London born and raised director Daniel Rands (whose previous work has landed on not one but two of DN’s Best of Fest lists) is no stranger to the multifaceted conflicts and often invisible toxicity present in the UK inner city education system which all play out in his Grey Moth Originals drama short Margin. Inspired by his time working in schools, the nuanced and tense power plays, racial aggravations and questions of class in Margin are tightly contained in the claustrophobic, cloistered environment of an after-school last chance catch up class. Shot in a 4:3 aspect ratio with an intentional granular texture which is a perfect tonal fit, Rands’ film manages to cover an incredible range of thorny modern day issues, as well as intentionally shining a light on the students who are left to suffer by institutional failures. With Margin making its online debut today, Rands spoke to DN about steadfastly sticking to his belief in the pertinence of his script despite negative feedback and rejections from funders, casting and then building multi-layered characters whose worlds were fully fleshed out, and the benefits of creating an immersive and inspirational visual deck.
The disparity in the UK education system is a huge topic, what made you want to broach it on screen?
Margin was a few years in the making. I worked in London secondary schools as a day job for about six years, and the film is based on an altercation I witnessed whilst I was a TA in an English lesson. The same poem used in Margin, Checking Out Me History caused some racial tension between teacher and student, and although it didn’t escalate to the intensity it does in the film, the incident stuck with me. It felt like a very fertile interaction to use as a foundation to explore the various problems I’d noticed were facing inner-city academies, causing them to work counterproductively for some of their most vulnerable students.
We’re big fans of Grey Moth and their films here at DN. How did you come to be working with them on Margin?
Once I had the script ready, I approached Chuckie McEwan, a producer I’d been dying to work with, who brought it to Archie Sinclair and Grey Moth. The aim was to apply together for funding for the film, but ultimately we were unsuccessful and told the film had tonal issues, with feedback that people were unsure if it was a comedy or a drama. Thankfully, Chuckie and Archie continued to believe in the project, and pledged £5000 of Grey Moth funding towards the film, asking for no changes in the script. I’m honestly so, so grateful for this trust, as it made the film I’d been working towards for years possible.
When I got feedback from funders that they weren’t sure if Margin was a drama or a comedy, I knew they just couldn’t see what I could in it.
The 5K we had was much lower than the budgeting we’d been doing for funding, so it meant we had to be creative and find ways to cut corners without compromising on quality. One big way we did this was through finding a location we didn’t have to pay for. Since I’d left school at 18, my (clearly very inspiring) A-Level Media teacher had become the vice-principal, and after I got in touch, he went above and beyond to make the school accessible to us for our shoot for free, which was unbelievable. Toby was in his first year at the National Film & Television School when we were shooting, so we managed to make the equipment budget work by using a mix of kit borrowed from the school, Grey Moth’s and some other bits and pieces from friends and small hires.
How did you manage to overcome people telling you to change the script and keep true to your story?
Luckily, I’m quite strong headed. Because the film was based on events I’d witnessed, I fully believed in the relevance and potency of what I had to say with it. The tonal line I was going to be treading was clear to me, so when I got feedback from funders that they weren’t sure if Margin was a drama or a comedy, I knew they just couldn’t see what I could in it. I was also blessed to have supportive producers like Chuckie and Archie as, despite the funding setbacks, they never questioned the integrity of my writing or the story I was trying to tell, not once.
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I am bowled over by your ability to simultaneously talk about gentrification, racism, history and failures in our education system without judgement. Was striking the right line difficult and how did you know when you were there?
There were definitely a lot of themes to hold in balance throughout the writing of this film, and I did multiple passes just focusing on each facet to make sure they were operating in the way that I wanted. I think the ‘without judgement’ part was the trickiest element, it was important to me that the characters didn’t exist in a ‘good/evil’ binary and that I communicated the very human and relatable impulses that propel them all into conflict. I always wanted this film to be a conversation starter, so I think I only knew that we’d struck the right line once I saw the film with an audience and heard people’s discussions afterwards. Some viewers have had completely different takeaways from it, so I guess we managed to avoid being too didactic, thankfully.
It feels like a lot of the issues presented in the film stem from a lack of self-awareness and ability to fully ‘see’ the human being in front of us, and I wanted to get across these multi-layered tensions and misunderstandings.
What disharmony did you want to strike through your authentically constructed characters and tell us from their collective conflicting whole?
All the characters are amalgamations of colleagues and students I worked with in London secondary schools, and I wanted to do justice to the fertile cultural and class dynamics I’d observed in these spaces. It was crucial to me that each character felt fleshed out and nuanced, with their own specific desires and baggage they were bringing into the classroom. For me, it feels like a lot of the issues presented in the film stem from a lack of self-awareness and ability to fully ‘see’ the human being in front of us, and I wanted to get across these multi-layered tensions and misunderstandings as they bounce around the room.
How did you know the actors were right for their respective roles in the casting sessions and the huge swathes of self tapes you saw?
I love casting for my projects but I also find it terrifying, as it’s the moment of truth for whether the film is going to work or not. On Margin, I worked closely with my casting director, Amy Blair, and as with all great collaborations, we were always on the same page with what kind of performers we were looking for. She put an incredible amount of talent in front of me, through self-tapes and then zoom castings, and I was always looking for people who responded to the writing, themes and characters in ways that felt honest, reflective and motivated from experience. I had some really fascinating conversations with people about their time in education. When the connection felt right, and I could see the character forming in front of me, I knew we’d found our person.
I know you worked with a detailed, intricate visual deck, how did that grounding inform the actual production?
The visual deck was born out of my relationship with long-time collaborator Toby Lloyd who at that point I’d already made four shorts with, alongside a handful of other projects. Margin was actually the first film I ever pitched to Toby, it just wasn’t a makeable prospect for me financially at the time, so we made the other films (for a couple of hundred quid each) in the meantime. As well as talking about the script from the early stages, I developed the look and feel of the film very closely with Toby, building the visual deck for the film together to resemble a teenager’s schoolbook and get across the world of our film.
Whenever me and Toby work together, there’s this super excited big-kid energy. We get really into the project, bounce off each other and make stuff like this deck. As a collective exercise, it’s a fun way of really getting to grips with what you want the film to look and feel like as a team and serves as a great jumping off point to communicate the vision to the rest of the crew, a foundational document. I’m really proud that the final film resembles our deck closely, and it speaks to the skill of our team: everyone understood the assignment.
Toby and I really wanted to play with perspective in our approach to the film, putting the camera in the thick of it, between the students and their shoulders, and utilising a lot of foreground elements to really position an audience in the space.
Was all of the filming handheld and how did you set up the room and block so we have such an intimate view of everything?
I’m pretty sure everything was handheld other than the opening zoom. We replaced all of the classroom lighting with LED panels, which gave us a lot of flexibility on the day to jump around the room with minimal lighting changes. On a tight two-day shoot, this saved us a huge amount of time and probably made the film possible. Toby and I really wanted to play with perspective in our approach to the film, putting the camera in the thick of it, between the students and their shoulders, and utilising a lot of foreground elements to really position an audience in the space. Crafting the realism of the room was massively supported by our production designer Syd Harmony’s subtle and detailed work on the classroom displays.
I truly love the granular texture which juxtaposes the modern themes in the film, tell us about achieving that look.
We really wanted to convey the murkiness of the situation with our look, so we aimed to push and distort the ‘clean’ aesthetic of digital cinematography. Essentially, we didn’t want it to look too perfect and find beauty in its blemishes, so leaning into a 16mm feel made a lot of sense. Megan Lee really cemented this in the grade. It also added a timelessness to the image that spoke to the cyclical themes of the film, as well as recalling a lot of classic British cinema. Shooting on the lenses we used gave a deeper depth of field which helped bring the energy of our ensemble cast into most of the shots, seeing people’s expressions and movements in the background and building on the storytelling.
You clearly have a powerful voice, what are you going to use it for next?
Thank you! I graduated from the National Film & Television School earlier in the year, and am now developing longer-form film and television projects. I’ve always been a huge genre-head (for the suspense) and so I’m currently working on some horror and thriller ideas, whilst still maintaining my obsession with exploring the power structures of our society. I’m definitely not done with writing about schools though, I think there’s still a lot of material to come from my experiences working in them, and they’re such a potent microcosm for our world and its problems.
