What are the challenges of working on a low budget film like Shifty?
Eran: When I made Shifty, I didn't know what sort of filmmaker I was going to be. I thought I'd be more like a technically dynamic director but because of the budget it pushed me to shoot scenes a certain way.
After reviewing - after looking back at the film - because you know, I'd go around to everyone saying ‘I want to be a director' - but I don't know necessarily what sort of director I am. I'd see my first film as you'd see my film and I'd go ‘Oh, I'm that sort of director'.
I thought I was going to be someone more like say, Martin Scorsese who is technically dynamic with camera moves and maybe using some technical trickery or wizardry within the filmmaking narrative but I found that maybe because of the budget constraints, I allowed the camera just to settle and rest, tell the story without too many cuts.
After I watched the first screening of Shifty I realised that maybe I leant more towards the style of someone like Michael Mann (who is one of my filmmaking heroes) by allowing the camera just to sit and settle. I allowed it to absorb the scenes and the beats within the actors and that has now bled into my second screenplay. The style, in which I made Shifty, has now bled through into how I write my second film. And I've even found myself writing notes in the script about allowing the camera to settle, not too many camera moves or cuts and allowing it to absorb the acting.
So that's one way in which I found that the budget had a direct affect on how we made the movie. Because we didn't have cranes - we couldn't always have dollies on set. They go to a scene - Francesca Annis' house - and there's stuffed cats on the floor and one of the characters sees these stuffed cats. They're meant to be her old cats that she's now had stuffed.
Originally I wrote that the house was full of cats that were roaming everywhere but because of budget constraints, I thought, if we're shooting on an 18-day schedule and we're literally doing one to two takes and then moving on, the danger of having animals on set or in trailers is going to -we could fall behind schedule - so I phoned Ben and Rory and said ‘Look I think it would be funny if she hasn't got these live cats and that she's just got a house full of stuffed cats'.
So we just went around and saw stuffed cats and put them into the film, and again, that was another direct consequence of budgetary constraints, having to work with the script and moving things around.
Ben: Well, the budget was a challenge and the thing that created the challenge from the budget is the amount of time you have to do it. We only had 18 days to do the film. So that was one thing.
Then there was the good example from the shoot - in terms of having not a lot of time and not a lot of money - was the final evening. We planned to go and shoot the final scene of the film. It was a night exterior outside a house. It's the party scene from the film that you see in the movie, and we were moving locations on that day and what happened was I got a phone -call from the location manager saying that the location that we'd agreed to film at, -right next -door to that location (although we'd dropped him a letter to explain what we were doing) he said he'd call the police if we came to film there.
So he didn't have any real cause to call the police, however, it was the last day of filming, the last evening. Everyone - the following Monday - was starting work on other projects that were better paid, that they were saving up in order to have the luxury of doing this film for us - and so we were a bit stumped.
We had to work out what to do and rather than (in terms of problem solving without spending money) - we filmed in an area that I knew very well and in an area where my dad lives round the corner. So we always had up our sleeve that he wasn't home and that his house hadn't been filmed in so we took the crew, packed up, drove to that street.
It was 12 o'clock at night when we arrived there because it was a split day. We were going through to the early hours for night, and everyone just worked in silence outside of his house because no one knew we were coming.
The only people that spoke were the actors and there was this kind of magical experience for all the people that worked on the film. This low-budget film that everyone had got very excited about, finishing the film in this orange glow and the DOP set-up with only the two actors speaking.
Everyone whispering. But that is a good example of where the restrictions of the budget and schedule made us think more cleverly and we ended up actually with a really good result. Probably better than if we'd gone to do it elsewhere.