An ominous, seeping darkness lies at the heart of Simon Woods’ BAFTA nominated short Such a Lovely Day. Set under a languorous English summer sun, a family spend a seemingly idyllic day together celebrating a birthday and each other but something is polluting their joy. Everything is seen through the eyes of Sam, a young boy whose quietness and stillness, carefully captured by the film’s camerawork which places him at the focal point of the day’s events, is at odds with the constant buzzing and chaos of his family around him. Such a Lovely Day is quiet in its eventual denouement, you are aware of a feeling of creeping dread but Woods, in his screen directorial debut, subtly builds that tension. Every aspect of Such a Lovely Day was carefully thought through, from the tones and colour palette of the clothes to the use of low lit interiors contrasting the brightness outside. Continuing DN’s interview series with the directors of this year’s BAFTA shorts, we spoke to the Woods about rehearsing as if he was working on a theatre piece, putting his young protagonist at the centre of every scene and visually representing the concurrent light and dark themes playing out at the heart of the short.
[The following interview is also available to watch at the end of this article.]
We’re here today to talk about your short, Such a Lovely Day, what were your narrative aims for the film?
It’s a sad and sorry tale about a boy trying to understand his parents’ marriage. I wanted to make a really complicated grown-up situation and then to send a kid through it and take our audience through that child’s point of view as he tried to solve the puzzle in his family and in his parents’ marriage. I wanted to immerse the audience into this boy’s understanding of the world and to put him into a place where everyone was having a really lovely time. I wanted to make a beautiful, lovely, gorgeous world with a rotten core.
Tell us a bit about your background as this is your film directing debut.
I’ve been an actor and a writer in the theatre and this is the first film I’ve made. On film sets I always went and sat behind the monitors and asked loads of questions and always loved being in the video village and the make-up truck and the wardrobe truck. I’d be asking the director lots of questions and trying to understand what it meant about crossing the line. I always wished I was on the other side.
In film, you have this amazing opportunity to take your audience into one person’s understanding of the world and to see it through one person’s eyes
So it felt like a very natural transition for you?
Yes, I always knew it was something I wanted to do, it just took me quite a long time to do it. I wrote a feature film for BBC Film and then the opportunity came up to make a short and I just knew what I wanted to try and achieve. I knew I wanted to take an audience into one person’s point of view. Writing for the theatre is so different as you present your piece of work and everybody experiences it from their own point of view but in film, you have this amazing opportunity to take your audience into one person’s understanding of the world and to see it through one person’s eyes and I knew that is what I wanted to do.
There’s such a grand feel to the story through the house, the family and the whole ambience.
I felt the bigger, more wonderful, showy, fun and exuberant they all were, the worse the little dark heart of the story could be. I tried to cast in that way and to get an atmosphere between languor and exuberance. They’ve just got all the time in the world and their lunch could go on for seven hours if they wanted to, then they’re going to play a game and do a silly skit. The more loose and lovely it felt, the more awful it was. I was trying to tread that line between something that was appealing and something appalling.
My DOP Dave Pimm and I were constantly creating this continual contrast between the bright outside and the dark inside and we tried to do that with almost every shot.
The more you dig into the film you can see these ominous nuggets you’ve dropped in. For example with the colour palette, it’s a bright sunny day but everything is quite muted.
We went for a green and gold theme, I wanted the visuals to always be telling the story. The way in which people present themselves in public and the awful secrets they hold in their hearts. My DOP Dave Pimm and I were constantly creating this continual contrast between the bright outside and the dark inside and we tried to do that with almost every shot. We made sure the interiors were hardly lit and the outside was really bright and beautiful. Even when they’re in the car, the foreground is dark and the exterior is bright. Outside, everything is lovely and then there’s a dark heart to the inside of the house.
There’s barely any bright colour, even their clothes are muted.
Indeed, then there’s this one piece of bright clothing, this one red shirt. I was always trying to play with loveliness and danger and to make something that felt very mellow and muted with linens and natural cottons and then to have this one dangerous shirt with a bit of red. A short film is such a funny thing, isn’t it? Because it’s like a little jewel box. You think so much about every element, you plan every shot in advance, every element has to mean something because it’s so short. You mustn’t waste any time or any space so I was constantly thinking, “Am I telling the story in this shot? Am I telling the story in the costumes? Am I telling the story in the colour?” I was just trying to make sure I was always serving this story.
That’s how we set up each scene, we anchored him in position and moved everybody around him.
We spoke about the film being from your young protagonist’s perspective and the kitchen scene is such a great example of that. He’s surrounded by chaos but we just studiously follow him.
That was how I thought about the whole film. I don’t think we achieved it all the time as we only had three days of filming but, I always imagined he was still and the world, the rest of the cast and the camera moved around him. That’s how we set up each scene, we anchored him in position and moved everybody around him, we basically just went over his shoulder. That was our principle. Whenever, if in doubt, we were over his shoulder or from his point of view. We rehearsed that scene like a little play, there might have been 17 people in that scene and everyone was really up for delivering this story in a short amount of time.
All of the cast are wonderful but I want to talk about Edward Bluemel’s performance as Ben in particular. I hated him right from the start but he’s charming and affable and you’re drawn to him.
That’s a part of the reveal of the film. He has to be a showman in order to get away with everything. I was really lucky with him because it’s really hard to find actors who are relaxed in their bodies. You would think actors can be very natural but it’s quite hard to be fluid and relaxed on camera. He’s got that quality, when you see him, there’s something about the whole way he moves that you are wary of. I wanted somebody who could own a space and be gregarious which is quite hard to play and not be over theatrical. Also Tommy Finnegan, who plays the boy Sam was just such a find. Because without him there would have been no film as he’s in every shot.
I particularly love the shot where he’s coming out to perform and you track him almost like an artist getting ready to go out on stage for a big performance. He’s obviously still a child but he grows before your eyes and you can see there’s something coming.
He’d been passive throughout the film and then he had to cross this massive line. The character has to become a man at that moment which was exactly what I wrote in the script.
The actual filming of any scene is quite hectic, there’s a lot going on with hair and make-up and lights and cameras and it’s quite hard to centre yourself and do what you want to do there.
Does your background in acting help you when working with the actors and their performances?
Yes, I think so. Having been on good film sets and not-so-good film sets and worked with good directors and not-so-good directors, you just know what’s helpful and what you need in your toolbox when you start. The actual filming of any scene is quite hectic, there’s a lot going on with hair and make-up and lights and cameras and it’s quite hard to centre yourself and do what you want to do there. So I always felt, particularly with the child actor, that the more we talked away from the set about what was going to happen and what he had to hold on to, the easier it would be for him. We pre-chatted, went through the script several times and asked, “What’s really happening here? What are you wanting? What are you trying to understand here?” So when there were masses of people and everyone was moving around him, he would know what he was trying to hold on to. When I was an actor, I was always on a horse and I hate horses. So I always tried to imagine what I would have wanted in a horse scene and I would really just need to know what I was doing.
Congratulations on your BAFTA nomination particularly as this is your directorial debut. What does that mean to you and how has the whole process been?
The whole thing’s been amazing. It’s weird making a short because you don’t know if people like it or anything about it really. When we were longlisted and then shortlisted for the BAFTAs, it felt amazing. I asked people to come on this journey with me and work for almost no money and believe in this little idea. It’s just such a magical thing for me and for everybody else who worked on it.
Have you caught the directorial bug, are you moving forward with new film projects?
Totally! I’ve got a couple of things in various stages in the pipeline. I feel I’ve got to put as many irons in the fire as possible and try and hope that one of them comes off.
