Martyrs Lane Ruth Platt (Writer/Director) Talks With FlickDirect

Automatically transcribed; may contain errors.

hi ruth how's it going hi austin i'm i'm well how are you almost perfect i gotta say especially after watching your film which by the way really really enjoyed it i gotta say oh thank you i'm so glad yeah of course i mean i didn't know what to expect going into this film i mean knowing as a ghost story movie but guys saying creeped me the heck out in more ways than one i have to tell you so first of all i just want to get right into it so like this movie there have been many other ghost story films out there what was your approach when it came to making this one i guess um i wanted to make a film uh first of all from a child's point of view a child's eye view on the world and there are various film films that influence me in that um and i guess i felt that this child who is excluded and slightly invisible from the adult world rattling around in this big old house but really unseen was a little bit like a living ghost because she's you know she wears dark clothes against his dark walls and she's kind of camouflaged and overhears add up conversations and and um but doesn't always get the full picture because she's held at arm's length and and and really kind of not seen and not heard or not even seen so i guess i thought and then that made me think she's a little bit like a ghost herself and and that's what binds her to this little visitor that visits her at night um this this uh being invisible and uh this desire to be heard and seen by the adult oil so um that was the kind of seed for this this kind of ghost story and i think um you know it's tricky when you have children in horror because uh i didn't want to kind of make an exploitative film yeah it's kind of and i i i you don't want to like put an adult idea or stamp on a on a child's performance so i wanted to have these very natural children and and try and mold the world to their viewpoint um but i think it can create something interesting because children are naturally curious and children say what they see if they see something they're going to say it and i think that's interesting for a ghost story so speaking of which i i feel like that hero could trust me happens to me all the time when i'm filming my stuff um so speaking of which let's go into the performances of the children because i feel like that when it comes to horror homes especially kids i feel like the kids can make or break a horror film especially when it lies on their shoulders but indica she's a star how did you find her and i wonder how many little girls did you audition before finding indica well indica is a star but i i love indica but indica is in the shorts oh my you know the strange thing is i was trying to find the short film i couldn't find it anywhere yeah yeah it was more like a proof of concept for the fact oh okay but akira also kira thompson who's in the future she's she's amazing and um she has this incredible um because we we had to recast for several reasons um you know time had gone on a little bit it was a couple of years after we made the show and um tony it had moved slightly and um and we found kira through quite a large casting process and um it was also about her chemistry with this little visitor who who visits her at night um and and finding this this natural connection which these two kids had when we found them together we did lots of pairings but but kyra it's interesting with children because you don't again you don't want to kind of you don't want a performance yeah you don't do it to be artificial or it was all about keeping it very very natural and trying to instead of bending them to the film building bending the film to them you know um and and uh keeping them in the moment just keeping it very spontaneous so i didn't really talk about the the adult world and the story arc um i i gave the script to the parents and and they were able to talk about whatever they thought was appropriate but we just kept it in the moment of their of their relationship and and um each thought and and keeping it spontaneous like that and and we were just really lucky to find those those girls and uh it was very clear when they came into the room that they just didn't perform they just evolved the character by by using their own personalities and their own experience and their own emotional intelligence yeah endicott there were more than a few scenes right thought this girl needs to be in more stuff because she is that good so speaking of the horror element i am a horror film junkie i love being scared and this movie takes a very unconventional approach i mean there are jump scares to which there's one that almost maybe screamed and that rarely happens with me this movie takes a very unconventional approach to horror can you talk about the way that you approached the more unsettling tone to this film yeah um so again that that emerged through the proof of concept through the short i think getting getting it right tonally i mean i was very heavily influenced by a lot of um you know the ghost story cinematic genre so guillermo de toro and you know devil's backbone pan's labyrinth the orphanage um even the others a little bit there's a there's a beautiful old spanish film from the 70s called spirit of the beehive which has these very natural performances from two children um and so uh that was the kind of aesthetic i was i was aiming at um and uh i think it's um yeah it's much more ghost story than horror it's not overtly horror and and so i'm so glad it's on shutter because i think shadow have this really eclectic kind of selection of different of different films across the genre because it's such a wide genre um but we had to find something that was really rooted in this child's eye in his child's world so it was again bending the horror to that to that experience really rather than putting children into kind of a horror movie that would have been a very different movie i guess yeah i was gonna say it would be a very traumatic experience to say the least for them well there are great films like that oh absolutely yeah it can be quite uh it can be a little bit potentially exploitative just a tad bit so let's get into the actual scares so i want to thank you really quick because there's there are so there there's one particular thing i don't like in horror films when they put in false alarm scares then companies a loud sound you don't do that which i applaud you for because there are many directors out there as many horror films that when there's when the sound just eases out and all of a sudden you're back it's like what the heck did you do that for uh does that also frustrate you when you see horror films that that do that same thing and they do the loud conventional cheap false alarm jump scare as well yeah totally and i really love doing the sound design uh with ben baird on this film and it was very we wanted to do something very subtle and again because it was so rooted in these children's very natural performances we wanted the sound design to reflect that because it's so much of her internal narrative this one child that you're seeing everything through i didn't want to suddenly put some great big you know um tropes in the form of big bangs and sounds and it was about making it very subtle and very detailed just like little details of these little things that she carries and collects and scavenges um and so i feel there's an awful lot going on in the sound design but it is very small and detailed so i'm really glad you picked up on that obviously i'd love everyone to see it at the cinema yes yeah yeah i can did i agree so much this was a this was a movie i was watching is thinking i would have loved to have seen this i mean don't get me wrong shutter is a great platform for this movie i'm very excited about it yeah i mean i even i gotta tell you i don't really use streaming services personally but after seeing this i want to get shutter right away so i could watch this even better quality because i liked it that much i i was i didn't know what to expect from this film because i didn't watch a trailer i went to a completely blind eyes thought this was really freaking good um one other thing i wanted to talk about so a lot of live horror productions out there some of them not all of them they say they have some very strange occurrences happening on set was there anything unique or anything that may have happened on set that you can talk about uh so we were we were filming a big old house it was very very cold it was the winter there was no central heating in the house we all got sick this is freaking freak over thankfully just just at the end of the end of 2019 we were shooting um it was i felt okay in the house i mean i grew up in in these big old church owned houses where things did go bump in the night um but um i felt okay in the house but i think a couple of other crew members mentioned they heard some some weird things so i can't tell you it was cold i didn't want to i think there was one time when we were doing some test footage i had this brilliant um art director called me and she had she slept overnight with the stuff in the house the cat the camera kit because we were shooting the next day and i i wasn't keen to sleep there at night there was no electricity or or heat in the house and she was just like yeah it's fine i think some people are very practical and don't don't tune into those things but i wasn't that keen to stay there overnight oh trust me i don't blame especially i mean the house looked absolutely amazing i don't blame you thinking yeah a place like that no thank you i i want to go to a hotel or some type of restaurant or something as electricity yeah pretty much um another thing i want to ask so i love talk about the adding process in the film and i can imagine there must have been a couple of sequences or even a few scares that that you probably love so much that you probably couldn't have because even though they probably must have skipped the cr the tbg bits out of any of every anyone who saw it really were there any particular parts that even though you loved them you didn't you found that they just quite didn't work out in the edit or is the film true to your vision um i'm i'm very happy with the film obviously i mean you know i've made micro budget features before uh and this was a a bigger budget but still a small budget in terms of filmmaking um and obviously you always have to find ways around the budget um we were going to have this long sweeping drone shot at the beginning acro along this road this tree-lined road and for some reason with the guys who turned up there was no signal for the drone i don't know if it was the trees or what so we thought what are we going to do if only close this road for one day what are you going to do so he came up with the idea of we got a rickshaw we put the steadicam guy on the rickshaw and then my my incredible uh grip um legged it down the road multiple multiple takes as fast as he could with this other picture to get the opening shot of on on the road so i mean you know things like that happen and we got the shot you know and i'm i'm really happy with it but things things you know things change things are different and you have to keep problem solving and find creatively rewarding ways to to to you know to problem solve so that's just the challenge of indie filmmaking i guess and i get that opening show is really free i just thought okay i want to see this director go places and truly it truly was really well done uh so i am a big fan of ghost stories out there not just from not just from other horror films but ghost stories in general were there any particular ghost stories that you heard as a kid or even as a young adult that had that felt so personal that you put your experiences hearing them into this particular film um so yeah i had a vivid imagination as a child and uh i guess i guess the story of the monks fleeing the monastery is from my childhood that's a good one right there that i yeah i remember that road and i was always vividly thinking about these there was an incense boat that was found in in the woods potentially dropped by monks um and that that road was quite a dark sinister road and had some weird vibes so yeah i remember that lighting up my my imagination as a child and yeah i mean i i i i the the story's autobiographical story is not autobiographically so sorry but the setting the setting is quite autobiographical i did i did grew up in this big old church-owned house so there were always like ideas of of ghosts and and and those you know your childhood my imagination runs right on on small snippets of information so that that kind of yeah it was always part of my my childhood yeah so i know i have to let you go very shortly but one more thing i do want to ask so unfortunately even though we just mentioned this was a movie i would have loved to have seen a packed audience i mean because it's really more of a character-driven drama that's as masquerading as a supernatural stop recording in progress and i was just curious so since that it's going on the shutter um i really hope that this movie finds a huge audience on shutter and how would you how would you pitch this movie to everyone that doesn't have a shutter account so i think i think you can um hopefully experience this film on on several levels and hopefully it's a it's a it's a a tense spooky slightly scary uh thrilling kind of story that you can really enjoy and feel creeped out by um and just really entertaining in that way and then perhaps on another level it can speak to people uh about family trauma family dynamics your own childhood even you know um being a parent and uh or being an older sister or a younger sister hopefully it can say something to you about that as well so i hope you can speak to people on either or both levels i guess i completely agree ruth thank you so much for your time i really enjoyed this movie it definitely gave me more creeps i inspected and there is a particular scare that actually had me jumping out of my seat which rarely happens in horror films congratulations i'm hoping this film finds a massive audience and thank you so much for your time i really appreciate it well justin i appreciate your time thank you and you have a great day hit like smash subscribe and get notified for whatever reviews interviews and news go live [Music] you