Read the full transcript from the BAFTA Guru Live Film Keynote Interview with Justin Kurzel
Tim Hunter: Hello everybody. My nameâs Tim Hunter, Iâm Director of Learning and New Talent here at BAFTA, and a very warm welcome to all of you, thank you for coming on this Bank Holiday Monday. And welcome to the third day of Guru LIVE, our three-day festival featuring masterclasses, panels and keynotes which bring to life BAFTA Guru, which youâre here to see. And the aim of the event is to give people like you access to insights from BAFTA winners and nominees to help you forge a career in the creative industries. So BAFTA Guru is BAFTAâs online resource for publishing original content and sharing inspiration and advice from winners and nominees, but as well as that we also ran over 250 events a year, so if youâd like to know more about those please sign up to our newsletter. So this is Guru LIVEâs inaugural year, and this is day three, so if weâre slightly worse for wear now you know why. Your feedback is really important to us, so after today youâll be sent a link to a survey, and please do fill it in, it will only help us to improve, and youâll be also in with a chance of winning one of the nominee bags from the film awards this year, which is a lovely Globe-Trotter bag filled with lots of goodies, so thatâs worth doing. Also, if you can support us on social media, that also really helps to make a case for doing this again, and you know our sponsors love it as well. So itâs @BAFTAGuru and #GuruLIVE, tell us what you think of the day good or bad. Preferably good. We are creating podcasts of all of these sessions which will come online in the coming weeks, the keynotes are all done the next day so you can listen to yesterdayâs now and Justinâs will be online tomorrow.
Thanks to our partners, Nespresso thereâs coffee downstairs in the David Lean room which Iâm sure youâve all enjoyed already, and then also they will have lunch in the Membersâ Bar, if you want to buy lunch itâs around a fiver for a very delicious lunch. And as a ticket holder for this session, the keynote, youâre entitled to a free ticket to Yes! And?, which is our last session of the whole day and indeed the whole weekend, and that is Cariad Lloyd and a cast of improvisers whoâll be writing a short film in the space of an hour using only ideas from the Guru LIVE audience. And that will be followed by a Q&A with Nick Film, Nick Helm, sorry, whoâs going to talk about using improvisation in his BAFTA-nominated short film Elephant. Thatâs in the Princess Anne Theatre downstairs, no this room in fact, between five and six, and then we have free networking drinks downstairs in the David Lean room. So just finally I just have to thank our partners, so EE is the partner in this creative keynote, who also as Iâm sure you know are the title sponsor of the EE British Film Academy Awards. British Academy Film Awards, I should have that down really, shouldnât I? And 2017 will be the 20th year of that partnership. Weâd also like to thank our breakfast briefing hosts which are Nespresso, Ham Yard Hotel, session sponsors who include BFI, Film London and Creative Skillset. And finally thank you very much to our keynote speaker, director Justin Kurzel, whoâll be discussing his work from his debut Snowtown, to last yearâs Palme dâOr nominated Macbeth, and the upcoming Assassinâs Creed. So, welcome Justin. Thank you.
[Applause]
Justin Kurzel: So Iâll play the first clip. I should have given you a warning.
[Clip plays]
So that film scared the shit out of me when I was, when I was, I think my parents let me watch that when I was about nine, ten, and my daughters are obsessed with kind of wanting to watch that film as well because theyâve heard about it. And itâs, this wasnât the film that made me want to be a filmmaker, but it is the film that I, you know, still to this day, especially living in Australia, going to the beach, and that shot underneath going towards the boysâ legs plays in my head when Iâm supposed to be kind of enjoying a, you know a Saturday dip in Bondi. So itâs kind of the power of this film is still with me in a very visceral way and immersive way, and I think itâs sort of you know from everyone Iâve spoken to, Jaws is a film thatâs kind of etched in their sort of subconscious. And I think a lot of it has to do with something Iâm really interested in talking to you about, which is point of view, and itâs point of view of character. And itâs something Iâve become a little obsessed about recently while editing Assassinâs Creed, about you know your films are told through a character, and usually that character has something that they are struggling against, and you are as a filmmaker doing everything possible to make the audience experience you know that story through that characterâs point of view.
And I donât mean literal point of view, you know, I donât mean sort of seeing you know, having a camera kind of look towards another character and pretending that itâs your main character. Iâm talking about every single frame, every single lens choice you make, every single piece of music that you put over this or sound design, has all got to do with what you want an audience to feel through that character. So Brodyâs, you know, his whole character is based on fear of going into the water. In that clip you never see the shark, so itâs all told through his point of view. I mean even the fact that he, all those kind of side wide shots, everyoneâs coming out of the water and Brodyâs just on the edge of it. You know the point of view of what imagines is underneath the water with those shots coming up towards the kids. Those over the shoulder shots of Brody looking past the two men, out to a kind of still ocean with a kind of buoy just bobbing you know in the distance. Itâs all got to do with the anxiety and fear of making you experience what Brodyâs experiencing. And thatâs kind of, thatâs a thing that Iâve kind of come across that I think subconsciously you understand as a filmmaker. I think that you, you know, you do get caught up in style and you do get caught up in story, and you do have a feeling for how a scene should go or where a camera should go, but you know itâs also about interrogating every single moment, where the camera should be thatâs telling the story of your character, and what youâre trying to say within that.
So that kind of, that film kind of started me off, and it comes on you know every six months, you know that film will come on and Iâll just start watching it, and I think Spielberg is just a master at putting you in the psychology of a character, and without showing you the kind of monster like he kind of did in this. I mean even that last shot there of the kind of floating mat that the box was on, you know thatâs the kind of lasting image of Brodyâs that then kind of propels the kind of dread and threat throughout the rest of the film. And itâs something that I kind of want to talk a little bit in regards to my films, and how that point of view of character has informed me, and at times when I didnât know that the answers were about really putting the audience into point of view to solve narrative problems in my films, or to make you experience the film. I think, the other day I was editing Assassinâs Creed, Iâm working with this amazing editor, Chris Telferson, who edited Moneyball and Capote, and even Gummo and Kids. We were talking about exposition in the film, and how there was an, almost about a story to get across, and then Chris said something really interesting. He said, âI just feel as though the audience in this moment and scene needs to experience it, you know, needs to experience the point of view of the character. And to me thatâs just a great example of the difference between kind of literal narrative story and actually experiencing a story, and that to me is where it becomes cinema.
So I just wanted to kind of, I was gonna today just go through a few other little clips and then sort of backend with Macbeth and Snowtown, and then obviously open it up to you guys for some questions about, I guess my journey as a filmmaker. I mean itâs, I came from theatre, and then sort of started moving into film through doing music clips and short films, and then really just lucked out in terms of a story coming my way in regards to Snowtown, which was about a place and a series of events from where I grew up, so I had a very personal and intimate kind of knowledge of that. And from then on Macbeth was a film that really just landed in my lap in a way, it wasnât something that I was sort of planning or wanting to do. So Iâll be open to kind of talk about that through the Q&A, but I just thought Iâd go through some sort of clips, talking about point of view and really kind of looking at kind of whatâs most interesting about it. So probably my, weâll go to this next clip which is Gallipoli. This was the first time that I sort of discovered Australian film and Australian voices, and this was a very, very powerful moment which inspired me to want to make films. And itâs the end of the film, I donât know if youâre aware of it, itâs Mark Lee and Mel Gibsonâs character who are both two young Australian soldiers caught up in the front in Gallipoli, and they are about to go over the trenches to face their kind of fate and destinies. So Iâll just play the, you know, this filmâs directed by an absolute master in Peter Weir. I was watching Dead Poetâs Society the other day and the way he is able to focus on again point of view within a frame is quite astonishing. So Iâll play the Gallipoli clip.
[Clip plays]
So this, I mean itâs an incredible, powerful scene, and, but it took me a long while to kind of work out that the point of view of Mark Lee in this scene, and how much of an effect it has on the finale of this film. Itâs a character whoâs desperate throughout the whole film to kind of find his war, you know, to leave Australia and to find adventure and to do his duty. And thereâs something extremely powerful in the ritual of death in this, I mean itâs quite religious in a way, the way Peter Weirâs kind of filmed it. Thereâs a dignity in the way each of them say goodbye, the fact that you never go up to the trenches, the camera stays down amongst these final kind of confessional moments between these soldiers who each individually sort of say goodbye or do a gesture, which you can sense in the sound they way theyâre writing the paper, and the way the knife goes in, and the way the ring hits the knife when itâs kind of strapped on. Those sounds have all been amplified, you know, and theyâve all been amplified to make you understand what Mark Leeâs character is hearing in that moment. Time stands still apart from the ticking clock of his little kind of timekeeping clock that his grandfather gives him.
Youâre then cutting back to Mel Gibsonâs character whoâs desperately trying to get to them to stop them. That, those cutbacks are kind of impossible, you know, Peter Weirâs always kind of shooting them with, you know, Mel Gibson with long lens across the trench, you know, 20 people in front of Mel Gibson as heâs trying to kind of waver through those big wide shots on top of an impossible cliff with a donkey in front of him. Theyâre juxtaposed with these sort of fatalist kind of shots of these soldiers saying goodbye. And then breath, you know, the breath of Mark Lee taking sort of final breath before he goes over, juxtaposed with the continuous breaths and the frantic breaths of Mel Gibson running through the trenches trying to get to them. And then that wonderful thing I think, you know, which I think you know such great filmmakers do with sound, is they take the sound out at the end. You know, youâre expecting a kind of Saving Private Ryan moment of a kind of flurry of activity and action, and it all goes quiet and all we can hear is the breath of him and his footsteps. And somehow amongst all of that it becomes a very powerful moment of cinema that completely engages you with the point of view. And it was those, itâs those sort of elements that you feel as though can just sort of fly by and you donât take much notice, but are actually subconsciously having a huge effect on you emotionally as a viewer, because theyâre directly related to the experiences of Mark Leeâs character in that final moment.
I think Peter Weirâs an incredible, I was watching Dead Poetâs Society the other day, which I just mentioned again, and thereâs a moment before the boy shoots himself downstairs after he does the play, and his father forbids him from being an actor. And thereâs this beautiful moment of him kind of going down to his fatherâs den, takes out a gun, and the father is about to hoping bed and the you know the motherâs crying, and the father says, âEverything will be alright.â And instead of sort of going to the bed and seeing the father and mother in bed talking to each other, he just stays on a pair of slippers, beautifully kind of lined up next to the bed. You know, a kind of life of order and a life of kind of comfort that completely is going to go against the sound, the tragic and brutal sound of a gun going off and his sonâs suicide. So itâs, heâs extraordinary at kind of doing those juxtapositions and they have enormous power. I think even in Jaws, I think the way that colour palette is and the kind of kid playing with the castle, you know and the little sort of singing rhyme, I think, you know, usually a kind of brutality coming off something that is calm and peaceful and almost domestic is very, very powerful.
I did a lot of that with Snowtown, which was, you know, essentially about some murders and brutality happening in a very domestic suburban place of Australia in broad daylight, so that to me was what was so horrifying about the events, was just how domestic these murders were when they were sort of taking place. The next clip Iâm going to show you is Beau Travail, and itâs, I was basically rejected out of film school twice, and this, and one of the exercises was that you had to show a clip that you really liked and then talk about it similar to this, and the guy hated my clip. And it was me and this other guy, and I was actually going to bring up The Godfather scene where Sollozzo is shot by Al Pacino in The Godfather. And the other guy kind of put this clip up, and itâs an amazing clip, and could talk beautifully about it, and now I brought up this clip and really just said that I liked the dancing at the end. And it wasnât until probably three or four years later that I realised why I liked it, you know what was it about it that within each of the frames and the ideas in it that made me compelled to use it as âthis is why I want to be a filmmakerâ to a film school. Anyway, I didnât get in, but weâll have a look at the clip.
[Clip plays]
So yeah, so you can probably tell why I didnât get into film school. But itâs, I just, thereâs just something, I mean sheâs a beautiful filmmaker Claire Denis, and this character, Galoup, played by Denis Lavant, if you see the whole film heâs an officer in the French Foreign Legion, and his whole life is about order and is about you know a kind of outlook on life which is incredibly restrictive. And he makes a fatal mistake, he gets jealous in this film and sort of causes the death of a young kid, a young soldier who becomes very good friends with his colonel, and he gets expelled from the one thing that he has in life, which is to be a soldier. So this end of the film is a kind of goodbye to that life, a kind of final kind of supper with that life that heâs led, and I just think itâs kind of quite astonishing that his death instead of playing out with a gunshot, you know instead of playing out in a melodramatic way, is done in the complete reverse
So itâs, you know, the, itâs what you donât see in this scene, itâs all about the bed and the practice of kind of folding the sheets, and the camera doesnât leave to go up to him. Itâs about you know cutting it off, and itâs about how he folds those sheets, how he brings over the final kind of blanket. The way he clasps his hands at the back, that you sort of see right in the foreground as a kind of viewer the birds tweeting outside, just how normal and domestic and, I mean thereâs something very dangerous about the scene because of that. You donât see his face, all youâre seeing is skin and youâre noticing his heartbeat, youâre noticing little movements next to the gun. Heâs holding the gun in a really comfortable way, itâs not aggressive, and then that beautiful kind of farmed moment with the pulse, the little vein kind of pulsing away. And then the song coming in, Rhythm of Life, and then how that kind of dovetails into this crazy kind of heaven that he goes into. I mean if you’re seeing this character through the whole film and then see him dance at the end like this is the biggest surprise. But essentially itâs the most beautiful ending to, you know that thereâs this life in this character, you know that his circumstances and his job and who he is has kind of restrained an extraordinary celebration in him.
And I just love the way Claire kind of completely unexpectedly shows you that soul at the end with one shot, and itâs a dance piece, and Denis dances unbelievably in it, and itâs in this strange little kind of nightclub in Paris. And thereâs something that I think is really bold and beautiful about it that is much more powerful than if youâd played out the scene of a suicide, literally. Again its point of view, her taking you into the point of view of what this man is feeling in his mind in these last moments of his life. And those sorts of things I think stay with you much, much more than playing it out literally you know, as an observation. Weâve got 20 minutes? I might go onto Snowtown and Macbeth. I mean those are very particular clips and I didnât really sort of talk about them when I first saw them like that, but definitely looking back now theyâve kind of, they definitely informed how I approached point of view in Snowtown and Macbeth. So, this is the opening of Snowtown, and Iâll just kind of show you and have a bit of a chat about how we got there with this.
[Clip plays]
So we were editing Snowtown and we had no idea how to start this film, and I kind of wanted to do a whole lot of really boring observed shots of mundane life in this town to kind of open it. It just wasnât working and I was, it was just shots of Jamie walking around having a hamburger or playing on the pinball machines, or his wife doing the pokies, it was a really, pretty uneventful opening to the film. And for some reason I decided in my mind that the audience had to be bored at the beginning of this film to kind of understand his point of view. And then my brother said to me, who composed Snowtown and also Macbeth, that, âYou kind of donât have an opening to the film, you donât have a point of view that youâre starting with.â And he said, âIs there any way of kind of really laying out right from the beginning a very solid idea of who Jamie is, and what you want the audience to feel for himâ. And I had just been, I had been really just fascinated by a couple of films at the time. Iâd just watched the redux of Apocalypse Now and I was really fascinated by the kind of premonition at the beginning of that film with Martin Sheen talking about Kurtz at the beginning of the film. So we were kind of fascinated by trying to find a sense of Jamie talking about his fate and the idea of meeting a monster, or having a dream about something that was beyond his wildest imaginations, and somehow setting the tone of something thatâs going to come crashing down, you know before you start getting into the characters and story, and it kind of sets up right from the beginning a kind of sense of dread. And so it was really interesting, as soon as we did it, and actually John Bunting the other character, the main seal killer, actually said this in the film, we actually shot John saying it in the car as he was going out to the bank to possibly kill Jamie. And he says it as a kind of warning to Jamie, and it was something that was, that happened through the interviews of the real character John Bunting, serial killer, where he actually admitted to someone his greatest dream would be to kill someone, put a Chihuahua in their neck and then ring up the cops. You know, itâs macabre and kind of ghoulish and extraordinary in its narrative. But we had John saying it and it didnât have any power, it just didnât have any effect. And we couldnât, we loved the idea of the story and what it brang, but we, but it just was wrong for this character to do it, it was too overt, you know because he was saying this as a threat while Jamie was in the back of the car. So Jed and I were discussing it and he said, âWell why donât you give that to Jamie?” Why donât you give that dream to Jamie, because itâs his point of view, and the actual images at the beginning are the points of view of the car ride out to Snowtown, which becomes at the end of the film a very, very strong motif, because that was the landscape that Jamie and this other boy would have seen as they were driving out to these killings. And then at the end of the film you somehow kind of cycle back and use the same imagery, but you know in a very, very different way. So that was really interesting how, you know, starting a film with a really, really strong point of view, even though most of the film was a social realist piece and you donât hear Jamie say, you know speak in a voiceover at all through the rest of the film. It seemed to work at the beginning as a kind of destiny, as a kind of sense of setting up what he was going to become, which was a kind of killer, and the person who he was going to meet, which was a monster. So that definitely reshaped our whole film, and that came really late, like a week before we were about to lock off, and definitely set the tone of that point of view. The next clip is, that second one of Snowtown, theâŚ
[Clip plays]
So this, I mean this was, the point of view in this scene was Jamie experiencing community for the first time. There was an energy that came into this place where suddenly things were going to get done, and John brought this charisma, and he brought this can-do attitude and empowered these characters. So all those actors apart from Dan who plays John Bunting were all I cast people that I cast off the streets in the actual town where it happened. So they had never acted before, and you know they, this scene we did in one take, and the reason I bring it up is itâs quite an interesting story with it. We had like three or four cameras one because I knew that as soon as they started repeating things it would suddenly start to be contrived, whereas what I wanted was a real life debate about sexual abuse in this area, which because we were in the area and we were using people that were living in the area, it was something that was extremely passionate in their lives. And they had a lot to say, and we had a kind of a rehearsal for that, which was basically just beer and pizzas and all of us kind of getting together, and it was to just discuss problems in the area and so forth. And a lot of the energy and a lot of some of the points that came out of that rehearsal were kind of bedded into this scene.
But what was fascinating is that Dan, who plays John Bunting, who is a Sydney boy, was suddenly cast as John and had to come into an environment thatâs incredibly intimidating and be loved you know, and have some kind of control and power over these people. So Dan, I got Dan to come nine weeks before we started shooting, and he, heâs a beautiful guy too, heâs a lovely guy and heâs got an enormous heart, but suddenly he had to play someone who was, you know ,pretty kind of aggressive and powerful. So Dan kind of arrived and it was nine weeks there in the area, and lived in a hotel, and my whole aim with him was, you have to start becoming part of this community, you have to start going out and meeting people, and like Lou taking her out to dinner, she was the mother there. Jamie, Lucas, I want you to kind of you know go to his school every day and you know pick him up and drop him off and take all those young kinds to go fishing. And, you know, I want you to go into pubs and clubs around that area, and people start to recognise you and see you, because thatâs what John Bunting was. John Bunting was, he was like a preacher, he was the complete opposite to what the clichĂŠ serial killer is. He was very, very community driven, everyone thought he was a good Samaritan, there werenât many people that had a bad word about John when we were researching the film. Because on the exterior he was doing good you know, he was getting rid of pedophiles in the area and he was you know helping these little families and getting someoneâs groceries. So Dan had to become kind of involved in this thing.
Anyway, he kind of froze after about four weeks, he didnât go to McDonalds and KFC like I told him to and put on 10, 15 kilos, he didnât kind of you know get out there in the community and meet people and start to kind of feel an energy there, he just sort of stayed in this hotel and read books about serial killers. And it was, yeah it was really kind of disappointing, and you know I realised that he was incredibly scared you know of this place that he was in. So we had a real challenge to kind of get there where he suddenly felt like he could walk down a street in this area with confidence, and everyone would look at him in a very powerful and charismatic way. So when we did this scene, when we were rehearsing this scene, which was really just you know chatting about particular abuse in the area, Dan froze, absolutely froze. Could not speak, you know people were speaking over him, and I got, at the end of the night after three or four hours I got really angry with him. You know I was kind of like, âWell you know, if youâre going to freeze on the day, because weâll only get one chance to do this, youâre going to completely undermine the power of the character.â And he was saying, âI donât know whether I can do this, you know these issues and problems are really affecting me. And you know, and I donât know whether I can kind of be guiding people in that situation.â And it took him a good kind of two weeks before we shot it to really start to understand the power of that scene and the point of view of that scene, distance himself a little bit, and allow people to speak, and motivate them to speak throughout the scene, but at the same time give you the impression that he was in control.
So it was a really big turnaround for, you know again point of view, a guy, an actor who desperately didnât want to be in this environment and in this film and was very, very intimidated by it, but then suddenly found a performance through being part of it you know. And a lot of that came from these first time actors giving him that. You know as soon as he walked on the set the boys would hug him and kiss him and you know hang off him, and Lou would always beam when she saw him for the first time, and you suddenly realised that the dynamic of what heâd created with these people was the character. So we were always just bending and twisting off that a little. Everyone knew that we were, you know that it was a film, but there was definitely an energy there that came from Dan as an outsider suddenly taking control of a place and an environment and having an effect on it, and that certainly rubbed off on scenes like this where it was one take, Dan had to drive it. If weâd gone into a second take it would have suddenly started to feel contrived. He had a few points he had to hit and then that was it, so we shot that like in four minutes, two cameras to make sure that we got all the coverage that we wanted. And again it was supposed to feel, it was supposed to have an energy and it was supposed to feel as though it was Jamieâs POV about community. Suddenly this world that was dead was coming alive with a kind of passion. We might go into Macbeth, the beginning of Macbeth.
[Clip plays]
So this is quite interesting Macbeth, because when I signed on to do Macbeth it was like there was a beginning war scene in the screenplay that was probably about ten pages long, and you know it was very much kind of setting up the heroism of Macbeth as a warrior. And I found that really interesting, and we storyboarded it and worked out how we were going to shoot it, it was going to take three weeks with 200 soldiers and weâre going to do it in the middle of the moors in Scotland. And then we realised, I realised within the first week that that wasnât going to happen and I was going to have 30 soldiers and I had to do it in three days. You know it was quite a shock that that was what was being kind of proposed. But itâs interesting because at that time I hadnât really fully investigated the idea of Macbeth possibly suffering from post-traumatic stress from a war, and the idea that perhaps the witches could have somehow been a manifestation of that trauma.
So just really through logistics, it wasnât anything else, I had to suddenly go point of view on it, and how do I completely and utterly tell this story and this epic battle and understand Macbeth as a warrior through him and through what he sees. And I had to be very, very specific about the moments and the elements in that war that I wanted to highlight and heighten, and somehow connect them through the witchesâ prophecies, so that those images of violence and brutality, those little kind of moments that had defined what Macbeth was, and definitely in my story wanting to set up his sort of post trauma and how that works into the prophecies of the witches. I had to desperately sort of try to connect that imagery to the witches and kind of make it feel like it had come out of the battlefield. So that was, that was just a really interesting way of using point of view to solve a problem that youâll all have as filmmakers, which is, âHow the hell do I do this in the time that Iâve got and the money that Iâve got?â And you know Iâm still having the same challenges with Assassinâs Creed. You know itâs a big budget franchise film, and itâs never enough, itâs just never enough. You know the budget and the weeks never fit the ambition in your head, and youâll be quite surprised at how you from, âOh, well if I can get 80 percent of what I want,â youâll suddenly realise youâre at 50, you know and youâre compromising half of what your vision is. But whatâs great about that and the way you can solve things are through point of view. You know, even in that clip of Gallipoli there, you never see 1,000 soldiers, you know the shots are very, very specific. Itâs down in the trenches, you go from one shot up the top there with the gunner about to, you know just before they go over the top, and then you follow a kind of really beautiful kind of side-tracking shot focusing on Mark Lee and the sound goes out. And thereâs just ways of creating scale, and thereâs ways of creating story and narrative completely and utterly through point of view, if youâre really, really selective about it and assure about it. You know people wonât even go, âOh gee, that battle looks small,â or, âit didnât feel big enough,â or whatever. They wonât even think about that if youâre in point of view. And another film, Raging Bull, is a similar example of that. When you have a look at that sequence with La Motta fighting Robinson, thereâs hardly any people in the crowd, you know the shots are really, really selective to his point of view, what he would be seeing. So yeah, I guess thatâs it, weâll open it up to questions.
[Applause]
Q: Thanks. Thanks very much Justin, it was really interesting. My question is, at the beginning you mentioned about going from a place where you had don music promos and a couple of short films, I just wondered if you could perhaps chat about how you went from that to getting your first feature off the ground and how that came about.
JK: Yeah, I was working in the theatre for ten years. When I was 28 I became a theatre designer, and so I was around a lot of directors and actors, and then really just became a pest to directors because it was obvious that I wanted to direct. And moved from that after about ten years, in my early thirties I moved into, my brother had started a band and he needed a video clip, and I wanted to make something, so we went out and got some 16mm film somewhere and we just came up with a really, really simple idea, and we did it. And that was kind of it, I got the bug of cinema, and from then on it was doing, I did a short film for a short film festival in Australia called the Tropfest Film Festival where anyone could make a film for this one night that they have in Sydney. And then that progressed then onto me wanting to go to film school, I didnât get into Australiaâs film school, kind of devastated, âWhat am I going to do?â And then kind of picked myself up and you know started to just keep on making things. It really was that, it was kind of around that time, I went from around that time when you really could only make a film on 16mm, was your kind of lowest budget that you were going to get away with, to then suddenly, âOh wow, I can do this on a video.â So I was just on the precipice where things, production-wise, became much easier, easier to do.
So from there I then made a couple of shorts that then got me into commercials, and I spent two years making commercials, and thatâs where I learnt an enormous amount craft-wise, and working with actors. And then I was approached by Warp Films who had just started an office down in Australia, to do Snowtown. And it was absolute fate, like they didnât know that I was, they were interested in me based on some video clips Iâd done, and they had to same ethos as Warp here, which was like new filmmakers, new filmmakers, new voices, so I was very lucky to be around there at that time and then Snowtown landed on my desk and I said, âWow, I come from this area.â And I was living in Melbourne at the time and it was set in Adelaide. And I actually lost the project, I didnât say yes for about seven weeks because I was just so scared of it, but I donât think about the subject matter, just scared of making my first film. You know kind of like you know judging everyone else for years and years and years, and then suddenly when you have to do it yourself youâre kind of like, âOkay, I better step up here,â and I think I was completely intimidated by that, but then it just happens and youâre on, and yeah I was just very lucky, there was a lot of timing there that worked out.
Q: Hello, itâs on. Firstly, thank you very much for this, it was really, really interesting. Could you maybe go into more about your process with actors, because obviously your films are extremely visceral and cinematic, Iâm really interested as well in how you work with actors, because the performances, especially in Snowtown, are so natural, and in Macbeth as well theyâre very real and intense. And you talked a bit about doing sort of a workshop and rehearsing, could you talk a bit more about your process with that? Do you always workshop, and were you able to do rehearsals on a film like Macbeth or Assassinâs Creed for example?
JK: Snowtown was a different experience from Macbeth because it was working with people who hadnât acted before, so a lot of it was about using their own experiences, and I didnât overly rehearse that film, because as soon as we did theyâd start acting. So a lot of it was about, okay, whatâs the key to this scene, there might be a couple of lines here and there that I need them to hit, but what I wanted them to do is, I just wanted them to be in the moment in the scene. And in fact Dan Henshall who plays John had the most difficulty because the others were so, they knew this world so well and they knew the points of view so well that they could just effortlessly be in it. Whereas Dan I think started it with, thereâs a fantastic story, Dan was once doing a take and he would speak opposite Lou, and then he would look out the window at the end of the take. And I kept on going, I was saying to Adam, my DoP, I was like, âWhy is he doing that? I donât understand why heâs always looking out of the window at the end.â And Adam said, âItâs because heâs going to a commercial break.â And I said, âWhat do you mean?â And he said, âWell heâs been in a soap for three years, they kind of teach you to like find a cut point on soaps where you know they can go off.â
And I went up to him, I said, âYouâre doing this thing, you know youâre looking out the window at the end of each take.â And he goes, âItâs the soap, itâs like the commercial break.â And I went, âI fucking thought it was.â And you could see the others would just be sort of in a scene with him and heâd look out, and Lou and that would sort of look out as well, and it was because I was so involved in what he was doing. And then I said, âYou donât, just be, you know you just have to listen.” That is the most important thing is just listen and be there, and come off what theyâre giving you. And I think you know, the biggest mistakes Iâve made I think with performance is too many takes, you know and too much direction. You know you have to load, you have to be really careful about how you load that cannon, and you know they when youâve got it loaded, you know in terms of kind of backstory and this is the scene, and mood and setting. Like you know when you walk into a space, you know donât have people on their phones, you know make it a sacred space, make it a space where those actors feel really comfortable, and then just donât over direct it, allow them to find their thing. Because when youâve got two actors opposite each other, listening to each other, it is kind of gold.
And that was the same with Macbeth. Macbeth was very much about how do you keep a text which is incredibly well known and has been spoken you know millions of times, I didnât want to start to rehearse it like a play, I wanted to keep it very fresh for them. So we would talk about the scenes and you know there, with Marion, Marion did like to say it a lot because for her being French the English was really difficult, and there was a rhythm to it that she needed. But Michael was very much, Michaelâs process he reads thing 100 times and then forgets them, you know so heâs never reaching for the lines or for anything in the scene, heâs always just trying to connect to the other actor in terms of whatâs going on right there in that moment. And I think thatâs really important. There was one clip I was going to show with Macbeth which was, âFull of scorpions is my mind.â And it was, Michael was really tired that day and we were at the end of a long shoot, and you know he was on the floor just playing with his knife. And you know Marion was really tired, and the energy I wanted from the scene was completely different from their tiredness, and you know their kind of like boredom. Not in terms of them as actors in the scene, but in terms of their characters, you know that these characters kind of had nothing to do. You know they were kind of, theyâd done all the killings, and I was sort of sitting there bored just sort of waiting for whatever. And it was just a really lovely moment where Michael was so in a world and Marion came in and was so in a world that was opposite to what I thought, and then they did this scene, it was just beautiful, it was absolutely beautiful. But it came from an energy that was already there, and that was a little lesson I learned about just being open to whatever the truth of the day is. You know if your actors are feeling tired or whatever, actually sometimes there might be something really great about that because it will bring a vulnerability or something that goes opposite to the scene. Always be brave to flip things you know, donât hold onto your chickens all the time.
Q: Hello, thank you so much. Iâm really interested in how you transition from a film like Snowtown a bigger budget with like loads of special effects and how the special effects sort of effect your creative process?
JK: Well itâs kind of the same, I mean itâs not, I mean you kind of have, you know you have a series of shots you know have got special effects, and I always like my effects to be really real. So we do a lot of real plates, I try to make feel as in -camera as possible. So hopefully youâve got an essence. With Macbeth there was always an essence of what I wanted in the frame before I started putting in mountains or whatever. And Assassinâs Creed is turning out to be the same, weâve shot a lot of the stunt-work in Assassinâs Creed, and a lot of the sequences for real in Malta. So it has a very real feel, and I think thatâs something Iâm just naturally interested in. So your plate, what you originally shoot, you should try and get as much as possible, the tone and the mood and the feel and the point of view in that plate, and then let that dictate the VFX that you put over it and the tone of those VFX, as opposed to the other way around. You know you can get caught up in changing too much, and actually I was doing it the other day, changing too much within the original plate, and suddenly it looks artificial. And you do, âWow, I went to Malta and shot this, you know and was on a roof the whole day watching someone jump from one roof to the other, why does it suddenly look like itâs green screen? And you suddenly realise, âIâve changed too much within the frame, and youâve just to really careful about what you change.
Q: Hi, I was just wondering about between and Snowtown and Assassinâs Creed, how did you find the change of creativity and control, because oneâs quite big compared the the other one. Was there much?
JK: From Macbeth to Assassinâs Creed orâŚ
Q: Snowtown to Assassinâs Creed. Did you find it less control and creativity at all?
JK: Yeah, itâs challenging. Itâs challenging because you know youâre dealing with a much bigger budget and much bigger investment, and Iâm also dealing with a brand that is already set, so thereâs already an expected audience for that film in a way. But I think you know, I think you justly to, again itâs story and narrative and point of view, and thatâs the thing that kind of guides you with it. And then you have to communicate in the best possible way why you think that is right, thatâs the effort. You just canât kind of go, âOh you know they donât understand.â You actually have to include people and really get them inspired about choices you might be making that are testing certain conventions. And I had to do that with Macbeth as well, you know to shoot it in the way that I wanted to do it, to do the verse in the way that I wanted to do it, there were a lot of discussions, really quite robust discussions about the approach. But I donât think you can be, I donât know, I donât think you can be an arsehole anymore in terms of just going, âWell Iâm a genius and you donât understand.â I think that thereâs too much money involved and thereâs too much, itâs an obligation of a director to be able to sit there and communicate to anyone why it needs to be a certain way, you know and why the vision is going to work. So, I think itâs a similar process.
[Applause]
