Festival REGARD presents the filmmakers of the Canadian Grand Prize Competition. Face directed by Samuel Mac, is one of them and was screened within the programs 3 of the official competition and #13-17 from the Youth Section.
REGARD : What's the inspiration for the screenplay?
Most of my previous work has been hard genre, horror, sci-fi and dark comedy. I felt like I wasn't nailing it. It didn't mean much to me; it wasn't personal. So I went back to the drawing board and thought about doing something personal—this film was a mashup of my childhood, father's childhood, and uncle's. I had elements of different ideas at the back of my head that all came together on this one.
It's based on experiences I had when I was about 15, my uncle when he was about 12 and my dad around the same age as I was. Then I built it around the story of a filmmaker and weaved in the struggles with the bullies. I tried to keep it realistic to our experiences.
REGARD : What's the film he's watching and why include it?
It was one of the first black and white horror films I saw growing up; it's the House on Haunted Hill. It was one of the reasons I really got into film and especially horror films. I thought it was cool to be able to use it because it's in the public domain. There are many things in that film that inspired the script in terms of a kind of horror facade not being what you think it is. I didn't want to be too overkill with having too many of the clips. We had a lot more in one of the earlier cuts, but we tried to pare it down as minimally as we could.
REGARD : The film has a striking look, black and white cinematography and some incredible camera movement. How did you develop the film's look?
Big kudos to Harley Francis, our cinematographer. His steady cam skills and the way he shoots so naturally were just amazing. We used a lot of natural light that plays into it, but the black and white decision came from the start. I knew that the mask was going to be a big symbol. I had an injury on my face when I was a kid, and I had to wear a mask. That was a motif that was going to be a big part of it. The mask is based on Bela Lugosi, the famous actor from those old school horror films.
The previous things I've done were very colourful, almost like super highly saturated colours. I wanted to pair it with natural light and black and white. As soon as I thought about that, it was impossible not to think about it, especially having House on Haunted Hill in there. Talking with Harley and our lighting [team] and gaffers, as well as Hugo, another guy who would work the steady cam for certain shots, it all just became very fluid.
We used a Red camera, which has an awesome broad black and white setting for us to work with. It all fed into the inspiration, with the mask and the film. Eventually [shooting in black and white] seemed like our only option.
REGARD : Can you talk about some of the locations for the film?
We wanted to show Montreal but the outskirts of the city. We shot the film in the Mile-End and St. Henri. The actual yard we use is a very well-known location, and we shot in September. It was nice and overgrown, and it had a non-maintained look. We went in and did those scenes in one afternoon, and it was pretty quiet. Usually, you get a lot of people walking around. It's very close to where they now have the pink house on top of the silo. It's a location that I live nearby, and I pass it almost every day. It looks sketchy and decrepit; we just went for it.
REGARD : You mention it was important to show Montreal. Can you elaborate?
If I'm going to make a film in Montreal, then I want it to shine through. The actors are all locals, and as soon as we started rehearsing and talking through the script, it was very important for me not to try and disguise their accents and just let their natural voice come through. With the location, that industrial aspect, it just didn't make sense to try and disguise it. I find unless it's like high sci-fi where you don't want your location to look like a specific place, you should embrace it. I love to show Montreal in the film, and I think it shows a very interesting side of the city. I just wanted to keep it as natural as possible.
REGARD : Can you talk about working with the actors, especially since the whole cast is teenagers?
When I was writing it, I was quite scared because I had a hard time imagining the actors. It was the first time I wrote something that was for teenage actors. Casting seemed like the biggest obstacle when we were in pre-production, but it came together as soon as we started auditioning candidates. We started rehearsing with all four of them. We tried to keep the dialogue as written as more like a basic outline. If the actors can hit the marks and the point comes across, I was open to the idea of letting them feel their way through it.
We did a lot of rehearsal in terms of movement, where they'd be in the scene and how the camera would follow them. We had fake cameras with the auditions. As soon as they all got together and got started, there was a lot of ad-libbing. A lot of that ends up in the final film because they were so consistent. That one thing I was super impressed by. There seems to be a lack of vanity and self-awareness that makes everything feel natural for them. As soon as they understood what each character was supposed to be, they just went with it.
We did so many rehearsals that the ad-libbing was almost rehearsed by the time we got on set. They knew what they were going to say. It made the work really easy, and we were rolling fast. It was one thing I was the most shocked by, my initial fear of "how am I going to cast this," to being on set and watching them in a scene was awesome.
REGARD : What was the editing process like?
We finished filming in September [2019] and went on to another project right after. I got the first cut done in January [2020], after which we started the process where we edit scene by scene instead of just doing a full assembly. I was trying to keep each scene as its own thing because each scene has its own movement. For instance, the opening scene is very static when watching the film and seeing faces in his home environment. That pace was different than the rest [of the film]. I was nervous to start with that scene because the pace was slow and more atmospheric.
Suddenly we start ramping up into a lot of movement. Um, but editing scene by scene allowed me to see the film's flow and how fast things should move. Harley's camera work was so fluid, and every take was pretty much the same in nailing the marks. At times it made the editing extremely easy. We did so many takes in certain scenes, but once I started cutting it together, it was all there. Each cut made sense in terms of how we filmed it. It was the most fluid editing process that I've been a part of.
When it came to actual final cuts, COVID happened, and everything went remote. We did the colour correction remotely, which was another challenge and all the sound mixing was remote. It was interesting to try and find ways of working. We just adapted, and it was a pretty smooth post-production process.
REGARD : What are you working on now?
I've been working on a project throughout quarantine, an immersive film experience, but it's not quite a film. We didn't shoot anything; it's all designed. Then I also have another script that I'm hoping to get funding to shoot either this fall or next spring. It's another short film, and it's all set in Quebec. I'm always writing features too, but it's about finding funding at this point.