, in the long version I could talk for hours about the intricacies of what / how I think films should be made, from years of research, watching films, reading scripts / books, listening to podcasts, interviews and talks and most importantly making stuff and getting it wrong – but it’s probably best you go find out for yourself.