By Travis Johnson
In Ellipsis, the first feature film directed by renowned Australian actor David Wenham (The Boys, Lord of the Rings, Lion) a chance encounter between two strangers (Benedict Samuel and Emily Barclay) leads to a night of adventure, connection, and revelations on the streets of Sydney. Almost entirely improvised and shot quickly and cheaply in real locations, Ellipsis was a test of creativity and adaptability for all involved – but as Wenham explains, such circumstances can lead to serendipitous discoveries.
This is your second foray as a director following your segment of 2013’s The Turning, and it’s a film with a lot of formal constraints. What led you to choosing a project with such an uncoventional approach?
Well, I didn’t plan to make the film, essentially. I was planning to make another film, which I’d spent at least six years working on. I’d written the film, imagined it, dreamed it, planned it, and had gotten to the stage of just beginning to shoot the film and a little bit of money fell out and the film fell over, as they do.
So then I was left with a sleepless night, thinking, ‘Ooh, what will we do?’ and I was thinking about the predicament of the two actors that I’d cast, and those two actors were Benedict Samuel and Emily Barclay in that film. The fact that they’d spent a heap of time getting into the heads of the characters I’d written for them, I realised that I’d always wanted to make an experimental film. Experimental not in subject matter, but in process – how films are actually made and constructed themselves. I’d always wanted to do a film over the course of one night, and the more I thought about these things I thought, ‘Well, maybe let’s turn this situation to our advantage’ and the next day I rang up [producer] Robert Connolly, I rang up the two actors, and I pitched them this idea. ‘Okay, this is the situation. How about we make an experimental film?’
I came up with the idea of [making it in] 10 days. 10 days was deliberate because we only had a very, very small amount of money, so it was doable, and the 10 days was broken up so I could come up with a simple narrative of the film, I could come up with ideas for characters to fill that narrative, workshop the characters with the two actors, and then for seven days we would shoot the film in real operating environments in a sequential method. And then to also experiment with a way of working, to make things that I’ve also been interesting in playing with. So the result of that is Ellipsis.
That’s fascinating in concept, but I imagine that when the rubber met the road you met some difficulties that you didn’t anticipate.
I know this is going to sound strange, but there were surprisingly very few hurdles. And I know that if I did this same thing again it probably wouldn’t work out like this and we would probably encounter many, many more hurdles. But there were so many serendipitous moments along the way. As I said, the film wasn’t scripted, it was one hundred percent improvised and we were open to whatever happened on the day – the people we met in their environments. There was no rehearsal, 95 percent of the scenes were one take with two cameras. It was a dice roll in terms of the people the characters encountered along the way and whatever.
What were the hurdles along the way? The only time during the shooting when I thought, ‘Hmm, possibly this isn’t going to work?’ was the second day of shooting down by Bondi after the Sculpture by the Sea scene and the elements took over. It was 45 degrees in the shade, there were too many people, the actors were starting to flag, and I thought this all might be too difficult. But then a storm came through and we couldn’t film any more, and so we just stopped filming. And it was that little break that made us. We went to a little café, sat down and talked about where we were in the film and whatever, picked up and came up with a whole heap of ideas and went on from there.
So, there was only one moment on set when I questioned the whole conceit of the project. And then in post-production the great thing is that I was away for about seven months after we did principal photography – I was acting overseas – and so I put the film on the shelf for seven months. And so then coming back to it very fresh. I could see the film very clearly and objectively, so it made the post-production period, especially working with Nick Meyers the editor, a really fantastic creative process. It wasn’t subjective; I could be very clear about what could go, what would work, and how we could shape the film with the material we got.
With using the same actors, Benedict and Emily, that were cast in your defunct project, did you simply translate the existing characters from that project into a new scenario?
No, they were completely different characters, completely different. With Ellipsis, we had to divest the characters from the previous film completely. The only way it was going to work with the time constraints was to come up with characters that weren’t too far removed from who and what both Benedict and Emily are themselves, otherwise it would be very, very difficult to improvise in-situ with characters that would need a very, very long period of workshop. So to answer your question, no, the characters were completely different.
With the improvisational nature of the project you must have had to put an incredible amount of trust in your actors. How did you approach that as a director, and with your experience as an actor yourself?
Well, it’s something as an actor that I’ve wanted to do for many years myself. And for many years I’ve had an idea of a character that went through one night by himself, but when this situation arose I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll give this idea over to these two actors and make it two people’ and then came up with the idea of these two characters coming together by chance and then parting, and they’re changed in some way or form by spending that time together.
As an actor I’ve always wanted the opportunity that as afforded both Benedict and Emily to take the shackles off, because when you’re working from a script, on a formal, scripted piece, you’re very constrained by what you actually physically can do: you have to stop talking as the script demands, when the script demands you turn and walk to a particular place. It’s sometimes completely counter to the actor’s instinct and intuition. So I wanted to empower actors to act completely instinctively and intuitively as we do in real life every day. I get very frustrated watching films – I’ve done it for many years and I’m guilty of it myself – I can see the construct on screen the whole time, I can hear the writer’s voice. Regardless of how good the actors are, I can hear the writer’s voice. So I’ve always been interested in working in film where it does represent reality a little bit closer than what normally appears on screen.
I’ve been a believer for many years that performances on film and television aren’t necessarily influenced by how we behave in life, but they’re influenced by previous film and television performances. Actors behave differently once the camera’s on them than they would in real life. On screen people look at each other in the eyes far longer than they would in real life. People on screen pause far longer than they would in real life. It’s a different reality.
You’ve worked with a huge number of great filmmakers over the years. Was there anyone who influenced your approach on this as a director? Was there anyone you pulled particular lessons from when it came to mounting this project?
There’s many actually, I’ve gotta say. There’s a number consciously and a number unconsciously. Local people who have influenced me: Jane Campion, Garth Davis very recently, Paul Cox was a big influence. And then films that I’ve seen: the French New Wave is a big influence on me, the American New Wave, but also a big influence on me were the directors I thought weren’t very good at all, and I’ve worked with a number of those as well – that has been as insightful as working with the great directors as well. Consciously and unconsciously I’ve put aside a whole heap of notes throughout my career that, when I stepped behind the camera, may have been some assistance.
Did you have a thematic goal in mind from the outset or did that emerge through the production process? How different is the resulting film from what your originally envisioned?
Well, the idea was always, as I said, two people meeting by chance and being changed by the encounter. How they were going to change? We were going to allow that to happen. One of the great things that happened – well, there were many of them, literally what I would call happy accidents. That’s always my favourite thing with any creative endeavour as an actor – things you don’t predict or plan for are always better than scripted moments. And one of them was a character, this man who approaches our two characters. I just saw him walking down the street in Kings Cross and I asked the two cameramen to turn over and I allowed our actors literally just to encounter this man. I didn’t know what was going to happen – nothing could have happened or it could have been completely different – but that encounter gave us ideas about where the film should lead to next. And that sort of happened along the way. One thing led to another and then it became obvious, the little thematic concerns that arose out of the film.
Presented by the Gold Coast Film Festival and Asia Pacific Screen Awards (APSA), the Ellipsis Queensland premiere will take place at the Gold Coast Arts Centre this Thursday, February 8 as a special prelude to the Gold Coast Film Festival in April. David Wenham and producer Robert Connolly will be on hand for a post-screening Q&A. Limited tickets are still available here.
