Heady summer days, vicious sibling rivalries, idle testosterone-fuelled young men and the accompanying nostalgia of childhood summers are sharply contrasted by Barnaby Blackburn’s early memories of his mother warning him against the danger of Britain’s steel sentinels and all came together in the making of his film Pylon. Initially conceived as a one-shot short Blackburn fuels the tension with long meticulously planned sequence shots pulling his audience unwillingly into the anxiety inducing narrative as the drama unfolds in real time. Pylon’s soft, hazy tone belies the menace bubbling just below the surface which slowly builds to a gut punch crescendo which whilst I had an inkling of what was to come, leaves you roiling long after the credits roll. As Pylon premieres on the pages of DN today, Blackburn speaks to us about the technical filming of those long sequence shots through the fields, finding the menace in the silence of his script and creating a hypnotic and repetitive sound design to really put his audience in a state of unease.
Where did this dark exploration of family and the foolishness of youth originate?
Pylon draws upon a variety of childhood memories I had from the school summer holidays. Scorching days when we kids wandered around my uncle’s housing estate and its surrounding fields and getting in scraps with the local boys while our parents barbecued and drank in the garden. I wanted to make a film about those memories, about fractious family relationships, about the horrors siblings subject each other to and the indelible marks they leave. It was originally conceived as a single take film. A gear rental house was running a competition that was giving away free camera equipment to the best one-take concept they received. We didn’t win, but we continued to explore the idea of pulling the film together this way until we realised it would be too expensive for us to execute in a single take on a short film budget.
Though we abandoned the idea of the single take, I wanted the action to play out in what feels like real time. I’m interested in something I call ordeal cinema – so it was important to plot the action in a way that feels like the audience are living through the events with the characters. To do that, we meticulously planned a number of long sequence shots in the film to allow for that level of immersion for the audience.
The script oozes with male toxicity and false bravado, how did you so accurately tap into that mindset and why was this something you wanted to broach?
I think boys at that age are all trying to figure themselves out and I think that often all the discomfort and confusion of that manifests in violence. It’s something that isn’t specific to class. It’s primal and it exists everywhere. Pylon is really a middle-class story. I didn’t want to create a film that people could detach themselves from and say Ooh well, this is happening because they have neglectful parents or low income”. They’re committing these atrocities because of something else. Something more fundamental. I think the accuracy of that behaviour in the film comes from the clarity of my own memories at that age combined with casting boys that felt like they could be anyone’s son, nephew or little brother. I think that’s why it’s so difficult to watch for some people because they feel like they know boys just like the ones in the film.
It was important to make the audience feel like they’re really inside the story as quickly as possible without too many questions or distractions.
Why divert our expectations and hide the fact the boys are siblings?
I didn’t want to muddle the audience with too many thoughts early on, but just lead them into the action in a way where they forget they’re watching a film. It was important to make the audience feel like they’re really inside the story as quickly as possible without too many questions or distractions. Discovering that Benny, Thomas and Sara are all siblings at the end creates an aftershock of understanding as to what’s really going on. So your assessment of the characters might change dramatically, leaving you with all sorts of residual questions. I like films that do that.
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How did you plan those long sequence shots that track though the fields with such well executed tension?
Once we’d confirmed our locations, my Cinematographer Robbie Bryant and I spent a long time at the field and housing estate locations plotting out how to execute the long shots and figuring out the right equipment to be able to capture it just how we imagined. Robbie usually operates everything himself but we decided we wanted to use Steadicam for most of the film to create a mood where the viewer feels like they’re being unwillingly led through the narrative. So the lion’s share of the film was shot on Steadicam or with our Steadicam operator, Luke Oliver, sitting on a tracking vehicle.
For the long sequence shot where the little girl runs into the estate and through the house to tell her mother that her brother is climbing a pylon – we shot that with Luke riding on the tracking vehicle then stepping off to follow the girl through the house, dodging and swerving various extras en route, with me chasing after them while watching on a portable monitor. The other challenge with our equipment was shooting around a real pylon and the various health and safety constraints that come with something like that. We decided the best way to solve this was to build an exact replica of the corner of the pylon, which we placed beside the real pylon and used for all our closeups when the actors are climbing it.
We have already seen the talents of Tommy Finnegan in Such A Lovely Day, how did you come to cast him for this role?
Sally McCleery is a fantastic casting director and particularly good with child actors. I’ve worked with children before and it’s been difficult to find actors who haven’t picked up bad habits from school stage productions, so I was prepared for that to be a challenge. But, actually, the main challenge was picking between all of the amazing young actors Sally brought to us. What set Tommy aside from the rest was his authenticity and his subtlety. He just has one of those faces that tells you so much about what’s going on inside and he uses it with a careful precision that I find astonishing for someone as young as he is.
I find that the times I feel most threatened is when there’s just silence.
The drama does indeed feel like it plays out in real time, perhaps even slowed down. What did you change from the initially conceived one-shot structure for the shoot and how did you set that pace?
The pace for the whole film is really dictated by the confrontation scene. I find that the times I feel most threatened is when there’s just silence. The range in Louis Thresher’s performance is great because he allows for his presence to loom over Thomas as he interrogates him – there’s a kind of sinister intimacy to his performance, letting his questions hang in the air with these long pauses that carry all this menace. I think the control of these moments means the more frenetic scenes that come later of Sara running home and her Mum running to the pylon are made more effective by being placed in contrast to some of the stillness you see in the confrontation.
Some of the key dramatic points unfurl just outside of the audience’s view, what was the intention behind this?
I think what’s going on outside the frame is often more powerful than what you’re being shown inside it. It’s like there are two films going on at once; the film the audience is watching and then the one they’re imagining. This film is about a boy being forced to climb all the way up a pylon but so much of the film takes place away from where that’s happening, so as a viewer you’re constantly inventing images of what that might look like, which makes you so much more of a participant in the film. That’s kind of what I mean when I talk about ordeal cinema.
I think what’s going on outside the frame is often more powerful than what you’re being shown inside it.
Those eerie viola, blocks and drum beats build that tension instantly in the opening scene which then very quickly focuses on the silence of the situation. Tell us about building that sonic ebb and flow.
I wanted something sparse and unsettling for that opening sequence. Something that would sort of lull or hypnotise you into the story with its repetition. Luis Almau is an extraordinary composer who I’ve worked with for several years, so he quickly created something that felt perfect and was ready in advance of shooting, so I could block and pace the action accordingly. Those three elements; a viola, a woodblock and a drum, combined with the sound from the field, immediately creates this tension and anxiety. It’s not clear where the story is going but there’s an uneasy expectation of what’s to come.
Once Thomas and Sara are confronted by the gang we reduced everything down to the sound effects from around the field; the rustle of the grasses, the wind in the trees, the ominous hum of the pylon wires overhead, and so on. I find that those subtle elements working in tandem with the measured quality of Louis Thresher’s (Benny) performance creates this unbearable atmosphere. I hope that the audience feels as though they are being confronted themselves.
And finally, what can you tell us about your upcoming projects?
I’m currently making Help Yourself, my debut feature film about a British family who face deep regrets when hosting a family of Ukrainian refugees. It’s being produced by Ken Loach’s Sixteen Films, who also produced Pylon.
