DFF’s Alexandra Fanning talks ‘Face to Face’ with director Michael Rymer
Alex: Congratulations Michael, Face to Face has proven to be a major success, winning awards at film festivals around the globe. Did you imagine the film would be so universally understood and embraced?
Michael: No I didn’t imagine that this film would cross so many boundaries. It’s a talky, character-driven piece with thick Australian accents, and yet that hasn’t been a problem at all. I also thought that the more politically conservative segment of the population would not like Face to Face. And I’ve been very surprised at how excited business people are about the film. They come out of screenings and want to set up community conferences at their businesses.
AF: That’s a fantastic result! Face to Face also features an absolutely stellar cast including Vince Colosimo, Sigrid Thornton and Matthew Newton. How did you prepare your cast for the diversity of their roles?
MR: A big part of directing is casting and I think Loretta Crawford and Greg Apps did a stellar job. Getting those amazing actors to commit was the tricky part. We had no time for rehearsals so all the prep was in discussions. Then again, David Williamson’s source material was so strong that the characters spoke for themselves. The hardest part was cajoling the cast into tackling 12-15 pages of dialogue a day!
AF: Yes, this conversational, ensemble style of Face to Face is very different from your previous works such as Queen of the Damned and In Too Deep, did this pose certain challenges to your methods?
MR: Queen of the Damned and In Too Deep where both genre pieces that demanded visual intensity, stunt work, VFX etc. I know how to do that, but my real love is good writing and acting - which is why I wanted to do this. So I was very happy making this film.
AF: Originally written as a play, was the tragi-comic drama genre of Face to Face difficult to translate to film?
MR: When I was in film school in the States, we had Robert Altman come to speak and present “Streamers” which was a film adaptation of well-known play. Someone asked him about the screenplay and he replied “there was no screenplay, we just bought copies of the play from Samuel French.” With that in mind, I very consciously do as little “opening up” as possible. We shot a minimal number of flashbacks, which I wrote myself, but that was easy because David had described these events very clearly in the play’s exposition.
AF:....and as Face to Face was written from real life ‘case notes’ did you have much room to appropriate?
MR: David Williamson sat in on a number of Restorative Justice sessions and then fictionalised his characters to protect real people’s privacy. So we weren’t too locked into any historical facts. But we didn’t really add anything. Most of it was subtraction.
AF: The film was shot in twelve days with the new DSLR film equipment. How did this affect your technique as director?
MR: For years I’ve been walking onto sets and saying “Why are all these people here? Can’t we have a smaller crew?” Even through Stanley Kubrick shot most of his films with a tiny crew, its always seemed quite difficult to strip it down. In this case, we were really able to do that - there were literally more actors than crew. We had minimal lighting, and very unobtrusive equipment, and I think that helped the actors create more truthful and realistic behaviour. The other factor was the time: it was a lot to shoot in a very short schedule but it created a rawness and immediacy that we might not have captured if we’d shot with a large crew over a few weeks. The biggest compromise I had to make was to reduce the amount of camera movement. We didn’t have focus pullers or dolly grips and the lenses we were using were not designed for pulling focus live. So within a couple of days of shooting I decided to let the coverage become more static. But I think there is enough depth in the shots and enough variety in the coverage to keep it visually interesting.
AF: Does your return to Australia to shoot show a renewed interest/ confidence in our film industry? What are your thoughts about the state of the Australian Film Industry?
MF: I think the long-term prospects for the Australian film industry are excellent. We’re a well-educated, literate culture and we’ve proved ourselves to be excellent directors, actors, cinematographers and editors. We’re witnessing a great return of our filmmakers from overseas, bringing a fresh perspective home as well as experience and skill sets. I really feel like my generation -I’m in my forties-are just ‘coming into their own’. The challenge is to elevate our screenplay writing. There are wonderfully talented writers in Australia, but for some reason, we don’t seem to demonstrate the same imagination, variety, depth and polish that our counterparts in, say, England have achieved.
AF: Just announced is Face to Face’s inclusion in the Melbourne International Film Festival. Do you have plans to develop any more works in our part of the world?
MR: Of course! I’m actively reading plays, novels, screenplays…. There are a lot of stories yet to told- we haven’t scraped the surface. The challenge is the current state of the international market. Australian films have always been an export product because the market here is too small by itself to sustain an industry. So our films have to work internationally, but it’s a tough time for independent cinema the world over.
AF: We are very proud of our Australian filmmakers that ‘make it’ overseas, are you still excited and proud to be a part of such film festivals?
MR: Dungog Film Festival has been branded the “Australian Sundance” and it does seem to have the energy - the “do it yourself ethos” that doesn’t rely on government beaurocracies. So we’re very happy to be “branded” as part of that movement.
AF: Are there any other projects in the works that you can let us in on?
MR: It’s bad luck to talk too much about it but I’m trying to do a follow-on project from “Face to Face” - using the same team and the same gear but to tackle something a bit more ambitious.
AF: Finally, what advice would you give to someone wanting to follow in your filmmaking footsteps?
MF: Well my footsteps have blown away with the wind - the landscape changes. When I went to film school, it was considered something frivolous - like getting a degree in metaphysical poetry. Now the film schools have sprouted like mushrooms churning out vast numbers of graduates into an industry that can’t employ its veteran professionals. So I actually wouldn’t recommend that path necessarily. My experience doing a small amount of teaching and having young filmmakers approach me for advice over the years is that the real energy is on the streets. With all this new gear, you can make feature-quality movies for almost no money. So my advice is write a really great script and shoot it. Don’t wait for anyone to give you permission to make a film.
Thank you for talking to me today Michael, we look forward to see what you come up with next!
My Pleasure.
For more details on Face To Face visit the official website
