Whilst psychedelics are largely associated with the hippie 60s or late 80s UK rave culture, their powers to draw out buried memories and treat a wide range of conditions is slowly becoming normalised and more widely. A purpose we see deployed in dark comedy short ORTOLAN, where three estranged sisters reconnect over a pot of magic mushroom tea. Set in a divinely crowded and lush old house, ORTOLAN, written, produced and performed by Kate Winter is inspired by her own experiences with repressed memories. Winter joined forces with director Tracy Mathewson to bring to life a powerfully vivid film where every minute detail has a role to play. A heightened situation in which it appears as if the world within is pulsating with energy as the acerbic and biting writing pits each sisters’ own memories against each other. The night descends into madness as does the frenetic camerawork and gleefully funny moments of self-realisation and absurdity. An impressive proof of concept short created to pave the way for the feature which is waiting in the wings and as ORTOLAN completes its festival circuit we sat down with Mathewson and Winter to talk about their creative partnership, how they brought about such arresting shots in low light interiors and accurately representing a psychedelic trip.
Why did you feel the need and desire to create ORTOLAN as proof of concept short you coming the feature?
Kate Winter: The feature idea is so complex that we felt we would be doing a disservice to that story if we didn’t first get to grips with what it was through the medium of a short.
Tracy Mathewson: It’s visual for me. The haunting, psychedelic world that Kate described to me when she pitched the film (and she pitched me the feature idea first) was something we both knew needed to be seen to be believed. The proof of concept is our way of showing rather than telling the tone of this film.
Your styles have merged beautifully on the film, can you tell us about your shared cinematic language and how this worked in the pre-production planning stage?
KW: So for me, it was how do you capture a feeling? How do you capture that squinting moment when you are trying to remember something, what that feels like? The blurred edges of being between multiple thoughts and questions and possibilities and also uncertainty… But I mean ultimately it’s PTSD. How do you show a feeling? When you wake up from a dream, the harder you try to remember, the further away it gets.
TM: Coming in as director to Kate’s writer/actor/producer was a responsibility that I took very seriously, but one that also came so naturally. She has a rich, illustrative imagination that meant I could see what she saw immediately for the story, it was then up to me to help shape that into the short script and hone that vision through pre-production.
How do you capture that squinting moment when you are trying to remember something, what that feels like?….
KW: This was so collaborative. Our poster shoot three months ahead of production was the ultimate bonding exercise, not only for us to get to know each other because we’d met less than a year before, but also to give us a chance to work together with our design team before the short.
TM: I can remember how nervous I was that morning! And just to navigate filmmaking with someone new. But you know what, if we talk about our cinematic language, it’s a shared understanding. There would be production meetings where I would all of a sudden ask a producer-y question or Kate would say something very director-y and we both felt comfortable with that.
The look and style embodied in the film are so rich, luxurious and effective at totally drawing in the audience, can you tell us more about the creation of this claustrophobic world?
KW: The house is a character itself. Walls that hold a lifetime of stories and questions. It would not have been the same film if we’d shot it anywhere else.
TM: In actuality, the claustrophobia on screen had been reduced from how tightly packed that home is naturally. Every room had about three full-sized sofas in it and we’d have to remove at least one per scene.
If we talk about our cinematic language, it’s a shared understanding.
KW: The homeowners are retired journalists and each room also had a wall of books, journals, letters, and stacks of old newspapers and clippings. They’re hoarders of literature of every form.
TM: And a painted portrait of each room… in each room. It was like tetris shooting around the place. So the claustrophobia was authentic.
I love the intense and tight camerawork, tell us about the equipment you used including your lighting setups and the storyboarding you went through to achieve this precision?
TM: So Yannick Hausler (cinematographer) hates storyboarding. Tam Lai, our first AD and I storyboarded the film mainly for scheduling/planning and as a resource for Pete Hills (our editor). Yannick wanted nothing to do with it.
Yannick Hausler: I just want the shot list and a good conversation.
TM: After two projects outside using only natural lighting, Yannick and I had been looking forward to shooting interiors.
YH: The idea was to try and light as much as we could with practicals and just enhance the motivation with small led film lights. We used a lot of old school tungsten bulbs on dimmers as practicals and in the bathroom we used ND and blue gel to create a night time feeling as we were shooting in the day. We shot on the Sony Venice for its low light capabilities.
TM: We had a great conversation about moving through the film with camerawork, right?
YH: Right, the film starts off fairly static. We wanted to build a sense of unease after the magic mushrooms kick in (like the contrazoom shot by the stairway and by using the Canon Dream Lens, part of the Canon Rangefinder Lens set 50mm 0.95), so we start locked off and progress to handheld and onto the Steadicam as the trip wears on.
TM: I’d love for you to talk about the chasing light, something which we’ve always felt totally captures the essence of being high and staring at someone’s face.
YH: Yeah, so we created our chasing light with three Astera tubes in a triangle formation, the idea was to have the light fully go around their face so the shadow it casts actually warps how we perceive their facial features. The actor had to literally slip inside or below the light and act into it separately.
Kate, the script is based on your own buried trauma and memories. Can you tell us about performing in a film infused with such personal connection?
KW: Again it’s about the feeling, right? It’s my experience with the feeling. So I liberated myself by exploring that through a fictional family. At no point did I ever feel traumatised by the content or the process because it did not feel like my life, but…
TM: What about your hard day?
KW: That’s exactly what I was just thinking. On day two of shooting I was in a constant state of turmoil for several hours. It almost felt like holding a yawn, no, not a yawn, like a whole day of the moment before a sneeze. The suspense of holding it. When filming the cupboard scene I hit my head on the cupboard door and I just had a little cry in the cupboard for a few minutes.
TM: This was between takes.
KW: Oh yeah, between takes. I asked you to close the door and give me two minutes.
TM: I remember the crew looking at me like “Is she okay?” And I was like, “Yep. She will be.”
KW: That was the fatigue that comes with having worn so many hats.
I think we both knew it was funny but it took screening it with audiences for us to have the confidence to call it a dark comedy.
Talk us through the move into the edit and the colour grade and really polishing off this world you have created?
TM: So production and pre-production was a nice mix of Kate and I bringing our teams together with a bit more of Kate’s side. But when it came to post I insisted we use my team. Our editor, Pete Hills and I have worked together since 2015 on every one of my narrative shorts and it’s been so great to grow with him.
KW: Pete is a wizard. He works with such precision and it was a wonder to watch him problem solve. He could salvage the magic from what we perceived to be an unusable shot and make it work. What I loved too was by the end of the day he would never say no, but he would play it out and show us that he was actually right. We had picture lock in two days, right?
TM: Right. And Felipe Szulc, our colourist, is again someone I’ve worked with on numerous projects since 2016. It was such a joy to see him breathe life into the chiaroscuro lighting and give ORTOLAN that painted quality.
ORTOLAN has enjoyed a very well received run on the festival circuit, tell us about people’s reactions? Were they what you expected?
TM: I think we both knew it was funny but it took screening it with audiences for us to have the confidence to call it a dark comedy. For a 24-minute film, audiences always say that it blows by, they want more in fact which, as a proof of concept, is exactly what we want.
KW: Representing the mushroom trip was always something I wanted to do well and I loved that this film summoned anyone in the audience who had ever partaken in psychedelics, they always felt compelled to tell us how accurate or how much like a trip the film felt. This was definitely one of our first wins.
I loved that this film summoned anyone in the audience who had ever partaken in psychedelics, they always felt compelled to tell us how accurate or how much like a trip the film felt.
How is the work on the feature going and how has making the short influenced that process for you both?
TM: The feature script is done!
KW: Sort of.
TM: Nothing is ever done.
KW: We’re still refining how to express the way memory blends and blurs with reality in screenplay format. It’s clear to me and Tracy because we wrote it and we made the short but currently to anyone reading the feature…
TM: It’s a bit opaque. It’s not a problem of story, it’s a problem of the medium. We’re working on it.
KW: And then the plan is to send it to talent in the New Year.
