Director Drew Casson Interview: Part 2

The second half of the Drew Casson Interview was interrupted by a fire alarm, which he remarked was like the start of his latest film The Darkest Dawn. I was slightly worried as I’d not checked my apocalypse survival kit for a few weeks.

The first part of the interview is here. The overall discussion includes everything from his latest film, his creative process, working with actors without formal training, why he didn’t go to film school, internet trolls, flame wars, zombie apocalypse survival techniques and growing up in the small town of Hungerford.

IC: You’ve worked with a lot of the cast before on Hungerford. The two leads, Bethan Leadley and Cherry Wallis, were both new. I thought they were really good.

DC: I think both of them were fantastic. Bethan for me was the saving grace of that film. There was a lot of weight on that character to hold the camera and hold the audience’s attention and to be believable and for people to care. If they get half an hour into a film and don’t care about a character, you start to worry about what the audience are going to be saying. Bethan had a lot of weight on her shoulders and I can’t praise her enough because I think she delivered something quite extraordinary. For someone who has never acted before, it’s remarkable.

IC: How did you come across Cherry and Bethan?

DC: When we were in the casting process and made the decision to cast YouTubers, me and Jesse sat down with a long list of British YouTubers we had access to. There was a good fifty of them, and I was on holiday in France at the time, my homework was to go through the list and see who caught my eye and for what reason. I came across Bethan and thought there was something about her that the audience, and in some ways herself, had not seen yet. On YouTube she’s a fashion blogger and musician. She’s quite glamourous. I was interested in totally stripping that away and seeing the raw, naked version of that person in character form. When we met with her she had proper sass and proper fire and that’s what the character needed, so we knew we’d found our female lead.

IC: When I was told about the film I watched the YouTube trailer with a friend and we agreed that it looked quite good and it was the sort of film we would watch, but a lot of the comments on it were very negative. Does that wave of negativity bother you at all?

DC: I’m human. This is two and a half years of work. This sounds pretentious but any artist who releases any kind of work has to prepare themselves to wear their heart on their sleeve and to be exposed to opinion. I learnt the hard way with the first film because we had a lot of great comments but we had a lot of negatives. What I realised, as with every creative person, you can’t place everybody and all you can be is truly happy in yourself with what you’ve made. If you’re happy, you’re kind of untouchable. Negative comments hurt, once they get into your head you start doubting, imposter syndrome kicks in, you start thinking is it true, but if you are happy that you’ve made the best possible thing you can make, there’s nothing else you can do. With this film, negative comments are going to come in. A lot of people don’t like the found footage genre. I’m incredibly proud and incredibly happy with what we’ve managed to make. It was such a team effort and we all poured our heart and soul into this thing for years so nobody can take that away from us. We are astounded and elated by what we’ve made. So in answer to your question, of course it hurts but you can’t let it, you don’t have time for that. I’m happy with what we’ve made and it’s now time to move on.

IC: I was a bit annoyed on your behalf when I read some of the comments. I’d seen the trailer and though it looked good. I’d seen the film and thought it works, and I thought back to the people getting online and taking on a destructive persona.

DC: Once you actually watch people troll, not trying to be arrogant but the first thing that goes through your head is they clearly have no idea about any of this process. You have no idea from beginning, middle and end how you make a film and how hard it is. You’re purely judging it as a piece of entertainment, which is fine because that’s what we all do, but sometimes I think people are ruthless for the sake of being ruthless. Constructive criticism is totally different. Being negative for the sake of putting your opinion in the world, well, I think we all have an opinion on that.

 

IC: I interviewed Fabian Nicieza last week and he’s been writing comics for 30 years. He said he had a lot more respect for the times people would send him a letter and he really tries to not get drawn into a flame war online.

DC: That’s the tricky thing because you can comment just as quick. If someone wrote a letter you’d approach it in a very different way. It’s when it’s an instant connection, and more importantly instant negativity, there’s a little voice in your mind pulling you in and telling you do something about that and defend your position. It’s planting your feet firmly on the ground and saying I’m not being drawn into that.

IC: Some people choose to ignore social media but you wouldn’t have been doing this film without it. How do you balance trying to ignore the negative comments without ignoring social media?

DC: Social media is playing a pivotal role in the whole of this film. From the social stars to the way that we’re marketing, the publicity, social media is absolutely crucial. We’re marketing this film purely through social media so the power of it is unprecedented. The other side of the coin is when it turns hostile you get lured into this ongoing war with trolls.

IC: You can use the internet to create or destroy. It gives everyone an outlet but some people chose to use it negatively and be destructive for the sake of it.

DC: That’s what I think. That’s exactly what they’re doing. It’s because they can. All of a sudden they have an opinion and they must share it with the world. It’s not constructive. It’s not “this bit was like this because of this”, or “I felt like this because this and this is how you can solve it next time”, which is totally different. It’s “well that was shit” or “I could have done that better”. What’s the point? That’s not going anywhere. That’s not solving problems. To me, that just strikes me as a waste of time.

IC: You grew up in the small town of Hungerford which only has about 6000 people living there. What was it like? Were there fewer distractions growing up or is it hard for a young person now as they can waste their time online?

DC: I’m very, very proud to be from Hungerford. It’s one of the most beautiful places I know. I love it. I absolutely adore it. It’s my home. It’s where I grew up. It’s where most of my closest friends are from. I will rave about it all day long. It was beautiful on one hand. Absolutely astounding. I wouldn’t change any of it. But for someone who wants to be a filmmaker, at the time, you’re not near the British film industry. I left secondary school thinking I was going to have to move to London in a month. You don’t have cinematographers living in places like Hungerford, or if you do they are few and far between. I was doing what I loved out of my bedroom. For seven years my office, my working environment, my green screen, my camera department, my writing room was my bedroom with my mates, which is quite incredible really. You get to that age where all your mates are going to Uni or somewhere else or getting jobs, and I wanted to branch off and get into the British film industry and that is certainly not in Hungerford. This is where it gets ridiculous because I met Jesse and we made the first film. We shot it all in Hungerford. It was completely fitting being born and bred there that the story was set in that place. We premiered it in the BFI [British Film Institute] and I had this mini revelation of “so it can be done, you can make a film wherever you are” and premiere it in London at the British Film Institute. All of a sudden, that daunting prospect that was in my head for years totally disappeared. The connection between the places, the distance was gone. It was an achievable goal. It was quite extraordinary growing up in Hungerford and I wouldn’t change it for the world, because being so small gave us more focus. When I say “us”, I made all my films with my mates. Tom, who played Adam in both films, he’s my cousin. I still use the closest people around me. We’d be at school on a Friday afternoon and my friends would turn to me and ask what we were shooting on Sunday because it gave everyone something to do that wasn’t buying a crate of beer, going skateboarding or sitting at home playing video games. It gave us something constantly creative and constructive to do. It’s funny you asking me as it’s making me think about it. It gave us a lot of focus I certainly wouldn’t have got otherwise.

IC: In the past you had young people buying a guitar, learning three chords and starting a band. In the last ten years or so you’ve got YouTube and cameras becoming really accessible. Is this almost the logical outlet for young people now? You could start a band but you can also make films instead.

DC: Now you’ve got a little Canon DSLR in your hand and all of a sudden you can shoot stuff that looks like it’s on 35mm. I’ve been interviewed a lot in the past couple of weeks and one of the things that keeps coming up is talking about the blurred lines between what would be considered classic Hollywood and Indie filmmaking. The lines now are becoming so ridiculously blurred, it’s why we can achieve films like The Darkest Dawn on £45,000. One of my favourite examples is Gareth Edwards’ Monsters, which was made for below a million quid. That guy smashed it out of the ballpark and they gave him Godzilla.  The lines kind of don’t exist anymore. It’s about how much time and effort and energy you want to put into it. It’s not where the technology begins and ends, it’s where you begin and end.

IC: What’s next for you?

DC: I’m about to finish shooting my own short film that I’m very excited about. It’s not found footage, it’s purely cinematic. It’s called Sweet Water. Huge, huge ridiculous concept which is that, in the future, all of earth’s water has been polluted by an interstellar gas cloud and a mission is sent to space to locate and extract water from the moon and save humanity. It’s about 25 minutes long. We’re kind of using it as a pitch in the hope that someone big will see it and go, “oh wow, that would make a lovely £130 million movie with Matt Damon”. But at the same time I haven’t done something cinematic for years so it’s given me huge focus. I’ve taken the knowledge I’ve acquired over the last four years and plummeted that into a film about a mission to space. That should be finished at the start of next year [2017]. We’re also developing a set of kid’s television shows and films. The Darkest Dawn is called that for a reason, because elements of it are very dark, and a lot of reviews have said we pulled the rug out from under the audience’s feet in quite a brutal way a few times, which I love because I think that can be very entertaining. I spent two years writing and making quite a dark and depressing film, which is great but what excites me is playing in worlds and genres I haven’t touched yet. The concept of doing a Tim Burton, Time Bandits, kid’s film just sounds brilliant.  Not watching faces being burnt off all the time because there’s only so much of that you can take.

IC: Would you be any good in an apocalypse? Have you got a plan for it?

DC: That thought does run through my mind on a weekly basis. You see 28 Days Later and you see The Walking Dead, you can’t help but think what if this did go down. I’ve got friends that have a zombie survival plan. There’s that rumour that the Whitehouse has a zombie survival plan. But personally, I don’t. I hope nothing like that ever happens. If it does kick off I’m just going to lock myself in a room of a very high building with a shotgun and prepare.

IC: Any last thoughts for the people out there who might be inspired by what you’ve achieved?

DC: Everybody is so overwhelmed by the reaction to the film and how we made it. I think it’s quite a feat in indie filmmaking and I hope it inspires a lot more people to go out and learn how to make films and follow their passion. I’m from Hungerford, there are 6000 people, there are trees and there are pubs. You’re not restricted or limited by where you live, it’s only your mentality. I know too many people who are scared. There’s a time to be scared, and that’s a great logical thing to be, and there’s a time when you’ve just got to say screw it, I’m going to go and do that.