Metafiction is a tricky beast to nail. More often than not it can lack a central point, being meta for the sake of it or, alternatively, it becomes too inward and referential and loses the audience altogether. BABYBABY writer/director duo Josefin Malmén and David Strindberg’s short A Bloody Mess, however, is an excellent example of how it can be done right as a piece of pure entertainment whilst also throwing some genuine honesty into the mix. I won’t go into plot details because it’s a ride you need to be taken on from the beginning but let me tell you it’s certainly worth its succinct eight and half minute runtime. DN caught up with Malmén and Strindberg again, after previously speaking with them about their brilliantly bizarre bodybuilding comedy Flex, to talk over their metanarrative influences, the tight timeline they had to write, shoot and edit their comedy horror, and the sheer variety of technical tools they utilised to manifest this multi-layered story into existence.
How did the core meta concept of A Bloody Mess come to be?
The break into meta from something horror/thriller-ish was actually initially a part of another script of ours that we were pitching to a financier. They didn’t get it though… at all. We were told that wasn’t something they could “easily explain” so we had to exclude it from that script. But nothing eggs us on more than a “no” so first thing after that meeting we sat down and wrote this script. Also, we were keen to explore the horror genre, as we’re developing a horror feature script. Many of our thoughts and feelings while writing made their way into A Bloody Mess.
Were you inspired by any other filmmakers or creatives who have been making work that operates in a meta way?
We’ve always wanted to do something meta. There have been a bunch of ideas over the years but the straw that finally broke the camel’s back, and really got us going this time, was probably The Rehearsal by Nathan Fielder, who’s also mentioned in the film by the directors, playing the directors, playing us.
How was it, both practically and mentally, putting yourselves into the film?
Writing yourself into a film is weird, and doing it twice, in the same film, is even weirder. To finish it off we also dressed the actors in our own clothes that we’ve used on shoots before. It was actually quite painful watching our own creative demons come to life through these actors. All the doubt we quietly share behind the monitor on any regular shoot was now spoken out loudly for everyone to hear. Over and over, while we’re literally standing behind a monitor watching versions of ourselves playing out the anxiety we’re having at that exact moment. Very odd.
All the doubt we quietly share behind the monitor on any regular shoot was now spoken out loudly for everyone to hear.
Some of the dialogue for the second meta part actually came about just a day or two before the shoot after we actually did realize that the, very pricey, police badge we’d ordered from eBay was in fact not an authentic LAPD police badge at all, but some collector’s item miniature version of it.
Could you break down the technical aspects of each reveal in the film? You must’ve had to use a whole host of equipment to establish each part of the film before peeling back the curtain.
The first part of the film is shot on 35mm using an Arricam LT with a Fujinon HK 18-85 lens, as that was what the leftover film we found in the kitchen fridge at our production company, and the second part is on 16mm shot with an Arriflex 416 with a Zeiss 11-110mm lens on Kodak 500T, and the last part is shot digitally on an Arri Amira with a Fujinon Cabrio 19-90mm lens with the ISO set to 1600.
The digital footage was then processed to look like “some crappy DV camera” by combining a transfer of the footage to DV tape with a recording from a Digi8 camera that we used to record a screen playing the footage, plus some additional interlacing and sharpening in post. Actually shooting the last part on a DV camera felt a little too risky and wouldn’t have given us much control both during the shoot and in post; it would’ve been tough to colour grade it and add the monster slug visual effects.
What was the timeline from initially conceiving the script through to the final edit?
We wrote it in early March, shot it over two days in mid-April, and had a finished version a month after that. We then did a small re-edit after the summer. Having not watched it in two months made us realize some darling shots from the horror part, although great in of themselves, had to be killed to make a better film as a whole.
How do you operate as co-directors? Do you each take on specific responsibilities during production?
We strive to make every decision together through every phase of the production as it’s only then the work tends to feel fully like BABYBABY in the end. That said, it’s not like we’re attached to the hip. During a shoot, for example, Josefin tends to be one step closer to the cast, and David one step closer to the monitor, but by then we’re so in sync with what we want that it’s like splitting the workload with yourself.
We’ve always wanted to do something meta.
And to wrap up, what are you both working on next?
We’re currently in the process of developing several longer format ideas. There’s an offbeat horror creature feature with an alien descending into the home of an upper-middle-class family, a workplace miniseries where a family-owned gun rental service poses as an aquarium leasing company, a power ballad-themed murder mystery mumblecore with a homicide detective writing songs inspired by gruesome murders, and we’re turning our Sundance short Flex into a superhero tragicomedy where a depressed bodybuilder discovers his, rather useless, supernatural abilities and becomes obsessed with the possibility of being the love-child of Zeus and Thor, or at the very least… a distant relative.
