Pat Holden
Pat Holden is back in the director’s chair this week as he tackles the horror genre for the first time with his new project When The Lights Went Out.
I caught up with Pat to chat about the new movie, the inspiration behind it and what other projects that he has in the pipeline.
- When The Lights Went Out is your new movie and it is released this week so can you tell me a little bit about the movie?
It is a poltergeist movie and it is set in the seventies - it is a bit unusual in the fact that it is almost a retro film and it harps back to how horror movies use to be.
The whole thing is based on a true story that happened to members of my family and while it is not a documentary I have tried to get it as factually accurate as possible.
- You are in the director's chair as well as having penned the screenplay for the film so where did this project start for you? And what was it about this story that you thought would make a good movie?
Well I guess because I grew up to the story - it happened to some members of my family and my mum was a regular visitor to the house - it was in my imagination from a very young age; it was a local story and so it was very much in my consciousness.
As I got older I use to think ’this would a good film or a TV show or a documentary’ but I never thought in my wildest dream that I would get to make a film about it. But it has been something that I wanted to do for a very long time.
- This is the first time that you have actually penned a screenplay so how did you find that experience?
Strictly speaking I have been writing screenplays for a long time - as I have developed as a director I have always tried to write. I have probably written three or four screenplays that haven’t been made but I was able to learn about the process as much as anything.
So this is not the first thing that I have ever written but it is the first thing that has been made. But it is very challenging and in some ways it is harder than director; with directing there is art to it but it is mainly about fact as there is a right way and a wrong way of doing it.
You are also surrounded by people who help you as you have experienced technicians and DOP’s but with writing you are on your own with a word processor.
The book really does stop with you - yes you do get feedback from other people - but it can be very tough. You can be full of self doubt but you just have to keep pushing it and pushing it to make it good.
But I am probably going to do a little more of it as I am working on my first screenplay commission at the moment - it is purely a screenplay and I won’t be directing. And that is a very interesting experience because I don’t have to worry how I am going to direct it all I have to worry about the screenplay.
So yes it is something that I really enjoy and something that I would like to do more of but I do find it very tough.
And this was a tough project because the story is based on people that I know so you do have to be respectful and show them in a good light - but you can’t make everyone nice the whole time. So I found that difficult and I just hope that I got the balance right.
- As you have said the movie is set in seventies so what sort of research did you do into the period as you were writing the script? And what was it like going back to that era?
I did a lot of research of my own as I read quite a lot of books about the time. But I did grow up in that decade and the girls and the boys in the film could have been me because it was the time when I would have been in school.
So I did know the period and it was more reminding myself of things as opposed to just pure research. I tried not to make that the big thing about the project I just wanted it to be an interesting backdrop that informed the story.
So I looked at the politics at the time and it was the blackouts and the three day week; Britain was through a tough time and I tried to bring that into the ghost story as well.
The entire inside of the house was built in a studio and the overall look was very much a collaboration with the production designer and costume designer and you really have to try and work together.
Because I grew up in that time I kind of know whether something is wrong or right. I think that a lot of people do when they try to recreate the seventies is they put a lot things in from the seventies but if you were a working class family you wouldn’t have new furniture instead they would have things from the sixties or fifties or have bits of furniture that they got from their parents.
Production designer is really interesting and I was lucky to get such a great production designer and she was almost obsessive in trying to get it right - she was a northern girl or a similar age.
- Kate Ashfield and Nicky Bell are just two of the names on the cast list so can you tell me a little bit about the casting process - did you pen the script with any actors in mind?
I didn’t have anyone in mind. My idea for the cast that I had was to find an amazing girl and I wanted her to be an unknown.
Then what I wanted to do was to surround her with an ensemble cast of really good actors - not necessarily the most famous people at the minute but really good actors who could surround her.
So it was very much having an unknown girl in the middle and then surrounding her with the best actors that I could get.
And I was very lucky to find Tasha (Connor) who hadn’t really done much before - she was actually a dancer - and I was just blown away by her.
I was also lucky to get Hannah (Clifford) her friend in the film. That relationship was very important in the film and so I cast them together - I never saw them on their own I always saw them as a pair.
I think that the relationship is just as important as the individual as you can have two brilliant actors but they have to have that chemistry or it doesn’t work.
- You have mentioned Tasha Connor already and she makes her big screen debut with this movie so what were you looking for with the character? And what did you see in Tasha that you thought would be perfect for the role of Sally?
What I didn’t want to do was get a kid from Harry Potter, not that that is a bad thing, but I just wanted someone who was completely authentic and I wanted a Yorkshire girl.
Most people when casting the role of a thirteen or fourteen year old will cast a sixteen or seventeen year old who is young looking but I didn’t want to that as I wanted someone of that age that had a genuine sense of vulnerability and adolescence - I wanted to be very faithful to that.
But with Tasha I also wanted someone who had a bit of an edge to her as well and we were really lucky to find her.
- So what were the challenges that you faced when you were filming?
Normally with British films the budget tends to dictate the look and when you have a small budget people tend to film things handheld - it is fantastic looking stuff but it is very much the Ken Loach School of Filmmaking approach.
What I decided to do is I wanted to make something a little more considered and a little more old fashioned and classic in style and so I didn’t really use any handheld stuff at all as it was all shot on tracks of dollies.
I wanted to film it like an old school horror film such as The Innocents or The Haunting and there is a lot of coverage and you need a lot of shots to build up the tension and covert things from a lot of different angles.
So we ended up shooting a lot and I was quite pernickety as I wanted to use long lenses which have shallow focus and that was quite difficult.
So I think that that was the hardest thing just getting all the amount of footage that I needed but luckily I had a fast crew and the actors were able to do things in very few takes. Some of the scenes are shot from fifty different angles and that was probably the biggest challenge.
But we were lucky in a lot of ways as we had really good weather and a great cast who were very fast - we had a lot of things working in our favour.
- How have you found the response to the movie so far?
I have been very pleased actually as we have had some very nice reviews. The response from the public has also been very favourable - I have checked out the Facebook page and we have about five thousand likes so far and that is great for such a small film.
It just seems to be getting a bit of buzz around it and it has so far been well received. I am really pleased because you work on something for so long and it becomes such a big part of your life and you want everyone to like it but you just can’t control that.
The only thing you can do is let go and how people respond is their business. But I am very pleased with how it has been received and it seems to be going down very well.
- We are always hearing about how difficult it is to get a movie financed and off the ground here in the UK so how tough a task was it to get When The Lights Went Out into production?
When I met Bill Bungay and Deepak Nayar, they are the producers, they were amazing guys and they were very fast and pragmatic.
Deepak makes a lot of movies, he is a Hollywood guy, and Bill is in advertising and so they brought a fresh can do attitude towards it.
I think that it was slightly easier compared to getting some movies financed in the UK as you say so it wasn’t such a hard thing - because it was also a horror movie they do tend to do quite well and so people are quite open to funding them.
We didn’t have any soft money so none of it came from the Film Council it was all hard money from a private financier. I attended some of the meetings for that but in a lot of ways it is out of my hands and it is over to hose guys to raise the money - I am involved but it is really their job.
- Finally what's next for you?
I am working on a project based on James Corrigan and the Batley Variety Club. Batley is a very small place in Yorkshire but they had they had this amazing club that opened up in the seventies and people like Shirley Bassey, Roy Orbison and The Bee Gees played there.
I have always thought that it would make an interesting story because James Corrigan said that he was going to build this club and everyone pooh-poohed it as they said ’how are you going to get these big acts to come and play in Batley?’
But he got it off the ground and it became a huge success. But it was a rags to riches and back to rags story as he ended up in a council house but for a few years he had this amazing club.
It wouldn’t be a musical but there would be plenty of music in it but it would be more about the variety scene - which I think is something that a lot of people have forgotten about. You wouldn’t have Tom Jones but you would have Robbie Williams playing Tom Jones - so you would have the stars that are current today playing the stars of the past.
But essentially it would be about a man and his dream. So that is something that I am working on at the minute and I have had lots of contact with the Corrigan family and they seem up for it so I am going to try and get that going.
When The Lights Went Out is in cinemas now