Directing Duo's Short Tackles Tough Political Issues

Directing duo Varun Raman and Tom Hancock are behind Transmission, a brilliantly tense and psychologically powerful short film.

Created through their own produciton company, called Parallel Madness, Transmission has been doing the festival rounds over the course of this year but has now been released into the wider world. The film was written in 2015 during the height of the refugee crisis as a warning against the anticipated rise of British nationalism. "We suspected people would sacrifice their freedoms on the basis of rousing narratives rather than facts," say the pair. "It’s easier to blame sections of society than to hold the elite accountable." Turns out their anticipation was well-placed, preceding the rise of Trump and the debacle of the UK's Brexit decision. 

Above: Tom Hancock and Varum Raman.

Set in a near-future dystopian Britain, now called Britannia, the film is told in the fragmented, traumatised perspective of Leonard. POV shots are a signature, along with heavy sound design and the fracturing of time, interspersed with memories and outer-body experiences, triggered by Leonard’s tormentor, Dr. Sam. 

The as-yet-unsigned Raman and Hancock, who met at the University of Manchester talk to us about the film, how they've learned on-the-job, having no film school experience, and their directing partnership and goals.

"Power play is always good for cinema. It's psychological and offers a metaphysical way in. An interrogation is perfect, it's about reality being manipulated."

Above: James Hyland plays Dr Sam.

Had you directed shorts before Transmission?

Hancock: We made two no-budget shorts. Our first, set in our living room, a three- minute silent film with a score. And the next, with dialogue and more locations. We had fun with them, tried a lot of shots out and generally learned what work flow processes were involved but with very basic equipment.

Raman: They were sort of practice films. Learning how to simply get one made is enough. But we always knew that the final stage of our self-education would be to make a film with a polished execution. One we could stand next to and have no excuses for. 

Where did the initial inspiration for the film come from?

Hancock: Film funds, schemes, competitions and festivals are always asking for 'bold, new, exciting voices, with vision etc'... So, we'd send something we thought was just that, but wouldn’t get in. We wrote wackier and stranger shorts and tried to make them more and more fun, but they still didn't get in. But the short answer is that films are expensive so we wanted to start from the limitation of having one with just two people in a room and find a dramatic scenario to provide as many interesting shots as possible.

Power play is always good for cinema. It's psychological and offers a metaphysical way in. An interrogation is perfect, it's about reality being manipulated. And it just got bigger, with an exterior world added, and then another actor. That's why it's best to start very small, so you have room to open it up and you're not totally over-stretching. 

Above: Michael Shon plays Leonard. 

The themes of the film can be open to interpretation but the feeling of unease and disquiet is palpable; is that something you were aiming for from the outset?

Raman: I guess we just must have got the whiff of the migrant crisis being reported a lot in the summer of 2015. The reporting was pretty stinky about the whole thing, so we realised something was up. A lot of language games were being played. The fact that they started calling them ‘migrants’ was insidious enough. It must have seeped in. For a very long time we didn't really know why we had written what we had. But we knew we should explore it. It was a bit of a tone piece.  

"Shooting on film ups everyone's game too. It gets people excited to work together. It feels like a bigger cause to unite behind."

Tell us about the casting; how hard was it to find the three actors and what did they bring to the film?

Raman: James Hyland [Dr Sam] was in a friend's music video - Ian Pons Jewell directed Jargon and Tinie Tempah's Disappoint You [below]. There's a prologue in it where James plays this really shitty cop and he's fantastic. And Michael Shon [Leonard] is an actor we think will go very far, the camera just soaks him up. From the first time we saw him in a film class, we knew the guy had oceans of subtext in him.

Above: Tinie Tempah's Disappoint You, starring James Hyland.

Hancock: Yeah, he's got one of those faces where he doesn't have to do much, and you read a lot into it. Though only Dr Sam speaks, we wanted it to feel like a dialogue. So, Michael does a great job at keeping a strong, internal monologue, to give the idea of protest, and James does an astute job of reading those thoughts and reacting to them but still in a way that Dr Sam seems to control the conversation. 

Raman: James is also an expert at finding the comedy in the darkness, in how to counter-act the two. It couldn't just be a dark film. It needs breathers, so we have the exteriors for that and we've got Dr Sam trying to convince us he's actually quite civilised. He opens with a 'honey I'm home' attitude, then becomes a friend, then a little fatherly. He even seems affectionate at times but only turns out to be momentary, and for selfish, manipulative reasons. 

How important was sound and sound design to the finished film?

Raman: It's the final cherry on top, it's what makes the audience vibrate. 

Hancock: The visuals are sort of the chords and rhythm of the film, but sound always plays on that world beneath the surface. The off notes that suggest numerous other thoughts and anxieties in parallel to the main issue a character has. They just add depth and complexity to a moment. 

Hancock: Seb Bruen [sound designer] and Nick Sutton [composer] seemed to compliment each other perfectly. We were worried for a long time if either of them would have enough space in the film to express themselves without muddying it. And we'd obviously promised them that there would be a space to really unleash. But in the end there was no clashing whatsoever. If you think the film is disquieting and uneasy it's likely because you could just listen to the score by itself on some good speakers, and likewise to the sound design, and you'll definitely feel like you've just taken a heavy does of something.

You shot on 35mm film stock; can you tell us a bit about why you made that choice and what it added to the film?

Raman: David Lynch's Lost Highway is a recurring visual reference for us. Those blues and greens in the Fuji stock just felt so right, and so using it seemed the appropriate to pursue for the interiors. And once we decided that, we colour coded the set design with that. Along with little pops of red. It was the last stock out of the factory when it closed down in 2013.

Our DP, Thomas Shawcroft, likes a challenge though, and we like high stakes, so it seemed right that we chose a stock with the right capabilities even if it was old and extra precautions and tests would have to be taken. The exteriors are Kodak, and that works nicely for the colours at play there, and we also wanted to reduce the risk there.

Hancock: Shooting on film ups everyone's game too. It gets people excited to work together. It feels like a bigger cause to unite behind. There's a shared sense of adventure. Which we wanted for the set. And it has some pretty cool secret economics in it. You see a lot of films with insane production design but then it's shot digital and often looks fake. More fake than it does to your eyes on the day of shooting. You've got to really go all-out with digital to try capture the dreamy feel of film.

Raman: If there's metaphysics in the story, it seems natural to shoot on film. You don't want brutal boredom of reality. You want that grain, that slight haze that you get in the mind. It also picks up colours so well, and keeps them distinct. Or maybe less fancy than that, maybe its just what we think that's what films should look like because that's what they looked like growing up. So film feels more like memories. Maybe the next generation will think films shot on film look weird, and digital looks more like memories.

How long did the film take to make and what were the most challenging aspects of its creation?

Hancock: We wrote it around summer 2015 and shot the interiors in January 2016 in Bristol. That was three days of setting up and four days of shooting. The exteriors were a three day shoot in July in Dartmoor. And we finished it off slowly into 2017.

Raman: [The challenge was] just having patience really. And the sheer amount of phases and levels you have to go through. And the amount of meetings you have to have, to make sure everyone is on board and on the same page. 

Hancock: Once we had key cast and crew involved they really take it off your shoulders. Picking a good team is the main task and making sure the vision is clear. Once that was done, everyone totally surpassed what we thought they were going to do and didn't need much instruction. 

Above: Leonard meets Joan, played by Kelby Keenan.

Transmission has gone down incredibly well at festivals; what are you hoping for it next?

Hancock: We'd like a Vimeo Staff Pick, so that it gets watched by an even bigger audience. It's hopefully the perfect audience for this launch. They know their cinematic references and like a high visual quality. You can trust them to give a short film its own focused bit of concentration, and give something daring and weird a chance. We just hope it reaches out to a lot of other filmmakers and that they get in touch and say hello. It helps for us all to know and look out for each other. There's a lot of talent about and we want to know them, so finally we're able to get our calling card out there for them.

Raman: We'd love for it to somehow break out of its European and North American bubble. But we have no idea how to breach South America and Asia. Hopefully social media can get it out there. We really want to know what other parts of the world make of it, and we want to make connections in those places because we want to know what's going on there.

Where did the name of the production company, Parallel Madness, come from?

Raman: We initially liked Asymmetrical. But that was obviously taken by David Lynch. And so was every other good name you can think of. Think of it, search for it, and find it's been taken by someone else more established. It's two words that have no meaning when put together, but hopefully, over time, will grow to mean something.  

Hancock: We did want a sense of a duo though, so ‘parallel’ works for that, and the ‘madness’ has a nice disrupting edge to it.

"We just hope it reaches out to a lot of other filmmakers and that they get in touch and say hello. It helps for us all to know and look out for each other. There's a lot of talent about and we want to know them, so finally we're able to get our calling card out there for them."

What are you working on now and what are your career plans from here?

Raman: We've got a TV pilot and series bible with Blue Shadows Films and they're looking for US partners to develop it. And a feature film for us to direct called QUEEN + CoUNTRY, which is a bit of a magical realism farce; a lowbrow take on the immediate political situation in the UK and Europe. The situation is not changing anytime soon. 

Hancock: We've got a few more scripts we'd like to write soon, too. Maybe some more series pilots and features of different genres. It's nice not looking for development funding and just finding the time to write projects ourselves and then looking for the key talent to get involved. It means that the story is very much our own.

Raman: The end game is to establish ourselves in feature films. It's a product that does need to make the audience sit up and want to leave the house to get a bite of it. There are films that people know they have to go to the cinema for. But some interesting commercials and music videos along the way would be nice.