Football is a difficult sport to represent on screen. There have, of course, been a handful of great films set around football but they are few and far between as it’s hard to truly capture the intensity of the game and its all-encompassing effect on players. That very notion is the subject of William Miller’s ONEIGHTY Productions drama Broke, which portrays a promising young player who questions his sense of self and his relationship with his father after he suffers a major injury set back. What Miller nails in his short is how these players are sometimes surrounded by individuals who care more about their relationship with the game than with them as people. Broke is a film which highlights the difficult mental challenges that athletes face in high level sports and successfully presents it with a grounded authenticity. DN caught up with Miller to learn how he got his debut short film off the ground, the process of shooting digital yet keeping everything gritty, and his desire to authentically replicate the look and feel of the so-called beautiful game.
What’s your relationship with football and why did you want to make it the subject of Broke?
Broke was born out of necessity in a way, a form of therapy, a means of processing. I was a professional footballer before I started making films and I had spent my entire life training to reach that position. When I finally made the decision to leave football and pursue this new career I greatly underestimated how it would affect me. Football had consumed my life from a very young age and through my most formative years shaped my identity and my relationships. People would ask how football was going before they asked how I was as a person. It became the metric in which I gaged the overall success of my life, my happiness. It completely defined me. It sounds extreme but when I lost football it was like mourning this version of myself, this dream I had as a kid, this perception everyone else had of me.
I had to wrestle with my identity and try and find who I was again, re-define my relationships. Through this turbulent process I became fascinated by it. This process definitely isn’t unique to football, I think the film is interrogating a very universal theme, when your passion or work has so deeply defined your life, what happens when you lose it? Whether you are a dancer, a teacher, a musician, a lawyer, a writer or a business owner, the same feelings can ring true.
The film is interrogating a very universal theme, when your passion or work has so deeply defined your life, what happens when you lose it?
Thinking back on the history of football in cinema there aren’t an awful amount of great films about the sport. What do you think are the challenges of portraying football on screen?
I think football is quite a difficult environment and energy to authentically create on screen. I felt it was really important that the lead character was played by someone who had grown up playing the game, who naturally moved like a footballer, who had gone through similar emotions and could draw on them and then add to the character from their own experiences. I met Moe Hashim whilst I was still only thinking about the film in my head. We connected very quickly, we spoke a lot about our individual journeys in football and how they shaped us as people. He had a certain energy and charisma that was undeniable. When I did sit down to actually write the film I couldn’t see anyone else in the lead role but Moe. This was my first proper short film and he didn’t have an enormous amount of acting experience at this point but we found confidence in our authenticity and truth in our own experiences.
How else did that authenticity manifest in the film?
With the changing room and tunnel scenes it was integral to me that anyone who has come from the football world would watch it and go, “Yeah, that’s what it’s really like in real life”. Two of the producers on Broke, Harry Campbell and Marvin Sordell, played professional football as well and between us, we had enough connections to fill all 25 extra spots with people who had played football to a very high level. It took a lot of pressure off of having to get a performance out of extras and spend time crafting background and energy. Everyone knew what it was like, what they would do and how they would behave before a game. It allowed me to focus more closely on Moe’s performance and the relationship with the camera in the world.
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The pitch that Moe falls on feels like the heart of the film, this concrete, urban training ground. Was that a location you were familiar with heading into production?
The concrete football pitch that Moe grew up playing on and later returns to was a really important location for the film. The producers and myself searched far and wide across London to find the right one. We wanted it to feel old and worn down, like it had seen thousands of games over the years. We wanted it to feel like it was at the centre of a community, like it was the integral heartbeat, always being watched over. After scouting for weeks with little luck, I went to meet Moe on the estate he actually grew up on and there it was, the perfect pitch. We’ve never actually spoken about it but I’m sure Moe having such a sentimental attachment to that pitch played some part in pulling out the performance in that final shot.
There’s a switch in aspect ratio during the therapy scene, what inspired that choice?
I chose to have a different aspect ratio in the therapist scene to have some mechanism that very subtly distinguished the present from the past. It didn’t need to be too in your face but I wanted to have a slight change in perspective as Moe’s character is in a very different headspace in comparison to the rest of the film. It’s a gritty and challenging story, so visually we never wanted the film to look too clean. We loosely floated the idea of shooting on film but it was never realistically going to be within budget. We chose to shoot on some old vintage glass from Japan I think it was and pushed the grain quite hard in post.
From listening to you, it’s clear that this is an important and very personal project, both as a first short but also as a piece of catharsis. How are you feeling about it now that you’ve made it and are sharing it with the world?
This project means so much to me and I feel very privileged that I got the opportunity to make it with such a wonderfully talented team. I feel very proud of what we achieved. It’s not often that you see this darker and less glamorous side of football. This is the reality at some stage for most of the young people trying to carve out a career in the industry for themselves, it’s a beautiful game but it’s relentless and ruthless. Mental health has been somewhat of a taboo subject in football, for a long time it has been completely overlooked and undervalued. Over the last few years there has really started to be a shift in mentality around it. I really wanted to make a film that would shed a little bit of light on the importance of opening up and confronting the things we are feeling and battling with, especially in this kind of world.
It’s a gritty and challenging story, so visually we never wanted the film to look too clean.
Have you shown the film to any other professional footballers or athletes, outside of the cast? What have they made of it?
Nike actually asked us to go into Tottenham Hotspur to do a screening and a Q&A with the reserves/youth team. I came through playing at Tottenham so that was a real full circle moment for me, it actually made me far more emotional than I anticipated. There have been some really touching responses from former and current professional footballers. It felt like people really saw the truth in it and related to it, they were thankful for the attempt to try and communicate these emotions, which more often than not aren’t spoken about enough. For others, especially the younger generations that watched, it opened their eyes to the fact that this situation isn’t something to take lightly or try and suppress and bury. I’m really proud that we were able to create a film that resonated with people, that shifted perspective for some and started a conversation for others.
I really wanted to make a film that would shed a little bit of light on the importance of opening up and confronting the things we are feeling and battling with.
One aspect I noted when I first watched Broke was how smooth some of the cuts were, did you block out the film or storyboard prior to the shoot to help achieve that?
Yes, I storyboarded the film pretty hard and then Miguel Cármenes (DOP) and myself blocked out a lot of the shots in detail when we recce’d the locations. Like most short films, our shoot schedule was pretty tight so we really interrogated how and why we were going to shoot each scene. We didn’t shoot for coverage at all and that made the editing process very swift and simple in some ways. The one big decision I made in the edit that I didn’t see coming when I was storyboarding was cutting all the shots of the therapist that Moe is speaking with. For some reason I just felt like her voice carried so much more weight when you never revealed her physically. The film was also so intensely wrapped in Moe’s mind and his subjective experience that I wanted as little as possible in the film that took you away from that, that broke that relationship with the viewer.
Since transitioning to directing you’ve also worked with Adidas and even the England National Team on their This Is Football series, do you foresee yourself telling more sport related stories?
For sure, I definitely see myself telling stories in the realm of sport going into the future. I feel really privileged to have had the opportunity to make films with some top athletes and brands so far. A lot of the time in sport there’s a well trained PR forcefield around athletes, in regards to the This Is Football series I really enjoyed trying to break through that a little and create films with a bit more intimacy and honesty to them.
What’s next for you and your filmmaking?
At the moment I am writing a TV series about football that has just been optioned by a top producer and production company in the UK and I’m developing Broke into a feature film too. I think there is a certain side of football that hasn’t been authentically captured and communicated through film. I’m excited to try and take on that challenge and Broke has kind of been the first step. I want to tell stories outside of sport and football for sure and I’m open to everything. But in terms of developing my own stuff at this stage in my career, as I start to find my voice and style, I’m enjoying writing about what I know.
