Ropes: The story of production.

Once pre-production was underway proper, my first port of call was discuss the look of the film with Ben and to also set Jonny on his way with getting locations, actors and props and other mise en scene type things.

I wanted to give the film a look which at once gave the audience a realistic and observational feeling and at the same time was giving the audience messages and signals about the character.
My main inspiration for this, as ever, was the work of Michelangelo Antonioni, specifically Blow-up, L'eclisse and L'avventura. These works effortlessly straddle the line between realism and formalism and it is for this reason I love them so much. To watch the films without really concentrating they are without any suspicion a slow paced film of absolute realism. However with a closer look, one can see that Antonioni is using every single element available to him to create a film rich with filmic language, that is not at all slow or hard to watch simply because of the amount of information being presented to you. In L'eclisse the opening shot is of some books with an arm leaning on them, this arm belong to a character who is dependent on intellectual knowledge and without it, will fall down. He his nervous and indecisive, he is almost clinging to his books. The a shot of a woman looking out of a window, she is longing to get out of the current situation, objectivized by the room, and into the world, the world behind the curtains. Then a shot of her moving and touching things through a picture frame, a window into the world, as if she is standing on the other side of some barrier, only able to stick a hand through to touch and feel ‘life’. Then another representation of life through a landscape painting that she longingly looks at. Shots of the man looking confused are intercut here. Then a striking shot of the woman’s legs, shown in contrast to legs of chairs and tables, the legs are also reflected in the marble floor. This reference is in keeping with the existential themes of the film. Then woman goes back the window and we see here reflected in the glass, like the marble floor shot. She then crumples herself in depression onto the sofa. This is the kind of story telling I wanted to achieve with Ropes.

I sent Ben off with some of Antonioni's films as well as Mike Leigh's Naked and John Huston's Fat City.
I wanted Ben to using the lighting schemes from both of these films which so honestly show the desperation of the characters involved. 

I wanted to use the same gym as we did with Bout, as i felt it's ruggedness and chracter were perfect in reflecting the kind of world the main character is living in. The ripped bags and torn posters all over the wall show the kind of emotionally tarnished and physically unstable condition the character will eventually develop throughout the film.

My house was chosen to shoot the domestic scenes more out of convenience than anything else.   The rooms are white, good for lighting and also spacious and therefore convenient to shoot in. Taking into considering the small amount of time we had to shoot, choosing my house was a necessity in reality, due to the amount of time it would save us.

James, the actor, was more or less a choice that had to be made, he was the only actor we could get in for an audition. After an actress pulled out due to health reasons, Hannah, a friend of james', was chosen to play the part of the girlfriend, which in turn turned out to be lucky, as she was a professional make-up artist who did the make up for the film as well.

Due to the availability of the actors, who both had full time jobs, filming time was tight, which was made worse by mine and Ben's meticulous lighting plans, which made time especially tight. 

Working with James was both a good and hard experience. James was quite enthusiatic about the role and was constantly questions about the character and we were able to build a person together out of the script.
During filming a tried to let James do his own thing, only interfering if something wasn't right or something in the script wasn't being achieved or if he wanted any advice with anything he should be doing. This happened often and it occurred to me and some of the other crew members that maybe James had not read the script enough, as I had through with him plenty of times what the film was about and what I expected of him in many senses. 
 

Due to time constraints some scenes, such as the take-away food one had to be rushed, using simple lighting and composition, which was soul destroying. The reason for this was the actors needed to get away and we were forced to rush set-ups and filming.
Shortly afterwards the actors told us that they would not be available for anymore filming. This meant we were forced to go to edit with what we had.