Sundance 2010: Interview with Diane Bell (Obselidia)

Diane Bell’s soft-spoken, profound, and disarmingly charming debut feature engages these fateful issues of our time with a warm, sparkling sense of beauty, sincerity, and compassion. Obselidia offers a rare and humane lens through which we can view a world increasingly preoccupied with and inhabited by extinction. – Sundance Festival Guide.

Eric Lavallee: This is your first film – can you give us an idea of what your background as an artist and how this eventually lead to Obselidia?
Diane Bell: From the moment I learned to write, I have always scribbled down stories and thoughts. As a young adult, I studied philosophy and was involved with the university theater group, mostly as an actor. During this time, I really discovered film. I was living in Edinburgh, Scotland, and they had these two great art-house cinemas, as well as a great film festival every year, and for the first time I had the chance to see all these classic movies – by the likes of Bresson, Ozu, and Tarkovsky. I watched everything that I could; during the festival I’d watch four movies a day. I started co-writing scripts in my twenties, and began to learn the craft. Then some five years ago, I wrote my first solo screenplay, which brought me to LA when it got optioned.

After relocating to LA I wrote a number of scripts, including a rewrite of terrorist thriller with the director John McTiernan (Die Hard), but I soon discovered the meaning of “development hell”. Despite getting paid jobs, nothing was being made. I also felt disheartened by some of the scripts I was working on. To put it truthfully, I wouldn’t have paid to see them. So I decided to devote time to writing something just for me, something that I loved with no concern of commercial viability. That script was Obselidia.

When I finished writing it, I knew that I would direct it. It was small enough in scale that I could imagine doing it. I had written it with certain people and locations in mind, and without being arrogant, I didn’t think anyone could do it better than I could, it was so close to me. So I set about raising money to do it.

EL: This may very well be the first film to discuss climate change, the extinction of habits, things and society from a glass half full perspective. Can you discuss the genesis of this project, how did the initial idea come about and then why did this become a story you wanted to tell?
DB: It began with me reflecting on the rate of change in our society – when I was a kid, I would have loved nothing more than to have a set of encyclopedias in the house, but like most people, we couldn’t afford them. Now they actually give them away for free in my local library! And that set me to thinking about how we deal with the fact that things we love and value today become worthless and discarded very quickly – and on a deeper level how everything we love, including people and our own good health, will come to an end. How do we cope with that?

On top of that, like many people, I was thinking a lot about climate change, and I came across the writings of James Lovelock, and they just scared the hell out of me. He is the basis of my character Lewis, and essentially he’s this highly considered scientist who was amongst the first to predict climate change, and who now believes that the world as we know it is going to end very soon.

After a trip to Death Valley, the idea began to take flight. I knew I wanted to write this story for myself, to go on that journey and explore these ideas and see what they would reveal to me, because that for me is what writing is – it’s a way of making sense of the world.

EL: Can you elaborate on what kind of work went into the pre-production process (how long you’ve been working on the project prior to pre-production and what specifically did you do top prepare and were there specific people involved in this process that are worth signalling out?
DB: I had the idea in December 2007, that’s when I first wrote down the word “Obselidia”, and I wrote the first draft between March and June of that year. Chris Byrne, my husband, has had many years of on-set experience as an actor, stunt man, and camera assistant, and he gave me the confidence I needed to direct it myself. We recruited two more producers through ads on Craigslist, Matt Medlin and Ken Morris, and together we all hatched a plan to go to Death Valley to shoot tests.

That happened in January 2009 and was pivotal in us raising money to make the film, as well as in developing the look and feeling of it.

Our principal shoot was just three months after that, and during that time, we planned everything we could. I rewrote the script again and again to make it more feasible on a tight budget. I cut any extraneous characters, locations, animals, and children. I basically boiled it down. At the same time, I went repeatedly to the locations we were going to use, and really planned how I’d shoot there. I’d go to locations at different times of the day and watch the traffic and the light, and just try to figure it all out in my head.

I knew we couldn’t control everything, but I was desperately keen that when we started shooting we would feel confident that we could get everything, that we weren’t setting ourselves an impossible task. And that’s how it worked. We did shoot everything, and we never went over time.

EL: I’m a huge fan of the Red Camera and it appears to have done wonders for you – I was wondering what aesthetic decisions did you make prior to filming and what did you appreciate most from the technology?
DB: Our extremely talented DP, Zak Mulligan, owns a Red Camera and he’s used it so much, it’s like an extension of his body. At first I was hesitant – given the subject matter of the movie I though 16mm would be best. But when we shot tests with the Red in Death Valley I was won over. One of the keys to the look of the movie was that Zak used some old camera lenses that he’d picked up in the flea market, and they just give it this dreamy quality, totally not what you expect from HD! The irony is, our movie has this theme of nostalgia for good times gone by in it, but it couldn’t have been made on this budget even five years ago. This new technology made it possible.

EL: Future audiences will discover Michael Piccirilli and Gaynor Howe – how did you find the pair, and how did you go about fleshing the characters out with them?
DB: Gaynor Howe is one of my oldest, best friends from when I was at university in Edinburgh. After I wrote the movie and started thinking about casting Sophie, I said to my husband: I just need to find someone like Gaynor over here. To which he immediately replied: why not just get Gaynor over. Genius! And I knew he was right, she has such a special quality – on one hand she’s so beautiful in a classic cinematic way, and on the other, you believe that she’s crazy enough to jump in a car with a virtual stranger and drive to the desert.

Initially I actually had another actor lined up to play George, but he pulled out just before the test shoot. It was really a crisis. We had Gaynor over from London, Zak in from New York, a weekend shoot planned out in Death Valley – and no George! So Chris and I sat at the kitchen table trying to figure out who could get. A couple months before, Chris had met an Aussie actor called Michael Piccirilli at a casting and subsequently we had got together with his family for a BBQ, so we decided to give him a call. I really wasn’t sure, I thought he was too good-looking and confident to play George – but when we out to the desert, he just transformed. He’s an amazingly gifted actor, and he truly became this character. Plus there was just this magic between him and Gaynor, it was spectacular. I knew they were George and Sophie.

We didn’t have a long rehearsal process, I think Gaynor arrived just a week before we started shooting. But it was long enough for them to get comfortable with their roles, while still being fresh in it. And they were both just amazing – all the actors were.

EL: If you could name just one – what stands out as your most favorite experience you had during filming?
DB: It was probably shooting the pogo-stick scene out in the desert. That had come about by chance – on our way out to Death Valley, the Second Second AD, Chad Welch, had gone into a junk shop and bought this old, rusty pogo-stick and started jumping around like mad on it in the parking lot. I though it was one of the funniest things I’d ever seen – a grown man on a pogo-stick! And I knew I had to put it in the film. So I cut out a scene that was dialogue heavy, where Sophie and George make up after an argument, and just stuck in the pogo. And shooting that scene, I tell you: it was delicious. It was the last day of shooting, it was boiling hot, and watching George pogo around on the salt flats, knowing most of the movie was in the can, that we’d done it – it was just pure joy.

EL: Anatomy of a scene: What was the most difficult sequence during production?
DB: To be honest, the most difficult sequence was out in the desert, when George and Sophie first meet Lewis, and not because it was technically difficult or emotionally demanding. You’d think the desert would be a silent place to work – well, you’d be wrong. The Death Valley area is surrounded by these massive military compounds, and every five minutes we had another fighter jet just booming over us. They were flying so close to ground we could actually see the pilots’ faces! And of course, the noise is extraordinary, so we’d have to wait forever before sound was clear. This would be fine if you only had that scene to shoot all day – but we were starting the toughest day in our schedule. Besides that, it’s 110 degrees in the shade and these horse-flies keep biting everyone. Fortunately we managed to get what we needed and now when you watch the movie, you’d never know the stressful situation it was born from. That’s the magic of films.

EL: Getting into Sundance is pretty much every U.S. filmmaker’s dream scenario. Was wondering what advice would you give to first time filmmakers?
DB: The only advice I could possibly give is: don’t listen to anyone (myself included), just follow your heart. If I’d listened to other people about the right way of doing things, I still wouldn’t have made my movie – never mind been selected for Sundance. At every step of the way, I’ve just trusted my instincts, and never worried about the outcome. If you make a movie that you truly love and have a great time doing it, then you can’t lose no matter what happens. So have faith in yourself and make the best thing you can.

Diane Bell’s Obselidia is one of the 16 films selected in the Sundnce Film Festival’s US Dramatic Competition. Here are the screening times:

Friday, January 22nd – 2:15 p.m. – Racquet Club – 1200 Little Kate Rd., Park City
Saturday, January 23rd – 12 noon – Broadway Centre Cinemas VI – 111 E. Broadway, SLC
Tuesday, January 26th – 12:15 p.m. – Eccles Theatre – 1750 Kerns Blvd., Park City
Wednesday, January 27th – 5:30 p.m. – Prospector Square Theatre – 2200 Sidewinder Drive, Park City
Friday, January 29th – 12 noon – Egyptian Theatre – 328 Main Street, Park City