Interlude
4 min, United Kingdom, 2009

BEHIND THE SCENES GALLERY POSTER

FILMMAKER’S STATEMENT

This is a really fast paced movie in every way. The idea for the short film INTERLUDE has been conceived in an evening while I was reviewing my life at the time concerning the fact that there is a missing part that I can not see, something that needed to be changed. I was making some diagrams on the paper to get hold of the issue hopefully in a visual form. After making several drafts of circles, lines and place holders, I just realized that the possibility for making a short film has been emerged! A story that could be told quickly yet it had the potential to have different visual elements and locations in it.

Each movie follows its own nature in terms of storytelling which is typical to the particular form of the medium and so the idea of this film, although it might seems to be simple, has gone through several stages of filtering to convey the message in a relaxed yet meaningful way. The new way of thinking or the resolution that the character in INTERLUDE finds for her situation might not be something that everybody in the audience could relate to, the fact still remains that a shift in consciousness has been occurred in her; that is a definite answer to many of the problems that we might have.

The woman in this story is a wanderer in a way, it is not to say that walking aimlessly around city taking meaningless photos is necessarily a negative way of spending time. Though this could be seen as a stage in her life when she is unconsciously trying to remove herself from actually confronting the subject matter that needs to be dealt with in herself; it is like spending the reserved time. Of course there is a limit to this reserved  time and then again it is the main character who has to decide what she needs to do with her life. At the end of the story she will find that answer; for her it is to move on to the next stage.

Sometimes there are all the beauties in the world in front of us, but all we need to do is to look again with a fresh mind. Sohrab Sepehri the contemporary Iranian poet says: “We must rinse our eyes, we must look in a new way…” This short film is about rinsing the eyes, detaching from the past, not to hide from life just like somebody who’s behind the lens and the act of redemption and suffering.

This is the main text that needs corrections and proof reading:

Tagline:

“The Art Of Redemption Through Taking Photos”

Excerpt:

“This is a short film about a woman who is going out with her camera to take pictures of the famous London locations, but instead of focusing on what she is doing now, her mind wanders to her disheartened past experiences. So a cycle of failure starts to carry her around as the result of her photography is not acceptable to her and it goes on until she realizes that something needs to be changed.”

SYNOPSIS

Jane is taking pictures with her photo camera while wandering around in London but instead of focusing on what she is doing, her mind is hashing over all the problems in her past. We hear her thoughts as a echoed voice over. Though she is trying to do something new, the result is the same for her; every time she sees the printed pictures, they are not what she is expecting. She goes through this cycle several times in the film, until finally something shifts in her. She puts away the camera, she goes to buy an ice cream and starts to relax on a bench in a park; not thinking about taking more photos nor her past problems.

PRODUCTION NOTES

Filming INTERLUDE has been done in a very short time. We had our production team ready and everyone was interested to start another project after filming of THE COLD BURDEN had finished. There was not any rehearsals necessary due to only one character in the movie. We had 2 sessions to discuss the elements of the story. The only challenge was to shoot in as many as 10-12 different locations all over London in just 3 days. We ended up having lots of footage, which made the editing process somehow slow. The first version of the film was twenty one minutes, the next shorter version it became ten minutes and the final version we ended up telling the story in just 4 minutes. The pace of the film is quick and we have removed some of the location and landscape rushes from the finished work.

Holly Horner who acted as the main character in INTERLUDE was really open to the idea of acting solely through the facial expression and body language; there was no interaction in the film, not even a single line of dialogue. She contributed a lot in conveying the inner feelings of the character. There were lots of traveling during the day for shooting different scenes and the expressions of the character had to be changed just accordingly, matching the ideas that was scripted beforehand.

Sadredin Taheri, one the most talented New Age music composers in Iran, has agreed to join the project and make the music for this film. Though the score has an underlying rhythm in it, the overall mood changes as often and as frequently as the feelings of the character undergoes through different states. It contributes to the picture in a subtle and yet natural way.  We have done a lot of separate sound effects recordings for this film and at the same time there were lots of the street sounds that have been recorded on the set by our sound recording Amir Esfandiari who did a great job in mixing the final sound of the film.