Recently screened at the 43rd London Film Festival, To Hell with Love is one of very few well scripted shorts. Shot on DV, received completion funds from the London Production Fund which allowed for its transfer to film. Director Tony Fisher tells us about the making
  

To hell with waiting
In early '98, I made a short film for absolutely no money. It was called To Hell With Love. I'd been working with a production company for a couple of years, writing a feature script for them and was gearing myself up to shooting it. British Screen had financed the writing and we were hoping they would be interested in making the film. My problem was, I'd left film school two years earlier and hadn't touched a camera since, and I desperately wanted to get my hands on some actors and throw myself once more into the fray. Around this time an old tutor from film school, Geoffrey Reeves, had asked me if I was interested in working at LAMDA, helping him run a TV workshop for the second year acting students there. I jumped at the chance. The more you're around actors, the better you get as a director. Geoffrey had always taken an interest in my writing and wanted to use some of my scripts for the workshop. I decided instead to write something new for them, and over a weekend the script of To Hell With Love was born.

The story was inspired by Marivaux's comedies, where lovers get hopelessly entangled in each other's stratagems; more often than not falling victim to their own. Briefly, it goes like this: A young man writes intimate fantasies about a waitress who works in a bar because he is too shy to talk to her. When he leaves his notebook there by accident, he is forced to enlist the help of his best friend, who is a consummate liar, to go to the bar and pretend to be its author - a strategy which leads to disastrous consequences when the friend ends up being seduced by the waitress himself. It was a film about love, friendship, desire and betrayal...

To make a film it is often said that you need a lot of luck. I'd like to revise that platitude. To make a film you need a damned good producer. Well, that spring I got lucky: a young producer, Christopher Simon, who had been making a short through Imagine, gave me a call. He'd read my feature script and wanted to get involved. We met up and hit it off instantly. He had charm, enthusiasm and most important of all, self belief. Being Australian and an actor really helped. I suggested to him that we needed to make a short as a calling card for the feature. To be honest, I just wanted to make something - anything. Chris agreed and I gave him the script of To Hell With Love. He came back to me within hours with an immediate and unequivocal yes.

The script came to me with particular ease. I don't know why. Sometimes it just happens that way. I just sat down and it wrote itself. If only it was always that easy! It seemed fitting that it should also be made that way. Chris, however, wanted to wait to put the proper funding together. But having waited and waited for my feature, I was just far too impatient to wait to make a 20 minute short. I told him, "Let's just shoot it on DV." It was written for a workshop and it could be made in a workshop. Not a film, but an attempt at a film. Video seemed perfect. It would let me shoot as much as I wanted, and also give me the freedom to work with the actors, and push the scenes around without the pressure of time and money. In any case, there is immense competition for the small amount of money that's available, and therefore little guarantee that you'll ever get your hands on it. DV was the only way, and with a little persuasion, Chris agreed.

To hell with funding
We had approximately four hundred pounds to make the film. But we felt reckless and decided to leap in, shoot first, ask questions later... Okay, so we had a lot of luck. Principally on two fronts: casting and locations. We needed four good actors. Because both Chris and I knew a lot of actors, that wasn't such a problem, but we were surprised at just how good a cast we finally got. I don't mean we got big stars, but the actors we cast were ideal for the job. Which, in a perfect world, is how it should be. Derek Riddell, Alastair McKenzie, Claudia Solti, and Ruth Grey. It doesn't matter how good your script is, the right actor will bring it to life and the wrong actor will turn it into dead wood. Casting is critical. And these four actors understood exactly what was required of them. What do I think makes a good actor? Emotional depth, intelligence and the facility to express themselves effortlessly. That's what you're looking for - that facility. It makes an actor worth more than all the money in all the coffers of a 10 x 10 budget. Get good actors and they will bring life to the screen. Fuck the rest, it's just glitter...

The second stroke of luck was locations. A friend who is a designer agreed to help out, but with no money there was going to be no design. (She did a great job with some old newspapers!) So the locations were going to have to do it all for us. They'd have to come ready made. Pre-designed, already furnished, and meet all the requirements of the script and preferably add to them. This is where your mates come in handy. A friend of mine was living in a huge loft space in Shoreditch. It was perfect and we got the full run of the place - all for a bottle of wine! Begging also helps too. We needed a cafe, but we could barely afford to eat in one, let alone close it down or make our own. Luck intervened again. Wandering past an advertising agency, we saw the perfect location. Bright, modern, spacious - it was their own private bar. Chris hesitated at the threshold, but I urged him on. That old charm of his came in handy again, and within minutes we had our cafe. All you have to do is ask, and as many times as you're disappointed, you're pleasantly surprised too. The final location was the toughest. We needed someone's house. Poor old Chris. He should have known better! Poor Fiona, Chris's wife! But it was better that way; we kept it in the family. And with cast and locations in place, all we needed was a crew.

To hell with professionals, work with your mates...

To hell with hangers on, winnibagoes, PAs, and Pinewood...

To hell with no budget filmmaking...

Thank god somebody up there likes me...

Full article published in Filmwaves - Issue 10, Winter 2000. Subscribe now!